New Music News That Isn't About Madonna

[ArtMan]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 4:58pm

Reba has a new cd coming out April 14. Yay!

Updated On: 3/23/15 at 04:58 PM

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 5:11pm

Adele has a new one sometime this year.

[tazber]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 5:20pm

Muse has a new one in June.

Updated On: 3/23/15 at 05:20 PM

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 5:55pm

Punch Brothers released a brilliant new record "The Phosphorescent Blues" recently, and y'all should give it a whirl. Also they're playing live round and about the place, so catch 'em while you can.
"My Oh My"

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 3/25/15 at 10:44am

MIKA has a new song out - with album to follow! It sounds more like a great album track than a lead single, but still - best news I've heard all day. Yay.
"Talk About You"

[tazber]

Posted: 3/25/15 at 11:18am

Oooh exciting! I had no idea MIKA was almost done with a new album.

Did anyone else get Bjork's new one?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 11:39am

New Mika song, video and album out mid-June!

The video is pretty gutsy in its simplicity.  I love it!

 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 11:52am

I will not be one of those white guys whiteguysplaining the limitless triumph of the new Kendrick Lamar album, but holy christ is it good.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 9:10pm

I love that new Mika song too - can't wait for the album.

Duke Special (whom nobody's heard of) released a new record this week, called "Look Out Machines!", and it's really rather good. Ladies and gentlemen, guys and gals, for your viewing pleasure, I give you his new single "Nail On The Head", and as a special encore, one of his most popular songs, "Our Love Goes Deeper".

I know that probably nobody will actually play them (your loss), but thank you for allowing me to live out my MTV veejay fantasies in this thread. Take it away, Duke...

 

Updated On: 4/11/15 at 09:10 PM

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 4/11/15 at 9:12pm

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 4/13/15 at 12:06pm

Okay, I promise this is the last random band I post about in this thread for at least two days - but this one is really good, I promise. 

 

Updated On: 4/13/15 at 12:06 PM

[VeraCharles3]

Posted: 4/14/15 at 6:59am

Years and Years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_uoH6hJilc

My new favourite band. I posted a thread about them but it was removed.  Not sure why. Anyway here is their single "King"

It's fabulous

 

Enjoy

Updated On: 4/14/15 at 06:59 AM

[HorseTears]

Posted: 5/1/15 at 4:56am

What a great week for new releases with Blur's first studio album in 12 years and Kendrick Lamar's absolutely brilliant second album. 

 

When it came to the Brit Pop wars of the 90s I was a BLUHHH man all the way.  Feck you, Liam and Noel! Their new album The Magic Whip feels like they picked up right where they left off with shimmering, jangly, melancholy Brit pop.  Nothing revolutionary, but they sound so at ease here - there's a wonderful unforced, unshowy confidence on display here.  

 

And the new Kendrick Lamar album, To Pimp A Butterfly?  What more can there be said. The universal acclaim is well earned.  Unless some kind of miracle happens, this will easily be the hip hop album of the year.  

 

 

[tazber]

Posted: 5/1/15 at 6:04am

I've been eying that Blur album.

What do you think about it?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/1/15 at 11:46am

I listened to the entire Blur album yesterday.  It's the first album of theirs I liked right away.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 5/1/15 at 4:48pm

"I've been eying that Blur album.
What do you think about it?"

 

 

I'm a big Blur fan.  It's about... mid-range for me.  Behind 13, Blur and Parklife, but ahead of everything else.  If you're generally a Blur fan, I think you'll like it.  If you're new to Blur, I don't think it's the first album I'd try - I'd go with either Parklife or the self-titled.  

[darquegk]

Posted: 5/1/15 at 9:15pm

I love Duke Special- his music is like if Rufus Wainwright and Tim Minchin had a baby and it grew up without any of their neuroses.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 5/2/15 at 3:22am

Gosh, I used to love Rufus, but those last three albums...?  Oy.  Well, recommend a Duke Special track, darquegk!   

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 5/2/15 at 1:26pm

Hey, I recommended two Duke Special songs earlier on in the thread - they not good enough for ya? :)

That's a perfect description, darquegk!

Updated On: 5/2/15 at 01:26 PM

[HorseTears]

Posted: 5/2/15 at 7:37pm

 

Oh, sorry, Jay.  Your post started with "I love that new Mika song..." and I must've skipped the rest of the post.  

 

Any fans of the iamamiwhoami project?  Been following them since the early days in 2009.  Can't believe they've managed to sustain this audio/visual project this long.  I definitely prefer their earlier work - especially the more compelling narratives of the video series from those first two major projects - but they still know how to produce beautiful, icy, wonderfully weirdly Scandinavian "pop".   

 

 

Updated On: 5/2/15 at 07:37 PM

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 5/2/15 at 8:44pm

I was just kidding - though this thread is great for foisting my musical tastes on others, if only in the illusion that anybody actually pays attention. 

Duke Special is worth seeking out in fairness - this being a Broadway board, maybe folks will be interested in his EP of songs from Kurt Weill's unfinished Huckleberry Finn musical - Apple Jack is a favorite of mine, there are several live versions on YouTube for your perusing pleasure.

I'll be checking out iamamiwhoami - sounds right up my alley. Also loving the Blur album, though I really need to hear it on some great speakers - my little earbuds are so inadequate. Such great production!

