Posts published during July, 2009

07/31/2009

sam sparro – black and gold

sam sparro, in case you didnt know his name while seeing him live

so after a few days of straight up rock songs, lets go in a totally different direction. todays song is black and gold by sam sparro. hes had a pretty interesting go at things and has lived one of those international lifestyles that im so jealous of. even something like moving from detroit to chicago would seem like a huge deal for me, but then theres those people that have moved all over the world a bunch of times, and he seems to be one of them. but i guess its easier when youre a kid. he was born in australia, then moved to LA, then back to australia, then to the UK, then back to LA. kind of reminds me of a few international twin good friends of mine (one who happens to be abroad as we speak in fact!), doesnt it?

it was during sams latest stint in LA when he wrote todays song. it sounds like a love song sorta, but unlike most love songs, its pretty soulful and kind of a slow dancier. im sure there are about a million remixes of this song, but im not even interested in looking for them because i like this song so much just the way it is. im pretty sure this song came out some time last year (or maybe the year before) and im also pretty sure that i didnt like it the first few times i heard it, but definitely not the case now. make sure to wait for a few seconds because it doesnt actually begin until about 10 seconds in. and his little vocal improv before it slows down at the end sounds like the saxamaphone in “turn the page”. so listen for that. while todays song is definitely not nearly as heavy of a beat as the m83 song from last friday, ive been trying to do dance songs with a good beat to start the weekend out. hows it going so far?

sam sparro – black and gold

Sam Sparro - Sam Sparro (Bonus Track Version) - Black & Gold buy this track on itunes
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6 comments

07/30/2009

mew – am i wry? no

live mew

after yesterdays post, did anyone figure out that today would be all about danish band mew? id heard one or two songs by mew but didnt really know much about them, except that the word mew always came in handy playing facebook scrabble when i didnt have a lot of vowels. im only just now working through their whole discography and its really impressive. like muse, they take hard rock to the next level with ear-pleasing melodies, unthinkable chord progressions and the most unusual of time signatures. especially evident on their latest single “introducing palace players” where it takes some time just to figure out the beat. they just played the pitchfork festival but i missed their performance to be in the midst of the flaming lips confetti/balloon extravaganza and kind of wish i hadnt now (especially since the wind blew most of that away from us anyway).

todays track is one of the first id ever heard by mew and has everything ive talked about above. from their 2003 album “frengers” (get it? friends and strangers?), “am i wry? no” starts out with definite elements of heavy metal, but not in a dark, screaming way. it starts out in 4/4, then theres a little musical interlude into 3/4 thats just so nice to listen to. then back to 4/4, and to close out the last minute thirty of the song, in true mew fashion, a whole new theme is introduced in a whole new key. thats what i love about this group. theres always something interesting to listen to and even within one song, the mood is always changing. and in most cases, all of the things mentioned above are even more apparent then in this track. in their 2005 album “and the glass handed kites”, they take it even a step further, with many of the songs flowing seamlessly into one another. the worst part about festivals is the post festival regret. shows you know you should have seen that you didnt.

mew – am i wry? no

Mew - Frengers - Am I Wry? No buy this track on itunes
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07/29/2009

muse – glorious

muse live

starting today, im not trying to come up with cutesy names for posts. just straight up artist-song. cuz the cutesy names are never good anyway. also, im now including links for the songs just above the players where you can right click and save the songs. so perhaps that will be more motivation to visit and tell your friends. the next two days, we will be bringing you tracks from two bands who have a similar approach to music. theyre both pretty much hard rockers and borderline heavy metal (especially todays), but extremely melodic at the same time. and they have ridiculously similar names. todays band, muse (can you guess tomorrows group?), seems to almost take melodies from classical music and turn them into huge rock powerhouses. in general im not a huge fan of screaming heavy metal, but these guys take the loud overthetopness of heavy metal and turn it into something thats much more pleasing on the ears. and they have one of the best live shows ive seen. i was lucky enough to see them at the 89x birthday bash a few years back at a pretty small outdoor venue. while it was still a pretty big crowd, it seemed tiny when noted that just 2 days later they would be headlining one night of lollapalooza. besides their intense visual show, complete with everything on stage covered in video screens, they really showcased how musically talented they were as a band, with one of the members at one point playing some intense classical piano, right in the middle of a rock show.

there were about a million songs i wanted to post by these guys as my favorite tracks of theirs change all the time, but in the end i picked the song i did just because some of you may not have heard it before. the song is “glorious” (my second choice was “map of the problematique”) and its a bonus track off the japanese version of their 2006 album “black holes and revelations” and also as a track on the “invincible” single. this album is what really threw them into the mainstream in america, even though they had a pretty strong following here before and of course were huge across the sea. i like the transitions between the keyboards and guitars playing the backup music. and the chromatic choruses. and how its one of the more major-sounding muse songs. seems like a lot of their stuff is in a minor key, but im all about that too. im looking forward to hearing some new music from them (hopefully accompanied by a tour?) coming up pretty soon. aside: whats with all the haters of “united states of eurasia”?

