There is no reason why you should be, because the run-up to the release of this song as a proper single has been lengthy to say the least, but IF you are coming at this for the first time, can I make one small recommendation which will hugely improve your experience?

Ignore the vocal trickery: all the rasp and “aaaowww” and hiccuping. Just let it wash over you. If you find yourself clearing your throat while listening, or wondering if you should cottonbud your ears out, it’s probably just Pixie trying to emote the lyrics a bit too hard, and that can be distracting. So just try and concentrate on the lyrics for a bit.

It’s not too hard to do, there’s a nice backwash of clockwork piano and whooshy noises at the beginning, and when the fuzz bass and choir kick in, she’s pretty much singing normally again.

Also, once you’ve let those hoots and squeaks slip by, they’re basically gone forever. Second listen, third listen, you won’t even notice any more.

(Here’s the video. Which contains some SHOCKING product placement.)

And they’re not bad lyrics. It’s a fresh twist, sadly telling someone that you’d love to love them, but you’re a bit damaged by your last relationship and if the truth is to be told, you’re a smidge maudlin about how that all ended up. Oh sure, your new beau may just be the person who can make everything alright, but you’re really not sure about it. Actually, you’d rather snuggle down with some sad music and stick your face into a pint of ice-cream.

I guess there’s something a little, what, Scripty about that chorus, though. Pixie might be singing about “sitting in the front row”, but I’m hearing stuff about a cheap bottle of wine and sitting up talking all night. It’s most confusing, especially as Pixie has a low voice for a girl and Danny Script has a high voice for a boy, and they’ve both got a bit of a rasp thing going on.

Maybe they should do a duet? One where Danny tries to convince Pixie that they should get together, for the first time, and she tells him sadly that she can’t, because of a wound she sustained at the battle of Hastings.

Which would be both creative AND efficient AND educational. A win-win-win.

Download: Out now

www.pixielott.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

Music Reviews 10 says: “It’s definitely not as good as her third single Cry Me Out but it’s not too bad.”

Unreality Shout says: “This would sit well on the type of American TV show that employs pop ballads to supplement emotional scenes between characters. You know, the Grey’s Anatomy syndrome.”

View full post on BBC Audio & Music | Radio 1 Chart Blog

Oh no, you’re not catching me out like this again, Ms Keys. Credit where it is due, you did a very good job of sneaking your way into the record books by putting out the un-hip hop version of one of the biggest hip hop hits of the year. And yes, what that did was to force cultural commentators such as myself (I’ve got a badge and everything) to either review the same song twice, or pretend it isn’t happening.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me any more than three times, and you have to wonder if I’m deliberately pretending to be fooled because you’re being filmed for Facejacker or something.

(No video, sorry.)

That’s the trouble with Alicia’s careful confections; they get under the skin. Oh sure, it’s all there on first listen – the thunderous drum loop, the classical piano breakdown, the stacked harmonies that swoop and dip like a flock of starlings (see the current Foals video for details) all hit hard from the start. But it’s the way they linger which is interesting.

I mean, plenty of songs come across like they’re the spawn of a couple of Power Ballads Of The ’80s compliations. Heck, Glee are waging a one-show war to resurrect the originals in any case. What you need is a touch of strangeness to seperate the inspiration from its source. You need something which sounds NOT like an ’80s power ballad, so that the power ballad bits sound fresh.

You also need the power ballad bits because, well, that’s what Alicia does. It’s that kind of a song. She’s down, but she’s gonna find a way to make it without you, swine that you are, and while she does it, have you noticed she’s a dab hand at the ol’ joanna? Nifty, eh?

Now, should some enterprising hip hop producer seek to issue a rapped-over version of this song, I declare all future review correspondence to be closed until further notice.

See also: songs from Glee, mashups of hit songs from awards ceremonies, anything by Owl City*…

Download: Out now
www.aliciakeys.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

* Only kidding. OR AM I?

