Monday Roundup: NO HOLIDAY MUSIC YET.

Where I take a look at select cuts from what Spotify has recommended in this week's Release Radar. 

New John Rutter?  New Handel recordings? Early English Polyphony? I guess this is a reminder to clean up my massive Yuletide playlist. I’ll have to come back to the John Rutter EP - no holiday music yet! 

"No" - Little Mix 

Me, looking at the cover of this greatest hits collection: Weren’t there, like, four of them? What happened to the one with the lip fillers? 

 This led me down a rabbit hole of googling pictures of Jesy Nelson back in 2011 and hoooo boy she went full Ari, like... even more Ari than Ari. (Listen, I love Ari and I enjoy Little Mix, but people ain't wrong here.) Anyway, this is standard Little Mix, but nothing to write home about. 

"Sunrise/Sunset" - The Dodos 

Do I like the Dodos? I think I heard some of their stuff, liked it, then tried to get into their early aughts stuff and was like “meh.” I like this. It sounds, well, “early aughts indie” enough to evoke a certain nostalgia in me. The drive of it reminds me of Matt and Kim, the outro of the '60s, very generally. It’s repetitive, but not in a bad way; not quite earworm catchy but enough for your brain to latch onto.

"Never To Be Repeated" - The Long Blondes

The Long Blondes!!! It’s hard to tell if I’ve heard this before - Google says it was released in 2006, so very probably? This is classic Someone to Drive You Home-era Long Blondes, before "Couples", which felt more contrived. I started reading this interview in The Quietus, and it's fascinating. I miss this band, deeply, and their aesthetic. And that vinyl reissue looks gorgeous. 

"Barely Reason for a Smile" - NNAMDÏ, Lynyn

Every now and then, NNAMDÏ comes up in a playlist and I think, “I know that name…” and then I remember the absolute gem that is “let gO Of my egO.” I feel like this would go well on the alternative radio station out of Philly I used to listen to, and yet it feels cinematic and classical, a piece rediscovered and reinterpreted in the 21st century. 

"tend the garden" - Gang of Youths 

I overlistened to "the angel of 8th avenue" over the summer, and everything on this track is sweeping and lovely and somehow feels very New York and very Tom Waits at the same time. But maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. 

"Mr. Fix It" - Darlene Love 

Why does this make me think of New Year’s Eve? (It came on and I thought, "No, no holiday music yet!") (This is Barry's fault.) Doesn’t mean this isn’t great. 

"Pumpkin Spice Heaven" - Parry Gripp 

SPOTIFY. SPOTIFY, STOP. I. LISTENED. TO. ONE. ALBUM. A YEAR AGO. 

"Good As What You Give" - I Know Leopard 

Is this distorted or purposely out of tune? (Shows what I know, don't hire me for your next record.) I think I might’ve liked this when I was younger - it feels like a synthy, distorted DCFC with a dash of the ‘70s in the bridge - but it’s a bit too plodding for post-pandemic me. 

"Try a Little Act of Kindness" - OK Go 

Confession: I haven’t paid attention to any of OK Go’s more recent single releases. But my god, this sounds like their earlier stuff - squeaky clean, bright powerpop with just tinges of their fourth record. It’s for a soundtrack, so it sounds just a little contrived. I wish it was a little longer and given the opportunity to end a little more organically. A-, more like this, and a tour, please. 

"Billy Goodbye" - Franz Ferdinand 

FF’s releasing a greatest hits record and going on tour and Paul’s left the band and I’m not sure how I feel about all of those things together. But FF’s fourth record is absolutely my favorite, followed by their first, and this feels like a straight-up rock effort that mixes both of those eras with a little stadium rock feel and I love it. The bridge gets wonderfully weird. It’s catchy, fun, and wonderfully classic FF, keeping the energy going right up to the very end. 

"Fearless" - Hanson 

This is so dramatic! I keep seeing poll tweets from them about Against the World, and I honestly have no idea what it’s about. Is it a new record? A tour? This is not my favorite release from them, but it’s sort of like what Imagine Dragons might sound like if they were actually good. I’m still stuck on this summer's “Don’t Ever Change,” a ‘70s powerpop song that was magically transported and released in the Year of Our Lord 2021. 

"Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels (Just Dance Version)" - Todrick Hall
How many versions of this song can he release and get away with it?? 

"Teletron for the Populace" - The Apples in Stereo 

The Apples in Stereo? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time, a long time. But this is a hard “nope” from me. 