muse – glorious

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations - Glorious buy this track on itunes
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6 comments

07/28/2009

fiery furnaces – the end is near

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and just like that, my image from the white stripes post is no longer in the top image search results, and im back to receiving an abysmal number of daily hits. we sure had a good run though, didnt we? in other words, please tell your friends to visit the site. pretty please? while yesterdays song was just about a week old, todays is about month old. but thats still pretty good in dailybeatz time. its been on the list for a little while too, so thats got to count for something. but since this songs been stuck in my head the entire weekend, i decided it was finally time to post it here for all of you to enjoy as well. i definitely dont know a ton about the fiery furnaces (really though, have i ever claimed to know anything about anyone? not really), but here are a few things i do know. 1. some of their stuff is really really really out there. like crazy out there. but then some of their stuff is super normal and still really awesome. 2. my friends mike and gina really like them. 3. i really like their song “benton harbor blues” a lot. and so does gina. so much so that she even wrote a post about it. and its even cooler because as gina mentions, its totally random that they would write a song about this little coastal city in western michigan. and since im from michigan its weird. 4. i hear their live show is super weird and awesome.

todays song is one of the “more normaler” songs but it still makes me want to listen to more of their stuff, even the more unusual stuff, because i like the unusual stuff. i just listened to a few other random songs by them and my consensus is that i probably would like them a ton if i listened to them a bit more, because i crave the weirdness, as long as its in the context of a song with an actual melody. meaning, i dont really enjoy the stuff thats so abstract that it doesnt even have a beat (well, sometimes i do). to all of the fiery furnaces fans out there, recommend some songs/albums for me to get into them a little bit more, and to ease me into the crazy stuff. i think i can handle it.

the fiery furnaces – the end is near

The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away (Bonus Track Version) - The End Is Near buy this track on itunes
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4 comments

07/27/2009

atlas sound – walkabout

atlas sound live

did everyone recover from their first sunday without a song this week? i hope so, because thats the way things are gonna be around here from now on, so get used to it. todays song is maybe the timeliest of any song ive posted so far because it broke throughout the blogosphere just last week. but since its now a week later, everyones pretty much heard it anyway. the song is the newest offering from atlas sound, the solo project of perpetually skinny bradford cox, probably best known for his band deerhunter. he collaborates with noah lennox, aka panda bear, whos also a member of animal collective. i actually saw both of these guys at 2008 pitchfork fest (it always comes back to pfork fest, doesnt it?). panda bear was of course playing with saturday headliners animal collective, and bradford cox was part of the “make some shit up to play to keep the crowd pacified until cut copy makes an appearance since they are running really late” crew . it was a very…interesting..performance, but i gave him the benefit of the doubt because he was put in the precarious situation of improvising entertainment in light of an unavoidable delay. and i like deerhunter.

why do i like this song? probably because it sounds like exactly what you think a collaboration between atlas sound and panda bear would sound like. youve got all the poppy blips and beeps of atlas sound, and youve got all the reverb of panda bear. the first time i heard this track it didnt really do much for me, but after giving it a few more listens im pretty happy with it. happy enough that it makes the cut into playlist of songs on my ipod that i really like. without further ado, i present to you “walkabout”, which is only about a week behind the times in terms of the blogosphere, so thats not too bad when you think about it.

atlas sound w/ noah lennox – walkabout

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07/25/2009

erasure – a little respect

erasure

today is the start of a new format for the weekends. since readership, understandably, goes way down over the weekend, and the large number of monday readers dont always go back to the weekend, im making a few changes. saturday posts will now be known as “flashback saturdays” in which i will post an awesome older song that most of us probably know but may have forgotten about. sundays will now become free days. mostly because sunday is the day of rest. and lets be honest, once fantasy football starts in a few weeks, thats the only internet-based activity ill be able to accomplish on sundays. and it will get people more excited to wake up extra early on monday morning for a fresh new beat. im hoping this wont cause a major uprising among the loyal dailybeatz community, but if anyone strongly objects to this, please let me know. but make no mistake about it, the songs featured in flashback saturdays will still be awesome. phew. glad thats resolved. without further ado, here is the first installment of flashback saturdays.

