Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O has been recording what she calls "a body of love songs" under the name Native Korean Rock over the past two years, and now she's ready to show them off to the world; four of them are on her MySpace page, and they're stark, spare affairs with deliberate vocals that definitely fall under the "Melodramatic Popular Song" rubric that MySpace has given her. She'll be performing them live with "a motley crew of NYC natives"; there's a show scheduled for next week at the teeny Brooklyn bar Union Pool, and I'm pretty sure that if you want to catch what she promises will be a night full of high drama and high stakes, you'll probably have to start standing in line, oh, about now. [MySpace via ONTD]
A few years back, my pal Kate Silver played me a record I loved pretty immediately. The group was the Thing, a skronk-jazz trio featuring reeds player Mats Gustafsson (from Sweden), bassist Ingebrigt H. Flaten, and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love (both from Norway), and the song was their cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Art Star." If you're familiar with "Art Star," you'll know it doesn't take much work to reimagine it in this form (it hops up and down rhythmically during the verses and then turns into spazzy noise on the refrain). I've kept less of an ear on the Thing's other work, though I've liked what I've heard, but I'm thinking of checking out the new four-CD box reissuing some older titles. "Art Star" makes an appearance on one of the discs in a live version, and in that spirit, here's a clip of the Thing playing it live in Sweden. [YouTube]
Latest by Lucas Jensen: Mats Gustafson was my hands-down favorite member of the Brotzmann Tentet (+2) shows I saw. He did this weird twittering thing with his reed that was truly wild. more »
The AP has an interview with Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O today, and in addition to alluding to the fact that she's kind of terrified of Playboy's audience, she gets the chance to talk about the time she was stared down by an Emily The Strange lookalike at a radio festival a while back:
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ARTIST: Yeah Yeah Yeahs TITLE:Is Is WEB DEBUT: June 14, 2007 RELEASE DATE: July 24, 2007 SOUND QUALITY: 320kbps BEST TRACK: "10x10," which is up at DREAMS OF HORSES. ONE-LISTEN VERDICT:Is Is is a five-song EP featuring songs that were recorded back in 2004, and we're guessing most die-hard fans have heard these songs before in some incarnation or another. Most of these tracks are far more raw-sounding than Show Your Bones, particularly "Rockers To Swallow" and the relentless "10x10," which features a deadbolt-tight drumbeat and a surprisingly anthemic chorus.
Yesterday, we put out a call for a high-quality MP3 of "Sealings," the latest single from Yeah Yeah Yeahs; our thanks to the numerous readers who pointed out that Merry Swankster and Hate Something Beautiful both had the tune up earlier. The track is below, and while it's good stuff, we're a bit disappointed it isn't a song about actually having feelings for seals. Then again, knowing Karen O, maybe it is:
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Compiling a year-end Top 10 list means making plenty of painful nips, tucks, and tweaks. So, through the end of 2006, we present "Stuck At Eleven," a daily look at the songs that came thisclose to making our year-end lists' final cut.More »
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Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O has been recording what she calls "a body of love songs" under the name Native Korean Rock over the past two years, and now she's ready to show them off to the world; four of them are on her MySpace page, and they're stark, spare affairs with deliberate vocals that definitely fall under the "Melodramatic Popular Song" rubric that MySpace has given her. She'll be performing them live with "a motley crew of NYC natives"; there's a show scheduled for next week at the teeny Brooklyn bar Union Pool, and I'm pretty sure that if you want to catch what she promises will be a night full of high drama and high stakes, you'll probably have to start standing in line, oh, about now. [MySpace via ONTD]