 

[HorseTears]

Posted: 5/2/15 at 11:40pm

Jay - iamamiwhoami are an interesting one.  Your friends in Williamsburg and Silverlake probably know all about them. For fans of Fever Ray, Goldfrapp, Kate Bush, Bjork.  They're best appreciated by reading a bit about their origins and then watching each of their music videos in chronological order. And, they're not just music videos with interesting visuals, they're part of a very elaborate, mysterious narrative tied to an obscure mythology about the mandrake plant which grew from the semen of condemned men who were hung in public.  I actually dug this out from an email exchange I had with a friend back in 2011.  More has transpired since, but it gives you an idea of what to look for:

 

• Strange mystery video snippets started appearing on YouTube in December of '09.
  
  


• Featured a very obscured woman who sometimes appeared to be covered in mud. Lots of odd imagery around nature, trees, water, birthing.
  
  


• The woman's identity was obscured.
  
  


• Most of these 30-60 sec snippets featured brief musical clips which would be expanded upon in future videos.
  
  


• Speculation started running that this was a viral campaign for Christina Aguilera, Goldfrapp, Fever Ray, etc.
  
  


• As each successive video was released, the artist's face was a little less obscured; turned out to be Jonna Lee, a seemingly charming but conventional Swedish/British singer-songwriter who appeared to have some sort of musical/video arts collective project titled iamamiwhoami which produced much more interesting (and weird) electronic-tinged Scandinavian music.  
  
  


• To this day, Jonna has never confirmed it's her nor spoken about the project. [THAT CHANGED.  She's since done interviews and talked about the project]
  
  


• No albums released, but as complete music videos were released, full songs were added to iTunes. [Also changed, they've released several albums since, but they are best enjoyed as an audio/visual experience.  In other words: watch the videos]
  
  


• Eventually, a volunteer fan was recruited to go with Jonna and crew to a remote forest location in Sweden (we think) where a live "concert" of all of the previously released songs was performed in the forest. [this live "concert" in some remote Swedish forest is really something else - definitely worth checking out.  Kind of amazing that they pulled it off.]
  
  


• The videos appeared to be based around a strange myth about the mandrake plant which grew from the semen of men who were hung in public.
  
  


• After the live concert video. All went silent and the project appeared to be over.
  
  


• Now, 6 mos. later she's back with a whole new video and what appears to be a new concept and/or the old project set in the past or future... [several more since then]

 

This was the first teaser video released online in late 2009.  It's amazing to me that, at the time, anyone actually thought this could be a project from Christina Aguilera, but she was rumored to be working on a more adventurous electronic album at the time. There was speculation it might be Goldfrapp, Fever Ray, Bjork.  The name "Jonna Lee" certainly wasn't on anyone's lips at the time:

Several teaser videos like this followed weeks apart and eventually led to a series of full length songs being released in which the crazy - and I do mean crazy - mythology surrounding the mandrake plant was explored in an intricate, mysterious loosely tied narrative culminating in this magnificent video:

 

Then, came the "concert".  They sent out several obscure videos calling for volunteers.  They then apparently selected one fan as the chosen volunteer and brought him to a hotel in some undisclosed Scandinavian location - God knows what this kid was thinking.  They took him from his hotel to a remote forest in this Scandinavian country - think it was eventually determined to be Sweden - and performed a crazily elaborate "concert" of all of their prior releases in a wholly immersive experience in which the volunteer was both a voyeur/1-man audience and (somewhat) willing participant.  All filmed in one take and broadcast live on their website.  I've never seen anything like it.  

 

Then they dropped off the face of the earth - seemingly forever.  Only to reappear without any warning nearly a year later with their second full series - with some loose ties back to the mandrake plant mythology, but also to some very obscure sci-fi books and silent films.  Here's  a good taste of that phase.  I also chose this one because her look in the second half of the video gives me Grizabella The Glamour Cat vibes:

 

Then they took their longest break.  The last video in the prior series, called "Goods", seemed to directly reference fans and suggest that the "play" was over and the "players" were going to retire.  It seemed it might be the end.  But it turned out to just be their longest break and they reappeared last year with "Blue", their newest project.  "Blue" is somewhat more naturalistic.  Using gorgeously filmed Scandinavian scenery - beaches, icebergs, forests, deserts even - as the backdrop and featuring less of narrative and more of an evocative feel.  They're still producing gorgeous, icy, weird Scandinavian pop, but I kinda miss the more elaborate stories and mysteries from the earlier projects:

[Pippin]

Posted: 5/3/15 at 5:36pm

Alabama Shakes' new album "Sound & Color" is one of the best albums I've heard in a long time. 

This is "Give Me All Your Love" on Letterman a few months back

 

 

 

 

and this is Don't wanna fight" also from Letterman

 

 

 

 

Updated On: 5/3/15 at 05:36 PM

[VeraCharles3]

Posted: 5/6/15 at 7:07am

HorseTears - I love iamamiwhoami - how did I not know of them before, I am obsessed, annoyingly so!!!!! Thank you for enlightening us all to the world of iamamiwhoami!

[HorseTears]

Posted: 5/6/15 at 1:31pm

That's fab, Vera.  Figured you'd enjoy them.  I don't know what it's like to experience all of their weridness at once.  I can tell you that when they appeared out of nowhere without a warning and you had to wait weeks - sometimes months between releases not knowing if there would ever be another video/song and trying desperately to figure out what all the wacky symbolism was about it was kinda thrilling.  I honestly don't think any artist has made better - or more interesting - use of the music video form in the post MTV world.  True originals.  BTW, they just performed their second internet "concert" last week - featuring mostly music from the latest "Blue" project.  It's much more of a conventional concert than the original immersive concert-in-a-forest-with-an-unidentified-volunteer-who-may-or-may-not-have-been-burned-alive-in-the-name-of-art, but the live performance certainly helped me appreciate the "Blue" songs more than I had in the past.  It seems you're much more likely to catch a live iamiwhoami performance in UK/Europe than in the US, so keep an eye out!