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Over the Weekend (Mar. 2 Edition)

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News, music videos, and other fun stuff to help kick off your March…

It seems like there has been buzz about the new Kanye West album for months now, but the follow-up to Yeezus finally has a name: “So Help Me God”.  New material has been trickling out for some time now, and today the studio version of the club-friendly “All Day” was released, with an accompanying video to which we will link but not embed because of a certain amount of nudity that may not be welcome in all work establishments (Update: the video has been pulled).

Our favorite video of the week is Action Bronson’s “Actin Crazy”, which mashes up a ridiculous CGI video with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of said goofy video.

Alabama Shakes stopped by Saturday Night Live this weekend in preparation for the April 21 release of Sound & Color.  “Don’t Wanna Fight” was a nice little peppy funk number, but the standout performance was the electric “Gimme All Your Love”.

It wouldn’t be a Monday if we didn’t have random lists, so here’s SPIN ranking every single Oscar Winner for Best Original Song and here’s Loudwire’s list of the 10 Best Stone Temple Pilots songs, which includes just about every song you would hear from them on modern rock radio, with the welcome addition of “Down” from the long-neglected album No. 4 (though I would have hoped they could have found a spot for the closing ballad “Atlanta”).

Followers of The Thermals on Twitter have long known that singer/guitarist Hutch Harris is a funny guy, but they still may have been surprised by his recent forays into stand-up comedy.  Hutch talks to Splitsider about his longtime interest in the form and the difference in performing comedy versus on-stage as part of a band.  But don’t despair Thermals fans, Hutch hasn’t ditched his regular gig yet, and the band is working on a new album as we speak.

And finally, we regret that we weren’t able to post this video when it happened last week, but frankly it has taken this much time just to process what happened: Jimmy Kimmel had Warren G perform his classic “Regulate” with help from Kenny G.  I’m speechless.

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Over the Weekend (Nov. 10 Edition)

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New music, videos, and other fun as we prepare for “Foo Fighters Week”…

The Foo Fighters are released their eighth studio album today, Sonic Highways, and we’ll be running features on the band all week long.  To help get you into the spirit, SPIN has provided a ranking of all 147 Foo Fighters songs, including covers and soundtrack selections.  As with all lists, this one has its fair share of faults, including a weird affinity for the band’s weakest effort (Echoes, Silence, Patience, & Grace), dismissal of some of their best recent work in Wasting Light, and an unfortunate-but-expected disdain for tracks from One By One, and ranks “Hey, Johnny Park!” at least thirty spots too low.  On the other hand, it does provide the proper reverence for deep cuts like “A320” and “February Stars”, so we’ll take the good with the bad.  And though we have most of these Foo Fighters singles, including several obscure ones, this list did inform us of the existence of this performance with Serj Tankian of the Dead Kennedys’ classic, “Holiday In Cambodia”.

Aphex Twin recently sat down for an extensive interview with Dan Noyze, and not only that, provided a number of outtakes and and fragments made during the making of Syro.

Hutch Harris from local favorites The Thermals sat down with Late Night Action recently, and talked about subjects including the band’s early recording methods as well as the band’s personal involvement with their merchandise.  It’s always fun to listen to Hutch, so watch when you can.

Here’s an excellent list of “Songs You’ll Never Hear on a Sufjan Stevens Album”.

We’ve mentioned Interpol guitarist Daniel Kessler’s upcoming side-project before, but now we have a bit more info about Big Noble.  They’ve also provided a video of one of their songs, which is a nice combination of Kessler’s crystalline guitar with intriguing soundscapes.

Mark Ronson is going to be the musical guest on SNL in a couple of weeks, and to get an idea of where he’s at, he recently released one of the songs he wrote with Tame Imapala’s Kevin Parker, and the result is something that sounds a bit like MGMT.

We’re looking forward to the second album from Father John Misty, since Fear Fun was such an excellent debut; plus we need an additional enticement to go see Josh Tillman’s stage show once again.  I Love You, Honeybear will be released next February, but last week FJM performed on Letterman the new track “Bored In The USA”, and it was fantastic.

Cults performed in Austin, and Pitchfork was there.  That should be enough to get you to click the link.

And because we’ve spent the entire weekend pondering the philosophical conundrum that comes with “too many cooks”, we’ll ride that out the rest of the week and post the video here.

Over the Weekend (May 19 Edition)

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We’ve got a lot of fun videos and other distractions for your pre-Memorial Day week, so let’s get going.

First, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah released an intense and haunting video for their new single “As Always”.  The song is an interesting change in direction for the band, with spare guitar melodies filtering in and out of a spectral synth track, and propelled by a galloping drum track that stutters a bit with its inventive use of ghost notes.

Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, and even more groups) released his solo debut Everyday Robots a few weeks back, and while we’re still processing the spare and melancholic nature of the album, that hasn’t stopped Damon from releasing a video for one of the more upbeat tracks on the album.  He released a video for “Mr Tembo”, a song about an orphaned baby elephant he met in Tanzania, and the video features clips of the little guy in action.  I think this is one of the few times I would prefer less footage of the musicians, just so we can get more baby elephant scenes.

AllMusic conducted an interview with The Dandy Warhols, where they do the usual thing of talking about influences and songwriting goals, which actually are rather revealing when you consider the trajectory of their career.  In addition, they have the premiere of the lyric video for their classic “Bohemian Like You”.  It’s actually the version from their recent release Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia Live at the Wonder, and features some goofy animation.  So, there’s that.

Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live had one of my favorite sketches of the season, with an Andy Samberg Digital Short that was a vicious parody of the inherent ridiculousness of the current EDM scene.  Radio.com picked up some of the reactions from various famous DJs, and many seemed to enjoy the joke, though who knows how many thought that they were not themselves the target.

SPIN has an article talking about the first public performance of the reunited Slowdive and includes some video footage from the secret gig.  It’s great to see the band together again, though expectations should be tempered a bit considering the (understandably) low quality of the footage.

And finally, we have a little bit more chart fun, as Concert Hotels came up with an interactive chart comparing vocal ranges of various singers from different eras.  Some of the results may surprise you.