Here it is. The single I was clamoring for last week.
Forget what I said about seemingly superfluous album trailers. About too much affected buzz or too many snippets of fuzz or too buzzy too fuzzy streaming services. I admit: I’m a hype junkie.
The new album, V, releases August 19th on Secretly Canadian/Sincerely Yours. More information on the record, including tracklisting, is available here.
Enough with the album trailers already. I love getting news of an upcoming release as much as the next guy, but, you know… just drop the first single.
Admittedly, the trailer for three stops on Spoon’s upcoming tour was pretty cool (be cooler if I was going to be in Berlin next week), but their “Hi” clip posted back in March was like being handed a slice of pepperoni fifteen minutes before my pizza comes out of the oven. Guys. I can wait.
My summer nights wouldn’t be the same without a dreamy slice of Swedish pop courtesy of jj. And as luck would have it, their new album is set for August.
So you produced the hell out of this little trailer. I want to believe that you’ve produced the hell out of a single, too, and I’ll be hearing it real soon. Don’t make me wait until August.
It’s almost June… Continue reading jj – Album Trailers, Summer Songs, and Ditching Ne-Yo
Credit to my pal JN for introducing me to my latest Swedish crush. JN, during his year-long Scandinavian culinary adventure, spent a good amount of time in Sweden, honing his craft, his butchering knives, and his understanding of the vitality of dairy.
Over ramen the other night, while recounting his experiences, and conscious of my obsessive interest in all things Swedepop, he told me, “There’s so much good Swedish music you never hear. Because it’s all sung in Swedish.”
He didn’t mean it as a slight; he wasn’t trying to criticize my narrow only-in-English musical tastes. He meant that, because of the music business, we’re prevented, in many ways, from hearing a lot of great, international music.
Of course that’s all changing, and I’m embracing the world scene as much as I’m able. But to demonstrate his point, as it pertains to Sweden, he mentioned Veronica Maggio, a Swedish pop star of Italian descent, charting hits in her native land since her debut in 2006. While some of her earlier albums are available stateside, her latest album, Handen i fickan fast jag bryr mig (which Wikipedia offers, as a seemingly stilted, direct translation: “Hand in my pocket though I care”) has yet to see a U.S. release. Even the first single, released late in 2013, is blocked on YouTube (“The uploader has not made this video available in your country”), grayed out on Spotify, and non-existent on Amazon, eMusic, or iTunes.
There’s this “Lyric Video” of the single, which looks fan-produced, and there are some remixes on Soundcloud.
I like it more for what it represents than the song itself (although the song’s okay too). Separated from an American audience, popular music thrives and evolves internationally, new-bud growth in the radioactive wasteland of commercialized radio culture. It happens in Sweden; it happens in Portugal; it happens in Taiwan and it happens in Argentina.
It’s been more than a decade since “Noodles” spoke to me and opened the door to a Nordic love affair that hasn’t ebbed in the slightest. But I know that for every Love Is All, there are a pair of Hemstads. Every Lykke Li, maybe three Veronica Maggios to captivate my interest. Enough musical exploration to keep me busy for another decade-plus.
And how wonderful it is to be busy.
Outside Lands has come a long way since Radiohead’s solar-powered stage mess on that inaugural Friday years ago. This year’s lineup has just been announced.
My immediate takeaway? Ray Lamontagne steals Hamilton Leithauser away from The Walkmen frontman’s solo tour. Now, Ray is coming to Golden Gate Park… without Leithauser? Come on man. Didn’t you have fun at Cultivate last summer?
Every Dragging Handclap 