Lollapalooza starts tomorrow, and I’ve got plenty of business to take care of before then. As such, I’ll be brief. Today’s notable tracks via Pick Your Poison come from Collarbones, Girls, Kites With Lights, Rachael Yamagata, and San Cisco.
Today is Wednesday, and that means the start of Lollapalooza 2011 is a mere 2 days away. I’m moderately excited about this year’s lineup, so it should be a pretty great weekend as it typically is. Still, it’s completely sold out, so if you’re going expect capacity crowds every day. I’ll be publishing my guide to the music at this year’s Lollapalooza tomorrow, so hopefully it will give you a little insight in case you’re stuck with some time slot conflicts. It’s no picnic walking from one end of Grant Park to the other, so try to plan accordingly. Now then, allow me to break down today’s edition of Pick Your Poison. Highlights include tracks from Canon Blue, Forest Fire, Halloween Alaska, Sean Waterman and Tuesday Glass. Also be sure to download the new song from Icebird, a new collaborative project started by RJD2. In the Soundcloud section you’ll find new songs from Active Child and Das Racist, as well as a classic from Screaming Females.
In case you are coming straight here via an external link, I’ll say this right now – Paul McCartney played Wrigley Field last night and it was AMAZING. I’m not the biggest fan of stadium shows, given the impersonal nature of it, the ant-sized people on stage, and the oft-muddy sound, but exceptions will be made on occasion for artists that really merit it. Sir Paul is one of those such people, and considering the catalogue of songs he has to work from it just made the whole night that much more thrilling. You can read my full writeup on the show by clicking here. Okay, on to today’s Pick Your Poison. Tracks hitting my ears in just the right way include ones from Amen Dunes, Brian Keenan, Get People, House of Wolves, Rubblebucket and Tin Armor.
Hope everyone’s weekend was fantastic. Back to the “grind”, unfortunately, but hopefully this work week isn’t too bad. If you’re headed to Lollapalooza this upcoming weekend, it’s likely a shorter week than normal for you anyways. Not only is that coming up, but Chicagoans can also enjoy a second night of Sir Paul McCartney performing at Wrigley Field should you have tickets. I’ll have a review of that show for you on Tuesday. Word on the street is it’s gonna be a great one. Speaking of great, let’s talk Pick Your Poison for Monday. I can advise you to check out tracks from Cabin Dogs, The Dig, Gauntlet Hair, Lightouts and Stuyvesant.
Another grand weekend coming up, and unlike the last couple, if you’re in the Chicagoland area, it’s gonna be nice. Moderately hot, but still better than severe weather and a number of other issues. And hey, that also means it’ll be great out for the pair of Paul McCartney concerts going down at Wrigley Field on Sunday and Monday. I’m going to one of those shows, and am super excited about it. One could even say I’m more excited about it than Lollapalooza next weekend. But we’ve got plenty of time between now and then for my excitement to build. At the moment I’m most thrilled about this edition of Pick Your Poison. It’s yet another solid one in a long line of solid ones. Today I can give a thumbs up to tracks from Abstract Artimus, Comet Gain, The Grownup Noise, Jonathan Coulton, Magicks, Prince Rama, The Sweet Ones and Turf War. In the Soundcloud section I’ll also say that songs by Youth Lagoon and Neon Hitch are worth streaming.
Happy Thursday. The weekend is so close you can almost taste it. I don’t have much time today, so let me get right to the point. Tracks I can recommend in today’s Pick Your Poison come courtesy of Astronautalis, Equals, Matthew Friedberger, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, and Van Hunt. In the Soundcloud section you may also be interested in hearing a song from Oscar winning actor Russell Crowe, among others.
Is anybody else concerned about the state of the debt ceiling right now? Better yet, how about the government? It’s less than a week before the deadline officially hits, and the two political parties appear to be holding firm to their own sides of the spectrum. I’m not here to lecture or push for my own opinions on the matter, but my main concern right now is that it just gets done. In order for that to happen though, somebody’s going to need to swallow their pride and cross some aisles. Let’s hope cooler and smarter heads prevail. Alright, let’s get on talking about today’s Pick Your Poison. Tracks I can recommend come from The Features, Fool’s Gold, Geoffrey O’Connor, Howth, No Age, Oh Minnows, Release the Sunbird and Total Babes. In the Soundcloud section there are some good ones too, in particular from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Widowspeak.
