Flight of the Conchords Season 2 Premiere

Fan of Flight of the Conchords will rejoice to find the season 2 premiere HERE, before its HBO air date!

Or, just watch it below:

New Arcade Fire song for download!

Pssst.

Go here to get a previously-unreleased Arcade Fire track from the Neon Bible archives.

It's called "Burning Bridges".

(Why's it out now? It's part of marketing for the previously-mentioned Miroir Noir musidoc)


Cheers.

-S

A little more Sufjan for the holiday.

Good King Wenceslas [MP3], from Volume 2 of the Sounds Familyre's A Familyre Christmas

Enjoy!

Remixes for the rest of us!

A very happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Winter Solstice, Boxing Day and Festivus to all of our readers and listeners. A little present for you:

Click Here for the Thin White Duke remix of "Viva La Vida". It will be up on Coldplay.com until January 5th, so go get it now!

Cheers!

-Raggedy Annie, Scarecrow and the rest of the Campus Buzz team

Matisyahu reviewed!

December 23, 2008

Hanukkah Receives Kosher Pop Welcome

By JON PARELES

Matisyahu deployed what may be the only large, mirrored, rotating dreidel in show business — a Jewish answer to a disco ball — at Webster Hall on Sunday night, the first night of Hanukkah. It was also the first of eight New York City shows for Matisyahu in his third annual Festival of Lights series, bringing different opening acts and guests each night. A large menorah was set up for a mid-concert lighting ceremony, with the blessings declaimed in Hebrew by an audience volunteer.

Matisyahu, who was born Matthew Miller, sings explicitly devotional songs about God, Moshiach (the Messiah) and Orthodox Jewish identity. By setting them to reggae, rock and hip-hop beats, and after working his way up the jam-band circuit, he also reaches listeners with their minds on more secular pursuits, like dancing and drugs. Simcha Levenberg, the M.C. who introduced him, drew big laughs with jokes about marijuana and LSD, although Matisyahu’s song “King Without a Crown” insisted, “If you’re trying to stay high, then you’re bound to be low.”

Matisyahu has built a career on analogies between Rastafarian roots reggae and Hasidic songs. Both are concerned with faith and survival struggles and have lyrics phrased in Biblical allusions; both draw on modal scales and melismatic vocal lines that can sound Middle Eastern. Near the end of the concert Matisyahu sang long, cantorial phrases while rocking back and forth, as if davening, or praying. Yet if his lyrics weren’t so clear about their references to Jewish history and the majesty of God, most of the time Matisyahu would simply be one more reggae-loving rocker.

In “Jerusalem,” which drew heartfelt singalongs, he worries about assimilation, singing, “Cut off the roots of your family tree/Don’t you know that’s not the way to be.” But the roots of his music are Afro-Caribbean and African-American. He uses Jamaican reggae and dancehall toasting, sometimes delivered with a Jamaican accent; he also uses hip-hop cadences and showed off his vocal beatboxing.

His band also segues into rock, for chiming marches that borrow their idealistic sound from U2. Matisyahu is less concerned with a musical heritage than with a religious one.

Album by album Matisyahu has expanded his music. Along with basic roots reggae he now uses faster, tongue-twisting dancehall toasting and the electronic beats and brooding chords of hip-hop. And he’s looking farther: Matisyahu joined Crystal Method, the thumping, rock-tinged electronica duo that opened the show, to sing and rap on a song from their next album, due in March.

Matisyahu rarely improves on his sources. His voice is thin and sometimes nasal, closer to Jack Johnson than to Bob Marley or Sting; his rhymes can be as awkward as they are earnest. But his band — which was augmented, for a few songs, by an Israeli oud player — carries simple vamps through multiple transformations, from meditations to shredding guitar solos. It’s music for believers, with a groove for everyone else.

Matisyahu is at Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, Tuesday and Thursday , and at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth Street, at Wythe Avenue, Saturday through Dec. 30. Tickets: (212) 307-7171 or ticketmaster.com.