View full post on BBC Audio & Music | Radio 1 Chart Blog

Evan Lysacek is nursing two broken toes …

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Other Links From TVGuide.com

• Dancing with the Stars
• Anna Trebunskaya
• Evan Lysacek

View full post on TVGuide.com: Breaking News

John Mayer
Mar. 31 – Seattle, WA @ KeyArena
Apr. 1 – Vancouver, BC @ General Motors Place
Apr. 3 – Calgary, AB @ Pengrowth Saddledome
Apr. 4 – Edmonton, AB @ Rexall Place
Apr. 6 – Saskatoon, SK @ Credit Union Centre
Apr. 7 – Winnipeg, MB @ MTS Centre
Apr. 8 – Fargo, ND @ Fargodome
Apr. 10 – Chicago, IL @ United Center
July 16 – Charlotte, NC @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
July 17 – Raleigh, NC @ Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion
July 18 – Virginia Beach, VA @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
July 21 – Wantagh, NY @ Nikon at Jones Beach Theater
July 24 – Scranton, PA @ Toyota Pavilion
July 25 – Hershey, PA @ Hershey Park Stadium
July 27 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center
July 28 – Clarkston, MI @ DTE Energy Music Theatre
July 30 – Camden, NJ @ Susquehanna Bank Center
July 31 – Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 1 – Burgettstown, PA @ First Niagara Pavilion
Aug. 3 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
Aug. 6 – Mansfield, MA @ Comcast Center
Aug. 7 – Hartford, CT @ Comcast Theatre
Aug. 8 – Saratoga, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Aug. 10 – Toronto, ON @ Molson Canadian Amphitheatre
Aug. 11 – Darien Center, NY @ Darien Lake Performing Arts Center
Aug. 13 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
Aug. 14 – Tinley Park, IL @ First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
Aug. 15 – Noblesville, IN @ Verizon Wireless Music Center
Aug. 18 – Phoenix, AZ @ Cricket Wireless Pavilion
Aug. 20 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
Aug. 21 – Wheatland, CA @ Sleep Train Amphitheatre
Aug. 22 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
Aug. 24 – Irvine, CA @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Aug. 25 – Chula Vista, CA @ Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre
Aug. 31 – West Valley City, UT @ USANA Amphitheater
Sept. 1 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Sept. 4 – Dallas, TX @ Superpages.com Center
Sept. 5 – Woodlands, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Sept. 6 – Orange Beach, AL @ The Amphitheatre
Sept. 8 – Atlanta, GA @ Aaron’s Amphitheatre
Sept. 10 – Tampa, FL @ The Ford Amphitheatre
Sept. 11 – West Palm Beach, FL @ Cruzan Amphitheatre

Broken Bells
May 18 – San Diego, CA @ Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay
May 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Henry Fonda Theatre
May 21 – San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom
May 24 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
May 25 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox at the Market
May 26 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
May 29 – Denver, CO @ Gothic Theatre
May 31 – Chicago, IL @ Vic Theater
June 1 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
June 2 – Toronto, ON @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre
June 4 – Boston, MA @ Royale Night Club
June 5 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
June 6 – Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
June 7 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
June 10 – Atlanta, GA @ Center Stage
June 11 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club

David Gray & Ray LaMontagne
Aug. 15 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 17 – Boston, MA @ Bank of America Pavilion
Aug. 19 – Wantagh, NY @ Nikon at Jones Beach
Aug. 20 – Camden, NJ @ Susquehanna Bank Center
Aug. 22 – Nashville, TN @ Grand Ole Opry
Aug. 25 – Chicago, IL @ Millennium Park
Aug. 26 – Rochester, MI @ Meadow Brook Theatre
Aug. 29 – Council Bluffs, IA @ Stir Cover
Aug. 30 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Aug. 31 – Santa Fe, NM @ Santa Fe Opera House
Sept. 1 – Phoenix, AZ @ Dodge Theatre
Sept. 3 – Los Vegas, NV @ The Pearl
Sept. 4 – Valley Center, CA @ Harrahs Rincon
Sept. 5 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl
Sept. 8 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre
Sept. 10 – San Francisco, CA @ The Greek Theatre

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

Breaking Bad.

