As promised: The state of my “2009 awesomeness” playlist, in which I collect the songs that catch my ear as the year progresses in order to not make my best-of list a last-minute-of-December clusterfuck sort of thing. (It inevitably winds up being like that, but you know, I have noble intentions.) It’s after the jump, and has some contextual links added in. Feel free to make your own and share it here!


The Joy Formidable, “Cradle”
Vistoso Bosses, “Delirious”
Lily Allen, “Everyone’s At It”
Brandy feat. Ne-Yo, “Decisions”
Annie, “Anthonio”
Anthonio, “Angel Face (feat. Annie)”
The Breeders, “Fate To Fatal”
Chrisette Michele, “What You Do (feat. Ne-Yo)”
The Dead Weather, “Are Friends Electric?”
Depeche Mode, “Wrong”
Dum Dum Girls, “Catholicked”
Kelly Clarkson, “Don’t Let Me Stop You”
Laura Izibor, “From My Heart To Yours”
Maxwell, “Pretty Wings”
Miranda Lambert, “Dead Flowers”
Moby, “Shot In The Back Of The Head”
Wye Oak, “I Want For Nothing”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Zero”
Micachu & The Shapes, “Golden Phone”

Tinted Windows, the generation-spanning act that brought together members of Hanson, Fountains of Wayne, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Cheap Trick for cheery tunes and maximum bloggability, had their debut album come out yesterday. Eric “Professor” Harvey came up with a fun parlor game in honor of what he’s calling the self-titled record’s “astonishing competence”–namely, what would your dream version of such a powerpop Voltron look like? The formula, and my attempt to solve for “x,” after the jump.

1. Redeemable former boy-band member from the late 90s
2. Sideman from influential 90s alt-rock band
3. Reliable jingle factory who does movie scores and stuff but who’s had a big hit
4. Sorta-unknown component to legendary power-pop group

I would say that Bun E. Carlos wasn’t really “sorta-unknown,” but anyway. Here’s mine!


1. JC Chasez, for the same reason as Eric:





(I know five-minute mini-epics are a tough sell in the callout-research-dominated world of pop radio, but man, this song got so jobbed.)


2. Josephine Wiggs, because she is a bad-ass (and we need some ladies up in this)


3. Stephin Merritt, who may not have had a big hit but who is big enough to get Twitter-dropped by Trent Reznor


4. Andy Sturmer, because a post like this has to have a Jellyfish reference (plus someone who could play drums would help)


The songs would probably be very ornate and emotional, with a kick in everyone’s collective pants provided by Wiggs every so often–but is that a bad thing?


The Tinted Windows Album Is Astonishingly Competent [marathonpacks]
Tinted Windows “Kind of a Girl” [MySpace]
Tinted Windows [MySpace]

• Pixies box set to feature un-remastered versions of band’s entire studio output; “deluxe edition” to set you back ~$100 per slab of 180-gram vinyl [RS / Math via The Awl]
• In related news, The Breeders’ new EP is out today, and it’ll only set you back about $4 [FateToFatal.com]
• Noel Gallagher solo project to maybe result in extended Oasis hiatus, just in time for people to start making noise about band collaborating with Gnarls Barkley [Q / Guardian]
• Rogers & Hammerstein catalog sells for an estimated $200 million [WSJ]
• Lauryn Hill probably maybe headlining Stockholm Jazz Festival [Billboard]
• Steve Reich wins Pulitzer Prize for Music for his piece “Double Sextet” [pulitzer.org]

Kim and Kelley Deal’s sister act The Breeders have a new EP Fate To Fatal coming out on Tuesday, and the title track is catchy yet off-kilter, giving off a vibe that’s well-matched to the slow-motion destruction wrought by the members of the St. Louis derby rollerleague the Arch Rivals in the attendant video. Rolling Stone has the clip and an MP3 online, and those of you with a better eye than me should see if I’m right about there being a cameo by former bassist Josephine Wiggs within. (The woman crying blood at about the :30 mark—I may be thrown off by the eye makeup, though.) Anyway, RS hasn’t made the video embeddable on other sites, so before you go over there to watch it, why not enjoy a few other Breeders gems here?

“Safari”

“Cannonball”

“Saints”

“We’re Gonna Rise”

“Shocker In Gloomtown” (GBV cover)

“Lord Of The Thighs” (Aerosmith cover)

(That’s for Allison Iraheta. Study and learn, girl.)