our first flashback saturday will feature the awesomely 80s sounds of erasure. the funny thing is, id never even heard this song up until about a year ago and i still remember it. a few of us were at luna for an 80s thursday night and this song came on while maggie karen anthony and i were on the dancefloor, and everyone except me knew all the words. well, i still dont know most of the words, but i know the song and i know its got great 80s beats and synthesizers. i wonder if its a modern day response to “respect” because us men deserve respect too. but we dont have to make a big anthem out of it. just a sweet 80s song. so even though 80s night at luna is thursdays, i think we might be able to convince the dj to play this track for alternative saturdays.

erasure – a little respect

Erasure - Erasure: Pop Deluxe Box (Audio Version) - A Little Respect buy this track on itunes
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4 comments

07/24/2009

m83 – sitting

m83 live at 2009 pitchfork festival

before we get to todays track by the stellar m83, its time to announce the winner of our sts9 giveaway! traffic was definitely way up yesterday. guess it goes to show that if you give it away for free, they will come. anyway, we got a pretty good amount of entries once i weeded out the duplicates. really people, if youre going to enter 4 times with 4 nondescript email addresses, either space them out so they are not sent all within 10 minutes, or at LEAST change the subject line or body of the email so they are not all exactly the same. you know who you are, but i still gave you one entry. i numbered each correct entry based on the order they were sent and then used a random number generator online to pick the winner. of course the answer was peaceblaster: the new orleans make it right remixes (but i also accepted peaceblaster as a correct answer). and the winner is……

jess cosentino!! surprisingly, so many people entered that somebody won that i actually didnt know. even though a lot of people i knew entered. so thats sweet.

congrats and hope you enjoy your new tunes and swag and thanks for checking out the site. hopefully we can do millions more giveaways in the future.

back to business. if you need a nice and rockin beat to carry you out of the work week and into the weekend, look no further, as todays track by french group m83 will do just that. i first heard “kim & jessie” months ago and wasnt quite sure what i thought of it. then i heard it again, and again, and it grew on me. then i heard a few other songs and got their “saturdays = youth” album and liked it a lot, but never investigated any of their back catalogue, nor did i know there was a back catalogue. i always considered them electronic, but never really considered them electronic dance, so when i was waiting to see them at pitchfork on sunday i didnt really quite know what to expect, so i was pleasantly surprised when they turned in what i considered to be the best performance of the weekend.

i think a few things contributed to this, besides my lack of expectation. it had been cloudy for most of the day but by the time their set began, there wasnt a cloud in the sky. as the sun was just beginning to set, it electrified the orange in the flaming lips backdrop and the blue of keyboard/vocalist morgan kibbys shirt (see above). then the show began and the songs took on a new life. by the time the group got mid-set and played “sitting”, todays song, the crowd had erupted into an all out dance party. the entire audience was completely into what the band was doing, and m83 was of the utmost sincerity when they showed their appreciation for the crowds continued support, and you could tell they were feeling the energy too. they were also among the loudest bands of the weekend and could be heard loud and clear even from the back of the park. its now 5 days after pitchfork fest, and this is the one show i cant stop thinking about. i wanted to do a week of french artists, but theyve been so top of mind all week that i couldnt hold out. cant WAIT to see these guys in a smaller venue.

m83 – sitting

M83 - M83 - Sitting buy this track on itunes
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2 comments

07/23/2009

st.vincent – laughing with a mouth of blood

st vincent live

todays a double-whammy here at dailybeatz. besides bringing you the typical track of goodness for today, we also will be conducting a little giveaway, courtesy of the great folks of sts9! after my post on them a few weeks back, they contacted me and offered me some items to give away to one lucky reader of our just mediocre website. the winner will receive the last two albums by sts9 (one hard copy and one digital download), a tshirt, and a hat. the rules are pretty simple too. just email me at chris [at] dailybeatz [dot] com and answer the following question. you have until midnight tonight, eastern standard time, to email me your entry, and ill pick one winner out of all the correct answers. the trivia question is:

what is the full name of the most recent sts9 album?

should be pretty easy, so get your entries in before its too late. im only expecting one or two entries, so your chances are pretty good as long as youve got the correct answer.

i thought id provide a track im really digging lately as the jeopardy music while you try to answer the query listed above. its by annie clark, aka st vincent, and its called “laughing with a mouth of blood” from her latest album “actor”. this album is pretty unique sounding to me and as i think i mentioned before, i read an interview where she discussed the album, and she said something about how her goal was to use every instrument in a way it wasnt intended to be used. for example, the drums would be the melody, the guitar would keep the beat, etc. you can definitely hear in most of the songs how the instrumentation sounds a little backwards, and its pretty neat in a lot of cases. this song doesnt really exemplify that as well as some others, but its still got some really interesting chord changes, and we know that i love interesting chord changes. so enter the contest, and listen to the song.

st vincent – laughing with a mouth of blood

St. Vincent - Actor - Laughing With a Mouth of Blood buy this track on itunes
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