In the season opener (warning: minor spoilers follow) Skyler (Anna Gunn) filed for divorce after learning that Walt (Bryan Cranston) has become a crystal meth manufacturer. On Sunday’s episode (10/9c, AMC), Walt gets his first taste of how serious Skyler really is.

Breaking Bad: Is Walter White TV’s biggest liar?

“She’s trying to maintain distance and Walt’s agenda is to bring them back [together],” Cranston tells TVGuide.com. “They’re working at counter-purposes here, and all in the interest of what they think is best for the family. It gets very contentious throughout the season.”

Walt will get some support from his son (RJ Mitte), who shows up at Walt’s apartment complex no longer wanting to live at home with Skyler. Walt seizes…

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Other Links From TVGuide.com

• Bryan Cranston
• Giancarlo Esposito
• Anna Gunn
• Bob Odenkirk
• Aaron Paul
• Vince Gilligan
• Breaking Bad
• RJ Mitte

View full post on TVGuide.com: Breaking News

Photograph by Tony Landa
Night two of the SXSW Music Festival featured a trio of big guitar bands with new lineups, playing new — in some cases not even completed — albums. The pressure was on to strike a balance between satiating fans with classics and testing new material without trying their patience.

More SXSW day two guitar rock: full report on Stone Temple Pilots’ set.

The Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers — now without its third singer-songwriter, Jason Isbell — proved the worth of their new album, The Big To-Do, right from the get-go at Stubb’s. Remaining singer-songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley went back and forth with hardened new songs about old themes, principally boozing (”The Fourth Night of My Drinking”), whoring (”Birthday Boy”), and employment with “fast food wages” (”This Fucking Job”).

Muscle Shoals legend Spooner Oldham joined the band on keyboard for their final song, “Let There Be Rock.” Hood said it was in homage to record stores, where boys and girls learn about music new and old, and about Big Star’s Alex Chilton, who died of an apparent heart attack Wednesday.

Band of Horses followed with their bar-raising stadium rock. Under a crescent moon emblazoned on a blue backdrop projected onto the underside of the stage’s half-shell, frontman Ben Bridwell led his revamped lineup through a stout set including “The Funeral,” one of the great singles of the passing decade. The middle of the set featured two songs — “Factory” and “Compliments” — from the new album Infinite Arms, out May 18th. They may have been working titles but the mechanics therein were anything but in flux. “Factory” was a casual rocker with a punchy refrain and an undercurrent of keys, over which Bridwell sang something to the effect of, “I got to get my shit together and try to find something to sing.”

Headliner Broken Social Scene arrived with as much manpower as the two prior bands combined. Twelve microphones awaited the ever-fluctuating Canadian collective well past midnight. Jason Collett, a former core member participating in SXSW as his own concern, joined the band’s brain trust — Kevin Drew, Andrew Whiteman, and a freshly shaven Brendan Canning — for the intro track, a new one called “World Sick” (hear it here). The song took advantage of the band’s five-guitar assault, its ascending and descending melodies hopscotching gracefully along Drew’s lyrics about the homesickness inherent to incessant touring.

The band played a handful of old songs, among them a “7/4 (Shoreline)” embellished with a seven-person horn section, but mostly they rocked out new songs from the forthcoming Forgiveness Rock Record, out May 4th. “We’re gonna play our guts out,” Drew said, referring to dance- and keyboard-inflected songs like “Forced to Love,” “Texico Bitches,” and “All to All.” “But we’re human beings,” Drew continued, “still trying to figure things out.”

