Thank God it’s Friday’s song of the day

A kinda quiet tune for today. The Antlers hail from New York. Their new record Hospice was named by NPR as the best record of 2009 so far (wait, it isn’t No Line On The Horizon?).

I’ve only heard about three tracks off of Hospice, but I’ve been loving them for the last week or so. Of course I would only discover them the day after they played their album release party.

Ugh.

Here’s “Kettering” from the Antlers:

Who saw this coming?

Story here.

Best rock poster ever?

OK, maybe not ever, but it’s still awesome. Designed by Justin David Cox.

Via Swiss Miss.

Examining fandom

Almost a year ago exactly I wrote a post about seeing the Mountain Goats live and about John Darnielle’s interesting fame.

Fast forward to present day, New York Magazine has a piece in their current issue called God & Worshipper: A Rock-and-Roll Love Story, of Sorts, which details the connection between Mountain Goats fans and the bands’ driving force.


The great thing about reading the article online is that New York Mag has included audio tracks to accompany the story. Great idea!

Read the article here.

Thank God it’s Friday’s song of the day

After two solo records that seemed to signal the end of Clem Snide—and an actual confirmation that the band had indeed, er, disbanded—leader Eef Barzelay has brought Clem Snide back together (with a somewhat new line-up).

Released last week, Hungry Bird is the first Snide album in three years (I think; I’m too lazy to confirm it). In the past I’ve mostly wanted to like this band more than I ever actually did, due primarily to the occasional wacky Barzelay lyric or phrasing that—to my mind—detracted from an otherwise fantastic or beautiful song. Sometimes the man just can’t not make a joke.

There are examples where this playful device works exceedingly well, as in The Ghost of Fashion’s “Joan Jett Of Arc,” or “Mike Kalinsky” from A Beautiful EP. Other times it strikes me like the ring of a cell phone during a play, ruining the moment.

But the gems they, and he, have produced (see “Your Favorite Music” from the album of the same name) are proof of what Clem Snide is capable of.

Hungry Bird is less playful than previous records, and I’m happy about that. They also do some reaching, including a short tune that features a reading from poet Franz Wright. And the album’s closer “With All My Heart” is fantastic.

Here’s the album’s opening number, “Me No”:



Happy weekend.

Get wacky

What’s that you say? You’re a household name running a special on a well-known product? Well since you’re not going to tell anyone anything they don’t already know, you gotta get wacky!

Refuse to be ignored.



This song has been in my head all day.

Design matters

And this inflatable toy is proof.

From Ugly Doggy.

CNN plumbs the bottom of the barrel

How about this for a headline: Once-reputable news source chooses LOLcats over credibility.

Why brunch blows

Nice little piece found amid a section on breakfast in the latest issue of GQ, reprinted here in its entirety (and probably against some copyright law):


Why Brunch Blows

Fake-farmy restaurants! Hangovers with strangers! Long lines! Watery mimosas! Seventeen-dollar French toast! Sickly orange slices sadly dying next to overwrought infantilizing pancake concoctions on chipped china! Half your waking weekend day spent in a hollandaise haze! “Can I top off your shitty coffee?” Yes, please! Because it’s brunch. And everyone must love brunch. Because if you do not love brunch, you have a serious problem with joie de vivre and America and whole point of living with all our best friends in the city and being alive. But you know what? Brunch sucks. It’s a ritual, not a meal—and an annoying, unsatisfying, badly conceived one at that. Eat breakfast alone. Leave the house when you are ready to do something real at a normal time like an adult. Actually, it doesn’t matter what you eat or when. Just stop saying “brunch.” Stop. GQ declares brunch is over. We bury brunch. Huevos rancheros están muertos. Enough. Long live the real drinking lunch: drunkch.

– Adam Sachs, GQ, March 2009

Aaaaaahhhh!!!

When—not if, when—the Earth cracks open like the fragile egg it is, you’ll be amazed to learn it’s stuffed with flaming hot Arabic numerals.

Aaaah!!


This movie looks stupid.

Welcome back to the interwebs, David Yeend

He hasn’t totally made it public (he hasn’t totally hidden it either), but I’m going to do my part and drive a little traffic to David Yeend’s new blog, Marketing + Good.

As you may know, DY was my original blogging co-conspirator back in the Rock-Thirty days. With Marketing + Good, DY is focusing on societal marketing, cause marketing and other versions of things that are marketing plus something “good.”

Check out his post from this morning, on the Snuggie Pub Crawl charity event in Chicago.


And then check out the rest.