"Lonely Boy - BBC Session" - Black Keys 

I was not expecting to listen to this all the way through, since I usually skip over remixes and live versions in this playlist, but this recording is wonderfully unpolished. 

"Wake Me Up" - Foals 

And now for something different! So ‘80s! Reminds me of VHS or Beta, who were very derivatively ‘80s! (And whom I loved!) Reminds me of all the ‘80s stuff I just listened to on the Monster Jams playlist! Parts remind me of FF, which also shows how they tapped into the ‘80s too! I like the lyrics, too! This is great! 

"Love in New York" - HalfNoise 

After the bop that is “Wake Me Up,” I was ready to dismiss this, but it’s really lovely. It reminds me of Summer Fiction, about whom I got really worked up about a few years ago, but then I just... could not stand that guy live. This feels both sweeping and intimate. If this had come out in 2003, it might have been on the Garden State soundtrack; I don’t feel that’s a bad thing, because that record was the thing my first semester of college. The last line lingers: I’ll keep dreaming if you keep dreaming about us. 

"If U Can't Dance - Demo Version" - Spice Girls 

Normally, if you throw a demo version at me, I will automatically declare that it is the best thing ever and why did they even bother going into the studio and re-recording it because they just ruined it, but this is... hoo boy, this is not good. 

"Run Me Down" - Carla Prata 

I swear to the Universe, this did not show up on my playlist on Friday. I adore Prata, and this is exactly what I want and need right now.

"Holiday Rock" - Neon Trees 

NO, NO HOLIDAY MUSIC YET.

You're What We Came For : Franz Ferdinand at the Roseland, 5/7/09

It's been two weeks since I saw Franz Ferdinand play at the Roseland in New York. It's been four months since their third LP, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, dropped. Nine months since the radio edit of the first single, "Lucid Dreams," was released. And more than three years since last I'd seen them live at the Hammerstein with Death Cab for Cutie (what odd bedfellows!) and the Cribs. This review is nothing if not a labour of time and space, if not a study in contradictions.

When Tonight dropped, I couldn't find the words to express my own opinions of it. I could regurgitate what the band has said about the record. (That it's the soundtrack to a night out, filled with dance beats and synths and ending with the acoustic fadeout as the morning comes.) I could regurgitate what Pitchfork has to say on the matter. ("More so than stoking the band's current commercial prospects, Tonight is an exciting record for what it could potentially spell for Franz Ferdinand's future...as it turns out, their return is perfectly timed to remind us that, in a world where UK rock is so uninspired the Brits were forced to make superstars out of Kings of Leon, you really can have it so much better.") Or what my brother had to say on the matter. ("There are no guitars! Where'd the guitars go! I miss their post-punk revival sound.") I agree with all of it.

At the end of the day, while the record has grown on me – I can't stop listening to "No You Girls" at the moment, "What She Came For" makes me shout-along happy, the fat bass of "Can't Stop Feeling" no longer feels like a betrayal of the original version – I still find myself feeling ambivalent. Or perhaps apathetic. Franz Ferdinand and You Could Have It So Much Better were chock-full of singles-ready tunes that may not have created a cohesive whole but could certainly stand on their own. This collection seems to run into each other in a blurry, alcohol-fueled rush. But maybe that's what the band was going for.

So it was with equal parts anticipation and ambivalence that I approached my first Franz Ferdinand concert in three years. Nostalgia reigns in memories of April 2006. I was in high-fangirl mode at that time in my life, but had spent so much time and energy fangirling about other bands that, upon seeing Franz Ferdinand play not once but twice in the same day, I felt I was slapped in the face and promptly reminded of how much I fucking love this band. At the most, I was hoping that would happen again; at the worst, I was eager to see how the new electronic-based tunes would be played out live.




Born Ruffians. Warning that these photos are not my best. ie, pretty terrible.

I thoroughly enjoyed openers Born Ruffians' set. My brother, who has seen them several times before, said they were more sedate than usual. I still thought there was a great vibrancy to their set, even without their being balls-to-the-wall. The vocals caught my attention – as if someone’s gone and placed a wailing folk rock singer’s voice, something you might expect coming out of John McCauley of Deer Tick, in a skinny boy in a garage band and let them have at it. Possibly an odd combination, but given my recent reenchantment with vocals à la Deer Tick, I liked it. Point being, would I pay to see them again? Definitely.








Franz Ferdinand

And then, of course, Franz Ferdinand. The show got a bit fancy this time, adding a keyboard / synth set-up right in center stage and a huge light screen behind them, playing trippy video sequences and projected images of the boys, in lieu of the usual banners of themselves. Nick hobbled onstage in crutches to sit at the keys because apparently he’d gone and broken his foot somehow.