It’s Tuesday, and in my world (and hopefully yours), that means media release day. Go to your local store, or look online to purchase the good new music and movies being released. In terms of music, summer can be a bit difficult when it comes to album releases. This week’s pretty thin, but things I’ll make note of are records by Little Dragon, Inc. and Debbie Neigher. I’ve heard 2 out of those 3 and have featured all of them in editions of Pick Your Poison. Speaking of which, today’s edition has some great stuff from Belgrave, The Black Ghosts, Br’er, Extra Arms, St. Lucia and UME. In the Soundcloud section, there are solid tracks available for streaming from Fyfe Dangerfield (of Guillemots) and The Jezabels, among others.
I just want to take a moment to write a brief bit about the major music event that occurred over the weekend. I’m talking, of course, about the death of Amy Winehouse. It’s really such a sad story, made that much worse by the fact that nobody is surprised by it. She was a habitual drug user and abuser, among other things, and despite a few trips to rehab, she never could quite fully commit to staying clean. The extra dose of sadness is that people like Keith Richards continue to live on despite a lifetime of drug abuse. Everybody’s body is different I suppose. Amy Winehouse was a very talented individual whose contributions to music may have been brief but nonetheless impactful. People keep talking about “The 27 Club” when discussing her death. If you’re not already aware, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison are just a few of many musicians that died at the age of 27, most of them in their prime. Winehouse now joins that club, even if she wasn’t quite on the same level as those legendary figures. Over the weekend I took some time out to listen to “Back to Black” a few times. I haven’t listened to that record all the way through in a couple years. It still sounds great, and is largely responsible for opening the door for similar musicians like Adele and Duffy. So she did make a fair amount of difference in her lifetime. I wish her family and friends the highest of condolences, and hope she has now found peace herself.
I suppose talking about Amy Winehouse and then immediately moving on to Pick Your Poison could seem like poor taste. If that’s the way you see it, apologies. In this case, the “poison” cannot harm anything but your ears via bad music or high volume. Today’s songs meeting with my seal of approval come from Botany, D/Wolves, Mates of State, P.G. Six, Southerly and VHS or Beta. In the Soundcloud section be sure to stream tracks from Balam Acab and an old school Dan Deacon cut.
If I had things my way, this site would feature a lot more artist/band interviews. It’s something I genuinely enjoy doing, and it’s also more of a challenge than you’d think. While I do ask a lot of “normal” or obligatory questions, my favorites are always the more creative ones that often take an artist off guard (in a good way). When an artist tells me that I’ve asked a question about something they’ve always wanted to talk about but never get the chance to, there’s a small twinge of happiness I get out of making that sort of connection with the music or the creative mind behind the music. That being said, I am not an interview whore. I don’t just go begging to do interviews with artists, nor do I agree to interview artists whose music I don’t wholly love and respect. I get emails all the time from people and bands, many of whom I’m happy to feature here on Pick Your Poison, curious if I’d like to interview them and talk more about their music. Please don’t be offended or angry if I either don’t respond or say no to your inquiries, because in addition to the things I’ve already outlined in this paragraph, I have very specific ground rules for any interviews I do. I don’t do interviews via email. The answers are often very choppy and unconversational, plus it gives the artist plenty of time to carefully script an answer to their liking. That lack of spontaneity is detrimental to interviews as an art form. Secondly, I don’t do phone interviews. While they carry the much better cache of being actual non-scripted conversation, the cellular telephone has yet to be perfected. Dropped calls and cutting out are a big part of that problem, but then even if you’ve got two land lines the whole thing is a hassle to record unless you’ve got professional equipment. So my policy on interviews is strictly in-person only. Surprisingly (or not), it’s not the easiest thing in the world to set up those kinds of interviews. Artists have schedules to keep, I’ve got a schedule to keep, and even if the stars do align it doesn’t always mean that if I ask they’ll say yes. In the history of this site, I’ve only featured about one artist interview a year courtesy of the points I’ve outlined above. Tomorrow I will be posting an interview I did this past Thursday with Marissa Nadler. Keep an eye out for that. It was great to do and I repeat that I’d do more if I could. Okay, onwards with your weekend-starting edition of Pick Your Poison. Tracks I can seal with my approval come from Apricot Rail, Bon Iver, Cymbals Eat Guitars, David Bazan, Dum Dum Girls, Gold Leaves, Her Space Holiday, Say Hi, Yellow Ostrich and Teen Daze. There’s so much to love here. Have a great weekend.