CB Playlist - 12.21.08

Phantom Planet - Winter Wonderland
Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
Keane - Perfect Symmetry
Chris Cornell - Ave Maria
Kaiser Chiefs - Like It Too Much
Franz Ferdinand - Ulysses
The Killers - Neon Tiger
The Apples in Stereo - Shine (In Your Mind)
Snow Patrol - The Lightning Strike
Radiohead - Karma Police
Minus the Bear - Burying Luck
Sufjan Stevens- Amazing Grace & Put Lights on the Tree
Bloc Party - One Month Off
Jack Johnson - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
The Kooks - Shine On
Conor Oberst - Souled Out!
Copeland - Eat, Sleep, Repeat
The Pixies - Where is My Mind? (LIVE!!)
The Frames - Falling Slowly
Rogue Wave - Eyes
Guster - Careful
The New Amsterdams - Calendar Days
Jimmy Eat World - 12/23/95
Klaxons - Golden Skans
We Are Scientists 0 Nobody moves Nobody gets hurt
The Strokes - Juicebox
The Decemberists - Valerie Plame
The Postal Service - Brand New Colony & Against All Odds

Hope you enjoyed the show! Thanks for all the requests! Happy Holidays!!!

Kayne's Epic Fail.

Apparently will.i.am is NOT producing U2's new album. At least according to the band themselves. In fact, they blew up the Friday news cycle yesterday with announcement of their 13th studio album, hitting the streets MARCH 3RD worldwide. It will be called No Line On The Horizon. MORE INFO HERE.



Good news? Well, will.i.am would have been interesting, but go Eno. He's rarely led them astray. Also, the title is easy on the mouth, unlike How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (or its equally unwieldy acronym, HTDAAB)!

Sufjan Christmas Music Continues!

It's become a tradition: every year Sufjan Stevens releases a new collection of Christmas songs. This year is no exception!



Volume 8 is called Astral Inter Planet Space Captain Christmas Infinity Voyage, and contains both classic songs like "Angels We Have Heard On High" and original material, like "The Child With The Star On His Head".

We've been spinning some of the older Sufjan stuff, and next year we will likely add Volume 8 to the mix (with only one show left before Christmas and no album in hand, we'll have to forgo it the year! :-/).

Look for Volume 8 this Christmas, which is being released by Athsmatic Kitty. Check their website for goofy Sufjan fun!

Years of Refusal tour and album details

Morrissey Album, Tour Details.

12/14/08 Playlist

Pachua Sunrise (acoustic) - Minus the Bear
One Month Off - Bloc Party
I Am A Lightning Rod - Margot & The Nuclear So-and-Sos
Cross Bones Style - Cat Power
Confidence Man - Matt Pryor
Fa Fa - Guster
I Saw Three Ships - Sufjan Stevens
That Was The Worst Christmas Ever! - Sufjan Stevens
The Kids Don't Stand a Chance - Vampire Weekend
Losing Touch - The Killers
Laws Have Changed - The New Pornographers
I'm Sticking With You - The Decemberists
Get up and Go - The Polyphonic Spree
Never Miss A Beat - Kaiser Chiefs
Mexican Standoff - Elbow
All We Have Is Now - The Flaming Lips
I'm Outta Time - Oasis
I'm Amazed - My Morning Jacket
Two Halves - My Morning Jacket
Under the Blacklight - Rilo Kiley
Joke About Jamaica - The Hold Steady
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Bright Eyes
Syntax Lies - The Faint
Whatever It Takes - Tom Morello, the Nightwatchman
Hoppipolla - We Are Scientists
Rainy Day - Coldplay
The Planets Between Us- Snow Patrol
Crack the Shutters - Snow Patrol
Weak Become Heroes - The Streets

Cryptic new PB&J song/video

This new video from Peter, Bjorn & John is purportedly a song from a new, upcoming album. It's bizarre, it's crude in its construction, and it's incredibly catchy (and could be NSFW if you blast it too loud).

Enjoy!

Blindsided

I guess I missed this, so if anyone else has, enjoy this CLICKABLE "NEON BIBLE" ARCADE FIRE VIDEO.

It's really, really cool.


-------


Also, in related news... the guy who directed that is also director of a mysterious Arcade Fire film hitting the streets Monday. The site Miroir Noir provided some clues, but more details became concrete over the past few days. According to Pitchfork:

"The film will be available for digital download through the Miroir Noir site on Monday, December 15. A DVD will be released next year; if you pre-order the DVD, you'll receive an instant download.

According to a press release, the 70-minute film "follows Arcade Fire through the making and touring of Neon Bible, documenting the band at their Montreal studio, the making of promotional films and videos, along with live footage and a few short films made on the road."

There will be both standard and deluxe editions of the DVD.