The setlist (as seen in that really dark photo above, if you can read it – "Jacqueline" was not played) was a good mix of old and new, not too heavy on any one record if with a slight (and understandable) predilection for the tracks off Tonight. The songs from their self-titled and So Much Better got their post-punk revivalist searing guitar treatment, and the tracks from Tonight were layered with electronics, and so the band bounced back and forth between the two. (Slightly to my chagrin – I wanted to see the new songs played on guitar, too.) My brother pointed out the emphasis placed on Nick McCarthy, who had plenty of time in his own limelight, versus the other times I've seen them – at the end of "Tell Her Tonight," he declared, "That's the first time I've sang that by myself!" Tempo was obviously, and interestingly, played with – songs that are already slow ("Walk Away") got drawn out into near-dirge territory, others that were already fast ("The Fallen") were sped up to the point of rendering it nearly impossible to sing along. "40 Feet" and "Outsiders," at the end of the main set, were tweaked, drawn out, messed with, filled up with sound as Alex Kapranos (still, I maintain, the sexiest rockstar I can think of) had the crowd chanting back to him in call-and-response. And at the end, good old "This Fire," never one of my favourite tracks on record, but a captivating song when played live.

Speaking of the crowd, quelle horreur. I honestly cannot remember a crowd that made me more unhappy than this one, except maybe for that time I saw We Are Scientists at Irving Plaza and the 15-year-olds decided it was time to mosh into me the whole time. Seriously. At one point, I turned to the screaming girls behind me and demanded, "What are you, fourteen?" The guy behind me took upon himself to (unintelligibly) shouting the lyrics. A fight broke out during "Michael." Really. I'm all for enthusiasm, but that was a bit much. Does that make me a stick in the mud?

At the end of the show, I wound up walking away feeling more ambivalent than I had before. It's difficult to determine if I really didn't enjoy the show because I was too bothered by the people around me, or if I simply didn't enjoy the show that much. Maybe it would help to see it again. Maybe I should follow Franz Ferdinand around on tour instead, just to see. Maybe I was just expecting too much of one performance. Maybe it’ll be better next time.

In that case, I should probably get on shelling out the $52 for their November show in Paris.

New(ish) Single / New(ish) Tour Dates : Franz Ferdinand's record drops 26th January, too.

January is just one big ol' pile of exciting, isn't it? YES IT IS.

I'm a little late on the uptake on this one (sorry), but Franz's third record, Tonight, will be released on the 26th of January in the UK, the 27th in the US. And they've got a whole lot of dates lined up - in Europe and Australia. Grr! Fingers crossed for the summer.

29 Dec 2008- Rhythm & Vines Festival - Gisborne, NZ
30 Dec 2008 - Falls Festival - Marion Bay, AU
31 Dec 2008 - Falls Festival - Lorne, AU
3 Jan 2009 - Southbound Festival - Busselton, AU
5 Jan 2009 - Palace Theatre - Melbourne, AU *
6 Jan 2009 - Enmore Theatre - Sydney, AU *
8 Jan 2009 - Sunset Sounds Festival - Brisbane, AU
14 Jan 2009 - The Picture House - Edinburgh, UK
20 Jan 2009 - Heaven - London, UK ^
28 Jan 2009 - Dolans - Limerick, IR
01 Jan 2009 - Olympia - Dublin, IR
4 Mar 2009 - Barrowlands - Glasgow, UK
6 Mar 2009 - Academy - Manchester, UK
8 Mar 2009 - Academy - Birmingham, UK
9 Mar 2009 - Hammersmith Apollo - London, UK
12 Mar 2009 - AB Club - Brussels, BE
13 Mar 2009 - Paradiso - Amsterdam, NL
14 Mar 2009 - Palladium - Cologne, DE
16 Mar 2009 - Aeronef - Lille, FR
17 Mar 2009 - Olympia - Paris, FR
18 Mar 2009 - Olympia - Paris, FR
20 Mar 2009 - Vega - Copenhagen, DK
21 Mar 2009 - Circus - Stockholm, SE
22 Mar 2009 - Sentrum Scene - Oslo, NO
24 Mar 2009 - Docks - Hamburg, DE
25 Mar 2009 - Columbiahalle - Berlin, DE
26 Mar 2009 - Tonhalle - Munich, DE
28 Mar 2009 - Schiffbauhalle - Zurich, CH
29 Mar 2009 - Estragon - Bologna, IT
30 Mar 2009 - Alcatraz - Milan, IT
1 Apr 2009 - Le Phare - Toulouse, FR
2 Apr 2009 - Pabellón de la Casilla - Bilboa, ES
3 Apr 2009 - Palacio de Deportes - Madrid, ES
4 Apr 2009 - Coliseo Ciudad de Atarfe - Granada, ES
* with the Cribs
^ with Of Montreal

You all already know they've released their second single from Tonight, "Ulysses." Here's them in the studio playing it:



Franz Ferdinand - "Ulysses"

Festival des Inrocks 2008

So let's talk about this year's Festival des Inrocks and it's pretty amazing line-up and how, if I were living in France and had the money, I'd pretty much be going every night.



