PLAYLIST! 28-June-2009

...trail of dead - Fields of Coal
Cold War Kids- Hang me out to dry
Oasis- the shock of lightning
Eels - Prizefighter
Beck - Orphans
Dinosaur Jr - I want you to know
Rilo Kiley - Silver Lining
Howling Bells - Cities Burning Down
Spoon - My Mathematical Mind
Yo la Tengo - The Autumn Sweater/ The summer
We are Scientists- Nobody Moves, Nobody gets Hurt
Band of Skulls- Light of the Morning/ Death by Diamonds and Pearls / Honest - special thanks to these guys for coming in for a great interview!!
Matt Pryor- Confidence Man
Miike Snow - Animal
Operation Aloha- Rain
Guster - Come downstairs and say hello
Dredg - Jamais Vu
Deathcab for Cutie - I Will possess your heart
Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
Pete Yorn - Don't wanna cry
Bon Iver - Beach babys
Rogue Wave - Eyes
Iron & Wine - No Moon
Regina Spektor - Eet/ Two birds
Ben Lee - ache for you
cat Power - sea of love
Amazing Baby -headdress
the Arcade Fire - no cars go
Conor Oberst & the mystic valley band- cabbage town
Peter Bjorn & John - It Dont move me
Red Collar - Pilgrim
the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero (remixxxxx)
CSS- Move

Thanks again to Band of Skulls for stopping by!

June 21, 2009 PLAYLIST

The New Amsterdams - Turn out the light
Noah and the Whale - Shape of my heart
William Fitzsimmons - If you would come back home
Bon Iver - Skinny love
Iron and Wine - Swans and the Swimming
Miike Snow - Song for no one
Spoon - don't you evah
Modest Mouse - guilty cocker spaniels
the Killers - Spaceman
The Postal Service - The district sleeps alone tonight
Dinosaur Jr. - I want you to know
My Morning Jacket - I'm amazed
Art Brut - The Passenger
Anya Marina - Move you
MGMT - Kids
Peter Bjorn and John - Nothing to worry about
Amazing Baby - Headdress
Howlies - Angeline
Operation Aloha - Failure
Pixies x2- Where is my mind/Wave of Mutilation
Howling Bells - Cities Burning Down
Clem Snide - With all my heart
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley band - ten women
sonic youth - rain on tin
the Decemberists - the hazards of love (the prettiest whistles...)
Beck x2 - I think I'm in love/ Chemtrails
Margot and the Nuclear So & So's - skeleton key
Belle & Sebastian - Piazza New York Catcher
Fountains of Wayne - Michael and Heather at the baggage claim
Rogue Wave- Lake Michigan
The Shins -Sea Legs
Band of Skulls - Light of the morning
the Thrills - Teenager
The Kooks - Sway
Stereophonics - my friends
Vampire Weekend - A Punk
Radiohead - Paranoid Andriod
Polyphonic Spree - Light and Day
Architecture in Helsinki - That Beep
CSS - Move

Hope you enjoyed the show! Listen in next week for some more great music and a few surprises :)

West Gate's debut street date / Lead single online now!

West Gate update (ha, that rhymes):

West Gate just posted their lead single off their debut album Daylight on their website and Myspace. The song, entitled "Bleeding Out" is an old classic for die-hard fans, but is a great representation of their sound for new listeners.

Pre-orders of Daylight are possible on westgateband.com. The album drops on 7/14 (which, as the band's drummer George joked, does NOT interfere with the new Dream Theater album, as one of their original projected release dates did)

Enjoy!

Flaming Lips' Yoshimi notes

Here's the link of Wayne Coyne's notes on "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots", as promised on tonight's show:

CLICK

6/14/09 Playlist

Here's the 6/14/09 playlist:

Dashboard - Modest Mouse
Lilac Breeze - Eels
Vacationing People - Foreign Born
There There - Radiohead
Lucky - Radiohead
Daniel - Bat for Lashes
Unconditional - The Bravery
Inland Sea - ...Trail of Dead
Treasure Hunt - Howling Bells
Tick Tick Boom - The Hives
Death By Diamonds and Pearls - Band of Skulls
I Know What I Am - Band of Skulls
The Captain - Ingram Hill
Song for No One - Miike Snow
Ready for the Floor - Hot Chip
Green Eyes - Coldplay
Lovers in Japan - Coldplay
Ode to the Sun - Dredg
GfC - Albert Hammond, Jr.
Nicholas - Little Brazil
Irish Blood, English Heart - Morrissey
The Lights Are On in Spider Town - Tom Morello, the Nightwatchman
Night Falls - Tom Morello, the Nightwatchman
Baby's Hammer - The Features
If We Love - Mercury Morning
Waiting for a Superman - Iron & Wine
Cabbage Town - Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band
Running Away - Polyphonic Spree
Orange Crush - REM
Man-Sized Wreath - REM
Over It - Dinosaur Jr.
DC Comics and a Chocolate Milkshake - Art Brut
Valerie Plame - The Decemberists
It's Summertime - The Flaming Lips
Pilgrim - Red Collar
Hysteria - Muse
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - Postal Service
Librarian - My Morning Jacket
A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
Potato Juice & Liquid Bread - Minus The Bear
I Got Mine - Black Keys
Please Forgive Me (Song of the Crow) - William Fitzsimmons
Hiroshima - Ben Folds
We Dance Alone - Beck
Zero (N.A.S.A. Bloody Lobo Remix) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Stream the new Incubus album in its entirety!

Incubus has their new album streaming in its entirety here >>> Clicky Clicky.

"Monuments and Melodies" hits next week, July 16th.

Thoughts? Comment and let us know!

New Killers Video - "A Dustland Fairytale"

The Killers have released a new video for their song "A Dustland Fairytale".

This video made possible by "No Country for Old Men".



EDIT: The original embed was removed, this one isn't properly synced with audio near the end and it's not available anywhere else. Bummer. When I find a working link I'll get it on here!

Afterthoughts: Green Day - "21st Century Breakdown"

Now that the pre-release hype has died away, I've decided to take another look at Green Day's latest, 21st Century Breakdown.

Something about this album's sheer existence made it seem set up to fail. Billie Joe and crew had struck gold with American Idiot, somehow marrying multi-track thematics and ten-minute epics with their classic sound, making it one of the most successful albums of the 2000s. Beating that with their next album just seemed like a short-term form of Axl Rose syndrome - pre-release, review and post-release hype, the possibility of a stage production, movie, and more buzz surrounding American Idiot -- it all kept promo machine going through the massive gap of time between releases (nearly five years). Yet, fans and industry people still were left going "when is that next album ever going to come? And is it going to be remotely as good as Idiot?"

The release finally came about a month ago, and reviews have been mixed-to-positive. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I want to focus on what the album is, and what it isn't.

First, what it is not:

A cement-strong concept album -- While their marketing message for the album plugged it as a three-act concept album, the threads of narrative and sound that stretch through this album are not very strong. Two main characters are spoken of (Gloria, Christian) but where they go and what they go through is vague. It's mostly presented as vignettes. No matter... it's enough to unify it, but it's not story heavy, like The Decemberists' recent The Hazards of Love

Classic Green Day - Strong affinity Dookie is nowhere to be found on this album. But on that note, affinity to Warning isn't here either. Of course, they haven't abandoned their core sound, but their song structures, production, epic key changes (see: chorus on "After the Lobotomy") seem to have sprung out of something new in the past five years. People looking for Green Day circa 1994 may be disappointed, but those who have decided that 15 years' worth of music and life experiences should yield some sonic change will notice a departure from the past. It's not like every song on this album is "Last Night on Earth" (whose closest similarity in the GD catalog is "Wake Me Up When September Ends"), but for every "East Jesus Nowhere" or that feels old school, there is a "Murder City" that toes the line between classic and new-sound, as well as a "Restless Heart Syndrome" straying way away from their core sound. It pretty much falls into perfect thirds - 6 tracks classic, 6 tracks new-sound, 6 tracks somewhere in between.

Heavy, deep, overwhelming social critique - Going off the concept-album idea, Green Day has consistently portrayed this as an even heavier look at what American society is like today. I see traces of it, and none of that is very poetic ("...the bastards of 1969!" doesn't roll off the tongue very well in the title track), but it DOES exist. But maybe that just does fit Green Day. They're not the kind of guys to hole up in the branches of trees to stop loggers, and they're definitely not a trio of Dylans, but they do get across the anxieties and idiosyncrasies they set out to portray.