I’d love to idly sit by and chit chat like I normally do for these Pick Your Poison posts, but today I simply do not have time. So here’s my list of recommended tracks from the list below. Be sure to check out songs from Balkans, The Consonance, Jenny O., M83, Roadside Graves and They Might Be Giants. Check out the Hercules and Love Affair remix of The Irrepressibles in the Soundcloud section too.
HEAT WAVE! If you’re in one of about 40 of the 50 U.S. states, chances are you’re dealing with some seriously hot temperatures. Enough to make you not want to go outside. Hopefully you’ve got some air conditioning to hang out in, and electricity with which to power it. Music can also help make the hot weather that much more bearable, so let Pick Your Poison be like an auditory fan blowing cold air on your skin. Tracks I can recommend today include ones from The Coastals, Heroes of Popular Wars, Humans, Inc., and The Weather Station. In the Soundcloud section you’ll find a solid track from Pusha T that features Tyler, The Creator.
Have you at all been following this News of the World phone hacking “scandal”? People absolutely have a right to be angry and upset about it, but what surprises me is how nobody really paid any attention when the whole thing was exposed back in April. Who broke that story? Why legendary superspy Hugh Grant of course. The dude is like James Bond, pretty much with the same desire for loose women. But yeah, he wrote this expose and made these hidden recordings to gather evidence, then published the content. Nobody caught onto it until just recently however because of the sheer horror that emerged upon the discovery that News of the World had hacked into the phone of a girl who went missing and was later found dead. The girl’s voicemail was full, but because they wanted more info via messages people left for her, they deleted some…causing her parents to think (at the time) that she might still be alive. Pretty shady, right? Well, they’ve done a whole lot of nearly equally bad (and some might argue worse) stuff to others, which is why Rupert Murdoch finally shut that paper down a couple weeks ago. Arrests are being made and charges drawn up against the parties involved now, so one can only hope that there’s some justice coming. It’s fascinating stuff if you’re at all interested (and I’d hope you would be). Just wanted to make mention of it in case you’ve been living underneath a rock the last few weeks. Yet you still make it here for some Pick Your Poison mp3s. Tracks I can give the good ‘ol thumbs up to today include ones from Appetite, Buffalo Killers, Cut Off Your Hands, Exitmusic, Letting Up Despite Great Faults, Mungolian Jetset, The Pack A.D., The Real Tuesday Weld, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, The War on Drugs and Zee Avi. Wow, that’s a long list of recommendations. All are great though, if you’ve got the time to listen.
Whoa Monday. That crept up rather quickly. Almost too quickly. If you were at the Pitchfork Music Festival this past weekend, I think you know what I’m talking about. Time flies when you’re having fun. Speaking of which, I’ve got just a couple more Pitchfork Music Fest-related posts left to take care of, and for those just itching for the site to “get back to normal”, I promise you that my coverage will be complete by Wednesday at the absolute latest. In the meantime I ask that you just be patient as I’ve got more content than I know what to do with. I’m going to be just as happy to wrap this long journey up. One thing that doesn’t change from weekday to weekday though is Pick Your Poison. That continues to go strong, as evidenced by today. I can give recommendations to songs by Alexander Turnquist, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Boy + Kite, Carter Tanton, Little Green Cars, and Noah and the Whale as remixed by Yuksek. Also the Fools Gold track in the Soundcloud section is pretty great as well.
For much of this week, I’ve been providing advance coverage of this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival. Now it’s finally here. My coverage continues all weekend long. For hour-by-hour updates, feel free to follow along with me on Twitter. In the very late evening/overnight hours, check back on the site to read my daily writeups that chronicle the good and bad of the things I saw. I’ll try and post photos too, but if I’m too tired to slap all that together it might have to wait until Sunday/Monday. Basically I’m saying there are plenty of ways to keep up with all the happenings this weekend without actually being there. Plenty of sets will also be streaming online, so go to the festival website for details on how to do that. It’s set to be a great weekend, with only the smallest chance of a stray shower amidst the sun and temperatures that will get hotter each and every day. Stay safe and have a blast. Here’s your Friday edition of Pick Your Poison. Great stuff today in the form of tracks bu Gardens & Villa, The Glitch Mob, Rams’ Pocket Radio, Superhumanoids, Tom Vek and Memory Tapes remixing ANR. Tracks by Peelander-Z and Walls in the Soundcloud section are both pretty great as well.
