UK bands with big buzz are right up there with death and taxes. Luckily, they’re a lot more frequent and the hype surrounding them quite often pay offs. Like Arctic Monkeys before them, Cajun Dance Party is the most recent band of youngsters (their oldest member is 17!) from across the pond to generate high levels of excitement based entirely on demos and live performances.
Their name accurately reflects their nu-pop sound, which was described by The Sunday Times as “liable to make confirmed grouches dance like loons.” The five-piece are so catchy, they’ve even managed to score Thom Yorke’s approval and a deal with XL Recordings. CDP’s debut single “The Next Untouchable” was Single of the Week in both NME & The Guardian and their second single will be out later this summer.
Other headlines and links worthy of your attention today:
- Guardian Unlimited has posted a list of 1,000 films to see before you die.
- Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited will open the New York Film Festival.
- The Simpsons Movie website is gaining momentum and has some neat-o features, including the ability to make your own Simpsons avatar. Here’s mine!
- Break out your earplugs - Q Magazine has ranked The 20 Loudest Albums Of All Time!!!
- Perpetual Jeapordy! contestant Bob Harris has posted his well-observed theory about the much-talked Sopranos finale.
- Ryan Adams has told American Songwriter that Easy Tiger may be his last solo album and in the future he simply wants to be part of the band The Cardinals. Hypeful thinks he’s just sick of people shouting requests for “Summer Of ‘69.” (via Salad Days Music)
Julien Temple’s documentary on the Glastonbury festival is available for a free download for the upcoming two weeks at Movielink. Musicians and performances featured in the film include The Velvet Underground, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Primal Scream, Alabama 3, Billy Bragg, Cypress Hill, The Scissor Sisters, Radiohead, Babyshambles, The Levellers, David Gray, Björk, Coldplay, Chemical Brothers, Stereo MC’s, Blur, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, English National Opera’s ‘Die Valkyrie’, Ray Davies, Pulp, Faithless, The Bravery, Morrissey, Prodigy, Toots an the Maytals, and David Bowie.
Hypeful’s friend Beau attended an advance screening of this summer’s mega-budget, highly-promoted, prerelease award-winning movie Transformers in Dallas last night and was kind enough to pass along this advance review:
Overrall the movie was pretty much what I expected. Or, shall I say,
it was exactly what met the eye. The scenes involving actual
transforming and a handful of the action sequences were pretty fun to
watch. The dialogue and plot, however, seemed to be geared toward a
younger audience… a younger audience with learning disabilities. You
know when you’re watching a big-budget action movie and the hero does
something big and over-the-top and he will inevitably throw out a
cornball line that you just accept and move on from? Well imagine that
that is EVERY line in the movie and that’s what Transformers had. I
was never a fan of the cartoon back in the day, so perhaps that was a
factor in my opinion of the movie, but I’m thinkin’ if you’re over the
age of 16, you won’t be enjoying the robots in disguise.
Yikes - sounds like the film didn’t fall too far from the soundtrack.
Boxer or brief? It’s unclear what the underwear preference is for the #17 artist in our ambitious 120-part series - BETTER KNOW AN ACL ARTIST. However, the accolades for their new album Boxer have not been brief. The seventeenth installment explores The National - the Fightin’ Boxers!!!
Following last week’s news that OK Computer is 10 years old, Paxtonland posted this recent photo of Spencer Elden, (i.e., the swimming baby on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind), who will turn 18 next year. That’s right - the swimming baby will be old enough to vote.
What’s Elden been up to? In 2001, he re-created the album shot for Rolling Stone and two years later appeared on the cover of cEvin Key’s The Dragon Experience. Last September, Elden expressed interest to NME in meeting up with the remaining Nirvana members and told the magazine, “Nevermind is fifteen years old now, but you still hear the singles being played on the radio and it just doesn’t sound dated. Most bands around today can’t even get near to what Nirvana did on that album, and I’ll always be happy to be a part of it.”
Here’s a lullabye rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for Elden.
Because Black Music Month is celebrated in June, Hypeful wanted to acknowledge the important and continuing contributions black artists have made to American music and beyond. Like the June tribute to gay musicians, we would like to showcase some tunes by just some of the black artists we enjoy.
Recognizing that there have been so many talented black musicians who’ve influenced Hypeful’s favorite music from across genres, we’re unable to share a comprehensive collection of MP3s that features every important musician. So, in narrowing our criteria of who to share, Hypeful decided to showcase 10 tracks by some of the current black musicians we dig primarily from rock music.
While you enjoy the tracks, check out this article about the 25 most important events in Black Music History.
MP3s:
Bloc Party - “Banquet”
The Dears - “Lost In The Plot”
Gnarls Barkley - “Smiley Faces”
Solomon Burke - “Don’t Give Up On Me”
Tracy Chapman - “Change”
Seu Jorge - “Don’t”
Stephen Marley - “Inna Di Red (Feat. Ben Harper)”
The Noisettes - “Don’t Give Up”
Prince - “Fury”
TV On the Radio - “Wolf Like Me”
Electronic duo Microfilm have covered Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago” for their new single and given it a synth-pop treatment. After including three different remixes of “Chicago” on The Avalanche
STREAM: Microfilm - “Chicago”
Four new albums are on the Hypeful new release radar today. The Beastie Boys return in two unconventional forms today - releasing their “post-punk instrumental” album (The Mix-Up) and the Adam Yauch-produced Build a Nation. As for the other two artists, let’s just say Hypeful would love to see a Ryan Adams & Kelly Clarkson duet. Adams is prolific and Clarkson ain’t above Jack Daniels-inspired performances - it can only be a matter of time before this dream duo becomes a reality, right?
Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
MP3: “Everybody Knows”
STREAM: Entire Album
Bad Brains - Build a Nation
MP3: “Jah People Make the World Go Round”
STREAM: Entire Album
Beastie Boys - The Mix-Up
MP3: “The Rat Cage”
STREAM: Entire Album
Kelly Clarkson - My December
MP3: “Never Again”
STREAM: Entire Album
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MP3s are for sampling purposes only. If you like what you hear, please support the artist by buying albums, attending shows, and spreading the word about them. If you have a complaint about a track's ownership, please contact Hypeful and I will remove it immediately. You may also contact me about artists, albums, etc. you would like to see featured on Hypeful.