What it IS:

Longer than I expected - This is satisfying to sit down and listen to all the way through because it actually has some length to it. For every 3-minute track there's a 5-minute beast (those are usually where the loose story plays through the most), and at 18 tracks that adds up. There's a few throwaway tracks like "Peacemaker" and "Know Your Enemy" (I have little doubt that long-term fan hindsight will put it into the lower tier of Green Day singles because it has this incredible ability to be catchy for the first minute and a half then mind-numbing for the rest)

Chock full of singles - when I heard "concept album" I got worried that there wouldn't be much radio-ready coming from 21st Century Breakdown. Hearing the repetitive "Know Your Enemy" made me even more worried - if this is the lead single, what will follow? After hearing the full album a few times, I remembered -- often the lead single isn't the best material off the album, even if it gets the most radio play. It happened with The Killers' Sam's Town ("Read My Mind" was the third single, but is probably one of the best songs the Killers have ever produced), It happened with U2's HtDaAB (The whole rest of the album was much better than "Vertigo")... and 21CB follows suit. I'm disappointed with the selection of "21 Guns" as the second single, but it's probably because it's being tied into the new Transformers movie soundtrack and needed to hit the airwaves sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, they have plenty of options for radio play all the way into the fall and even winter: "Viva La Gloria", "Last of the American Girls" and even the title track are excellent options.

Easy on the ears - Experimentation and sonic evolution don't always produce good results. (Case in point: U2's No Line on the Horizon, Metallica's St. Anger). While a few songs feel wonky ("Peacemaker") generally the stretching Green Day does is still accessible. You'll get what I mean when you hear the very beginning of "¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)"... Question marks filled my head until the chorus came in, then it all felt right. That's a great microcosm that portrays the album in general -- the first time you hear it you may go "huh", but deep down listeners will find Green Day is still there.

Overall, I feel Green Day's latest is a fantastic work. American Idiot was hard to follow, but I think Green Day did it right - they didn't repeat that sound. I now think of Idiot as a stepping stone, bridging the sonic gap between Green Day's 90s work and 21st Century Breakdown. The album really isn't all they sold it to be (concept album, etc.) but what it truly IS doesn't come up short -- it's just different than what they said. Deep down, I just found the album to be satisfying, even on the first listen - something I can't usually say.

Band of Skulls - I Know What I Am

I Know What I Am


After much scanning, I've only been able to find one instance of the official video for Band of Skulls' "I Know What I Am". Sorry it's the Myspace player, I personally don't like their embeds very much.

Enjoy! There might be a big BoS announcement for Campus Buzz listeners soon... stay tuned. Tell your friends. Listen in. (remember, extra hour all summer... 7-10 pm!)

6/7/09 Playlist

Hey team, here's the 6/7/09 playlist:

Arc of Time - Bright Eyes
Ten Women - Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band
Animal - Miike Snow
Nothing to Worry About - Peter Bjorn & John
Someone to Love - Fountains of Wayne
With All My Heart - Clem Snide
Hold Time - M. Ward
God Put A Smile On Your Face - Coldplay
Into the Chaos - Howling Bells
Wrong - Depeche Mode
Flux - Bloc Party
Sound of Settling - Death Cab For Cutie
The Great Defector - Bell X1
Juicebox - The Strokes
Fields of Coal - ...Trail of Dead
Man on the Moon - REM
Supernatural Superserious - REM
Am I Normal - Art Brut
Missing - Beck
Off the Record - My Morning Jacket
Used Guitars - Red Collar
Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
The Fix - Minus the Bear
Up To You Now - Ben Harper & The Relentless Seven
Calling Lightning - Howlin' Pain
Whatever Happened to Cory Haim? - The Thrills
The Island - The Decemberists
Song For The Girl - Vox Jaguars
Prizefighter - Eels
Pale Bride - Von Bondies
The Good Life - Weezer
The Greatest Man That Ever Lived - Weezer
No Cars Go - Arcade Fire
Human - The Killers
Not Over You - Chester French
Heads Will Roll - Yeah Yeah Yeahs