Doom doom doomed...

Apparently the Postal Service will avoid the sophomore slump:

The prognosis on a second album is grim...

The Decemberists' "Hazards of Love" Track Listing

01 Prelude
02 Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
03 A Bower Scene
04 Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
05 Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)
06 The Queen's Approach
07 Isn't It a Lovely Night?
08 The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid
09 An Interlude
10 The Rake's Song
11 The Abduction of Margaret
12 The Queen's Rebuke / The Crossing
13 Annan Water
14 Margaret in Captivity
15 Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)
16 The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)
17 The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)

MORE INFO HERE!

The Max Weinberg-Roots Connection

Guess what?



The Roots have been confirmed as the house band for the new Jimmy Fallon-led Late Night show.

In related news, Leno may not be going away. Reports (1) (2) are saying that Jay may be given a 10 pm timeslot on the network. Back when CBS was re-upping Letterman, they offered him an 8 pm show, but he turned it down. It looks like Jay might follow through on this one.

Franz Nicolay explosion!

Franz Nicolay's back in the news!

#1: One of his new songs from his Major General solo effort has hit the net! Download it below:

World/Inferno Vs the End of Evening - MP3
(Right Click // Save As)

The Major General LP is due out on January 13th on Fistolo.


#2: Franz has also outlined a January tour to promote the LP. Pretty great, considering it's smashed in between the December and February dates of the Hold Steady tour! Check his solo tour dates and the remaining Hold Steady dates below.

Franz:

01-06 Charlottesville, VA - Boylan Heights Restaurant
01-07 Baltimore, MD - Ottobar
01-08 Washington, DC - Black Cat (Backstage)
01-09 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
01-11 New York, NY - Le Poisson Rouge
01-12 Buffalo, NY - Mohawk Place
01-13 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop
01-14 Lansing, MI - Mac's Bar
01-16 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club
01-17 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
01-18 Dekalb, IL - The House Café

The Hold Steady:

12-07 Sheffield, England - Leadmill
12-08 Oxford, England - Academy
12-09 Nottingham, England - Rock City
12-10 Manchester, England - Academy
12-12 Bristol, England - Anson Rooms
12-14 Portsmouth, England - Wedgewood Rooms
12-15 Wolverhampton, England - Wulfrun Hall
12-17 London, England - Roundhouse

(Insert Franz)

01-31 Brisbane, Australia - Laneway Festival
02-01 Melbourne, Australia - Laneway Festival
02-02 Melbourne, Australia - The Corner Hotel
02-04 Sydney, Australia - Metro Theatre
02-06 Perth, Australia - Laneway Festival
02-07 Adelaide, Australia - Laneway Festival
02-08 Sydney, Australia - Laneway Festival

Playlist for 12/7/08

Here's the 12/7/08 Playlist:

Walk Idiot Walk - The Hives
Keep the Car Running - Arcade Fire
Supernatural Superserious - REM
Life in Technicolor II - Coldplay
Movies of Antarctica - Stars of Track & Field
Happy Christmas (War Is Over) - The Polyphonic Spree
Neon Tiger - The Killers
Valley Winter Song - Fountains of Wayne
Lucky - Radiohead
Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
Set Your Glass Down - Snow Patrol
Mansard Roof - Vampire Weekend
A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
5 Years Time - Noah & The Whale
Blue Christmas - Bright Eyes
Come Downstairs and Say Hello - Guster
The Lights Are On In Spider Town - Tom Morello, The Nightwatchmen
Map of the Problematique - Muse
Valerie Plame - The Decemberists
Ulysses - Franz Ferdinand
Carpetbaggers - Jenny Lewis f/ Elvis Costello
Chicago - Ingram Hill
Juicebox - The Strokes
Against All Odds - Postal Service
Brand New Colony - Postal Service
Made in the Dark - Hot Chip
Hold Music - Architecture in Helsinki
The Beat Goes On - Ima Robot

Morrissey's "Years of Refusal" hits... with a message?

Morrissey appears to have a theme with his album covers of late. Quarry had a gun, Ringleader had a violin. Not so sure what he's getting at with the baby this time around, but it's potent when taken in series.


Thoughts (in the form of comments) are always appreciated.

Tom Morello / Jenny Lewis / Conan O'Brien

Like I talked about last night, here's the Tom Morello performance on Conan...



...and Jenny Lewis on Conan:



Enjoy!