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

Last week RS talked up Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach in New Reviews, so today we’re spotlighting Breaking band Broken Bells, a collaboration between the Shins’ James Mercer and Demon Days producer Danger Mouse. The pairing might seem like a strange match, but as Will Hermes writes in his four-star review of Broken Bells, “It turns out the two pop-science geeks are a perfect match. Danger Mouse pushes Mercer’s gorgeous, existential tunecraft outward with Day-Glo dynamics.” Mercer’s lyrics are at their loneliest while Danger Mouse brings beats that sound like “hip-hop for turned-on shut-ins.” The best tracks here at first single “The High Road” and the bouncy “Vaporize.”

Also out this week: a collection of some of the final recordings Jimi Hendrix ever made, presented here as Valleys of Neptune. Of all the unearthed songs on Neptune, the title track is a major highlight, along with the bluesy, horns-soaked “Ships Passing Through the Night” and rerecorded versions Jimi classics “Stone Free” and “Fire.” “Are these tracks ‘finished’ as Hendrix would’ve intended?” Hermes asks in his three-and-a-half star review of Neptune. “Probably not. But as a glimpse of the guitarist extending his reach beyond the Experience trio, it’s thrilling.”

With a new drummer kicking out Zeppelin stomps, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club also return this week with their fifth album Beat the Devil’s Tattoo. BMRC continue their musical odyssey from rock roots to garage goth on their latest disc, which earned a three-star rating from RS. “Devil’s Tattoo is unremittingly grim, and undeniably fun. Few bands wear their frowns so well,” Jody Rosen writes.

For more on all the albums out now, check out Rolling Stone’s Reviews section.

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

Who: The Shins’ singer-guitarist James Mercer and producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton), who’ve taken time off from their usual gigs to team for a new self-titled disc of left-field psych-pop. (Read the RS review here.)

Sounds Like: Spooky psychedelia with a British Invasion flavor. Burton outfits Mercer’s beautiful melodies and with analog-synth swooshes, slo-mo kick drums and horn breaks. The mellow punch of “Vaporize” features zippy organ and rolling snare, and Mercer goes for a T-Pained falsetto on the catchy, electro-kicky “The Ghost Inside.”

Vital Stats:

• Recording sessions for Broken Bells resembled a budding bromance. Mercer moved into Burton’s L.A. bachelor pad, and they’d go to the movies, listen to records (Love, the Zombies), drink at dive bars and talk about relationships and life. “We definitely had separate rooms,” Burton tells RS.

• One of the main reasons the two musicians linked up was a search for fun. Mercer says he wondered, ” ‘Do I still have the curiosity and enthusiasm’ ” to be the sole songwriter and frontman for the Shins. Burton felt less like a collaborator than a hired gun on projects with Gorillaz and Beck. With Broken Bells, “I was free to express any idea I had,” the producer says.

• Both Mercer and Burton say they’re focusing on Broken Bells right now, but the status of their day jobs seems a little up in the air. “There’s been no discussion” of another Gnarls Barkley LP, Burton says, and Mercer notes, “I’ll probably, you know, find the time at some point” to make another Shins record.

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

Photo: Legato/WireImage
Broken Social Scene’s five-year hiatus came to a grand end today as the Canadian indie-rock collective unleashed their new seven-minute song “World Sick,” which you can hear below and download for the low price of your e-mail address at Pitchfork. The multi-suite “World Sick” is a refresher of everything we’ve come to miss from Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning and the rest of BSS, who last released their self-titled album back in 2005.

Since then, the steady flow of BSS-related solo albums and side projects — plus the break-out of BSS alumni Feist, Stars and Metric — have kept fans stocked with Canadian rock. Forgiveness Rock Record, due May 4th, features cameos from Feist, Amy Millan and Emily Haines, along with new recruits like Pavement’s Scott Kannberg, Sebastien Grainger and Tortoise’s John McEntire, who produced Forgiven Rock Record.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, the group will also perform at this year’s Sasquatch! Festival at Washington’s the Gorge on Memorial Day weekend.

Related Stories:

• “Cho Show”’s Margaret Cho: Broken Social Scene’s Newest Member?
• Broken Social Scene Mix Group and Solo Songs for Sprawling Set

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily