Get your yeah yeahs

There's been a fair amount of new releases of note so I figured it was time I round up all the latest bunch of stuff you need to know about music-wise, the essential recent releases, the semi-recent stuff I've forgotten about but is still fresh enough, and maybe a few old things that I've grown to appreciate all over again. Here in the age of re-issues, new formats and predictable retro-schedules it isn't altogether uncommon to become enthused about something you liked years ago all over again because it's being collected and produced in some newer and better improved form. Technological progress marches on indeed, but often snatches up the past and repackages it for you in a fresher more efficient way. I can recall the days when all car stereos played 8-track tapes, or when I hand delivered my typewritten column dotted with strikeovers and white out directly to the office for editing. Just because I remember these things doesn't mean I cling to them although I tried in some respects with the writing rituals, resisting the big switch from pen and paper to writing on a keyboard. That's ironic when you consider my current home PC/ entertainment/communications center has at last reached a level of power and ability that is technologically up to snuff, on a par for the moment with the majority of the joneses who attempt to run the perpetual race with time and upgrades to keep their system currentâ¤|and I love it! I can sit at my desk and read about any band from any country on any label, find a place to order their product or just download their music rapidly with high speed DSL, burn it efficiently on CDs which I can play when I DJ, I can watch movies with my DVD player that I order online and they come in the mail and get returned in the mail for what seems like pennies, and they have all these added features. I can do what used to take a bus ride and some pretty fast power-walking with just a few keystrokes now, and I can go for months without even visiting the office. I can communicate with relatives and friends, do my taxes, pay my bills, talk to real live naked people, cruise for sex, shop for anything, order tickets for shows or air travel, and get off-all right here at home from my desk. I must admit, though, I certainly don't go out to clubs and whatnot very often any more, and occasionally my friends make snide comments about me turning into Howard Hughes or something but it's not quite that bad yet, and I really doubt it will get that way.

In spite of all the music available at my fingertips online, there's still nothing that could ever replace the feeling of actually going out to shop for records, or appease the guilt of downloading music for free so frequently, and often times I confront those feelings and actually purchase most of my greatest downloads, wanting the whole package anyway and of course to support the artist, especially the non-major label acts. As I see it there are hundreds of rock bands who are out there night after night town after town playing live, promoting their latest release, sleeping on peoples floors only to wake up and hit the road again to do it all over, all for the love of creating and playing their music for the people. Knowing this, I always purchase merchandise at shows, as that sort of insures that your money goes to the bands directly. These bands I speak of were likely the furthest thing from Michael Greene's (Recording Academy President and CEO) mind when he took the opportunity to address the issue of "illegal downloading of music on the net" at the 44th Grammy Awards Ceremony, "as a most insidious virus, threatening to destroy and marginalize the younger less established artists right out of the business, stealing their livelihood one digital file at a time." He wasn't speaking of these noble committed sorts of bands I go see, he was speaking of the contracted major label biggies that have been the industries bread and butter well beyond even being their own, the ones that pay those six figure executive salaries, the ones that have sadly been fucked for decades and died in the poor house while the industry systematically robbed them of all rights or claims to their own music, and there are too many to name. His emphatic plea was such utter bullshit and so transparent. It's pretty clear to me that the artists worst enemy is not thousands of young people downloading music on the internet as much as it is a small handful of copyright lawyers and industry CEO's holed up in an office somewhere, doing what they have done for years. The audience's lukewarm response to his address made me somewhat hopeful that people were starting to see through the bullshit just a little bit.

This issue is the focus of a notorious and unprecedented court case that will go to trial this year, as a group of musical artists spearheaded by Courtney Love have banded together to challenge the entire industry system of denying the artists own rights to their work. The case has cleared a couple of major hurdles and idealistically could change, even dismantle the whole music industry as we know it, but I doubt it. It's brave and admirable of these artists with the tenacity and brains and sense of fairness to wage this battle but basically Sony has more money than God and we all know how wealth rules the American judicial system. We'll see what happens.

Well now that rant came out of nowhere suddenly, leaving me less room for the cool records but lets get to it in a somewhat abbreviated fashion.

I'm not sure if it has actually been released yet as I found it used in the new arrivals at Streetlight by some odd chance, but Imperial Teen has a new release, their third entitled On. After two absolutely incredible records to their credit which placed them firmly on my list of favorite bands, I've been eagerly awaiting their third and wondering why they aren't massively popular. In some ways they are like the perfect pop/rock outfit-they craft some brilliantly buoyant and clever pop songs and strap some seriously terse and hardedged guitar playing around them and feature lyrics you can hear, words that make sense or make fun of themselves or cut right to the quick of a statement or clever double-meaning. Then it all seems to flow back into a carefully constructed place, the shimmering charm of handsomely crafted even intricate pop song structures. They are neither too hard nor too soft-they're just smart, and very good musicians and on top of that they are all incredibly beautiful to look at, as the photos in the inner sleeve will attest.

With On the band again shows a generous yet precise amount of growth as a unit, just as they did from the first to second record, an assuredness that they moved forward and hit upon the perfect point, the place where they should be. The first cut, "Ivanka" is a clever reworking of a seven-inch single they released just before their second LP and the treatment is a bit lighter and tighter and driven. It's a great song that needed to be featured more prominently than as an elusive seven inch. As the disc unfolds you realize that keyboards have forged ahead into a much more pronounced part of Imperial Teen's sound, and both Roddy and Will share keyboard credits as well as guitars and vocals. Jone and Lynn also as usual add their vocals in the most perfect and interesting and unique ways, lending another element to the overall intricate pop-ish arrangements, along with that steadfast and adept rhythm section, respectively. I'm continually amazed at what accomplished musicians each member of this band is.

It's fair to say that this record is by far their most overtly glazed with a definite pop sheen, the additional keyboards giving a distinctly new-wave retro-reference but this seems in vogue with a lot of fresh new and contemporary acts these days so it's a hip stylistic nod and it works very nicely. I must admit though, one of the songs towards the end of the record could have passed for a Belle and Sebastian song if I didn't know better, but even that is okay because it's funny. Another odd thing I realized was that three different songs make lyrical references to brides in some respect. I really love the fourth cut "Million $ Man", the ninth cut "Teachers Pet," and the final song on the disc, "The First." As I play it more and more I can tell I'm starting to love it and Imperial Teen has done it again, created another chapter of intelligent pop perfection. Another perfect little record of a completely different nature that I just find exhilarating and joyous every time I hear it is the five-song debut by the New York based trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Among those five short cuts is one that I'm told makes people leave the bar when I play it while dj-ing. I can't imagine why, it's my favorite of them all. It's called "Art Star" and it's all of two minutes long. It starts out with vocalist Karen O saying in a syncopated spoken manner, "I've been working on a piece about sex and desperation/ I've been screwing on the tracks of an abandoned train station"and then the song erupts with her shrill screams and a distortion-addled pummeling guitar avalanche that never fails to make me smile. It's cathartic and hilarious and it fades suddenly into her singing a brief line of , doot doot doot doot do da doot da doots then the avalanche again, even louder, then she screams a few internationally referenced Art Scene tag lines like "I've got a gallery in New York City!" then one final refrain of the screaming avalanche of noise. It's one of the funniest greatest things I've ever heard, and the four other songs are totally great too, and far less likely to send people running for the door. Buy Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It's a curiously strong record.

Another of my favorites lately is a band I've been trying to find for a good ten years in record stores and finally scored it online through Audogalaxy and that is Prince Charles and The City Beat Band. I believe they were a New York based funk outfit popular right around the time that Rap started to become popular. Definitely very influenced by George Clinton and Funkadelic, this 6 to 8 member outfit recorded an LP with one standout cut called "Money" that is deeply funky and enticing and long and couldn't shake the pervasive feeling of the streets of New York City if it tried. An urban experience of flashy funk and gritty street beats, pre-breakdancing. I probably would have never found it anywhere but online.

Finally, I've been reacquainting myself with a SF-based Art-Fag-Synth-Punk outfit who were quite a sensation in the city a few years before I got here and that was the precocious and pretentious art anomaly called Tuxedomoon whose spacy experimental synthesizer music and art school backgrounds made for some brilliant moments of self serious weirdness sharing more in common with The Residents than say A Flock of Seagulls. They left a three or four record legacy that sounds remarkably good today. I listen and think to myself "Softcell had to have been hip to Tuxedomoon."