Exclusive Premiere: The Breeders’ “Fate To Fatal” Video And Song [RS]

One thing that’s been nice about Coachella: Most of the outstanding performances so far have served as a nice corrective to my complaints about the male-white-semi-corporate-oppressive nature of current alt-rock. I saw four terrific performances from lady-powered bands that almost made me feel a tiny bit less despondent about the gender balance of rock right now: Portishead (who I saw Thursday night), the Breeders, Tegan & Sara, and Santogold all made me happy to be there, to the point where I didn’t even worry about when my last sunscreen application was until after each of their sets. (And yeah, it’s probably not much of a surprise that 50% of them first appeared on my personal radar back in the ’90s.) Video and brief writeups after the jump.

Portishead – “Over” (from Thursday night’s pre-Coachella show)

I feel like a blogger asshole even mentioning that I saw this show, which was at the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles. So I’ll just post the video above and mention that the show ended with Beth Gibbons jumping into the crowd to high-five a bunch of people in the first few rows. Yes, really.

The Breeders – “Iris”

OK, this video isn’t from yesterday–none of the Breeders’ Coachella performances have made it to YouTube yet, alas–but it’s one of my favorite songs of theirs and hearing it live nearly broke me in a good way, although some people wouldn’t agree. While their set stumbled at the beginning (with a false start and a somewhat half-hearted performance of the Amps’ “Tip City”), they recovered and ran through a set that meshed bits of Last Splash and Pod with tracks from the better-with-each-listen Mountain Battles Plus they played “Saints,” because summer is ready right now!

Tegan & Sara – “The Con”

How can you not love a band whose stage banter includes an extended rant about how the fabric H & M uses is so thin, you need to wear sunblock under your shirt? Not afraid to be servicey, indeed.

Santogold – “Creator”

There’s a lot of hype surrounding this woman, to be sure–given that the music business is “all about relationships,” I’m sure her major-label A & R past has resulted in many people who are still employed by said biz being in her corner–but I’m actually convinced that about 85% of it is well-deserved. (In this overheated era, it’s kind of hard to find anyone with a 100% hype-to-actuality ratio, don’t you think?) Her between-songs banter was charmingly nervous/tweaked, and somehow her voice reminded me of both Tegan & Sara and Musical Youth at the same time.

[Photo: AP]

So yesterday’s announcement that a Steve Albini-produced Breeders record was in the offing was followed up by the band debuting a track from said album on its MySpace page. It’s called “We’re Gonna Rise,” and it’s… well, the two words that came to my mind most often while listening to it were “stoned” and “meh.” I usually like the Deal sisters’ less boppy efforts (hello “Iris”!), but this sleepy track doesn’t really do much for me until the big guitar-noise burst at around 2:30. It only lasts for (sigh) about five seconds, but it’s absolute bliss. [MySpace]

So yesterday’s announcement that a Steve Albini-produced Breeders record was in the offing was followed up by the band debuting a track from said album on its MySpace page. It’s called “We’re Gonna Rise,” and it’s… well, the two words that came to my mind most often while listening to it were “stoned” and “meh.” I usually like the Deal sisters’ less boppy efforts (hello “Iris”!), but this sleepy track doesn’t really do much for me until the big guitar-noise burst at around 2:30. It only lasts for (sigh) about five seconds, but it’s absolute bliss. [MySpace]

So yesterday’s announcement that a Steve Albini-produced Breeders record was in the offing was followed up by the band debuting a track from said album on its MySpace page. It’s called “We’re Gonna Rise,” and it’s… well, the two words that came to my mind most often while listening to it were “stoned” and “meh.” I usually like the Deal sisters’ less boppy efforts (hello “Iris”!), but this sleepy track doesn’t really do much for me until the big guitar-noise burst at around 2:30. It only lasts for (sigh) about five seconds, but it’s absolute bliss. [MySpace]

This item on the forthcoming album by the Breeders (it’ll be produced by Steve Albini, but alas, it’ll be Josephine Wiggs-free) reminded me: Did you know that Fuse is now bleeping the word “bong” out of reairings of “Cannonball,” a bit of snipping that I don’t think was even practiced by MTV’s always-running-scared standards and practices department back in the day? And here I thought the Cablevision-owned music-video channel was so proud of its “edgier” stance when it came to scary words about sex and drugs and killing people. (I swear there was even one time when I saw the video for “Teenagers” on the channel and the audio on the words “murder” and “bleed” got pumped up through no volume-manipulation of my own.)

The Breeders reveal all about new album [NME]