The whole shebang (did I really just write that?) started off last night with MGMT, Alela Diane, Fleet Foxes, and She & Him playing L'Olympia in Paris, and continues through the 18th.

A Paris:
13th November - Franz Ferdinand, Get Well Soon, Yo Majesty - La Cigale
14th November - The Ting Tings, Cajun Dance Party, Black Kids, Amazing Baby, GaBLe - La Cigale
15th November - Foals, Friendly Fires, Soko, S. Steve, The Virgins, Wild Beasts - La Cigale
16th November - Hot Chip, Metronomy, Late of the Pier, Kennedy, Cut Copy - La Cigale
17th November - The Kooks, CSS, Mystery Jets, White Lies - Le Zenith

A Lille:
13th November - The Ting Tings, Cajun Dance Party, Black Kids, Soko - Aeronef
14th November - Foals, Friendly Fires, Soko, The Virgins, Wild Beasts - Splendid de Lille

A Nantes:
15th November - The Ting Tings, Cajun Dance Party, Black Kids - Olympic de Nantes
16th November - Foals, Friendly Fires, Soko, The Virgins, Wild Beasts - Olympic de Nantes

A Ramonville:
17th November - The Ting Tings, Cajun Dance Party, Black Kids - Le Bikini
18th November - Foals, Friendly Fires, Soko, The Virgins, Wild Beasts - Le Bikini


Plus some other bands that seem to be on the poster but not listed on any of these dates that I'm seeing.

That's a lot to digest. Point is, there's a shit tonne of bands that I'd love to see (Franz, Mystery Jets, Cut Copy) and would be interested to see (The Ting Tings, Foals, Friendly Fires, The Virgins, CSS, She & Him) and, um. I can't go.

Luckily, les Inrocks and sponsors iDTGV will be posting videos and photos in their Festival blog over here, for those of us unable to swim across to Europe.

If you do happen to be in France, there's some ticket info over here, although a majority, if not all, of the Paris shows are currently complet. That's French for "sold out."


I mean, frankly, whose idea was this whole "Atlantic Ocean" business, anyway...?

Franz Ferdinand announce title of third record, play three NYC shows, none of which I made / can make.

From VanityFair.com:

Before playing a crisp, truncated set that mixed classics (“Take Me Out”) with one or two new songs, singer-guitarist Alex Kapranos and drummer Paul Thomson of Franz Ferdinand told me that they have settled on a name for their upcoming third album, which is due out in January. It’s gonna be called Tonight. (I had to ask Thomson to spell that, which gives you an idea of how thick the dude’s Scottish accent is.)

Franz played MHoW twice this week, and they're scheduled to play Diesel's thirtieth birthday party today. I've been so out of touch, I didn't realise one of my favourite-favourite bands was playing in town until the day of, which is just silly. Ah, well. I'll have to catch them when they come around next year.

Tonight is supposed to drop in January of '09. You can listen to "Lucid Dreams" on their 'Space (or download it here until I get unlazy enough to delete it.)

There is no nation of you, there is no nation of me : Franz Ferdinand, the Olympics, and a short trip down Memory Lane.

This is an essay I wrote a few weeks ago, before, during, and after my vacation to Florida. You know, the one that got ruined by Tropical Storm Fay. Considering the material, I'm a little late in posting it, but I wasn't quite sure how I liked it to begin with and needed some time to tweak it a bit. I'm still not 100% sure on how I feel about it, but if I don't put it out there then, well. I never will. So enjoy.

.....


What does this guy have to do with Franz Ferdinand? Not much, actually, and yet everything. Keep reading...

Ask me who my favourite band is, and odds are, I'll give you the following response : It's a tie between Franz Ferdinand, OK Go, and Scamper, in no particular order.

It feels a little weird admitting that because, firstly, let's be honest here – these days, you ask any given music blogger who their absolute favourite band is, you're probably expecting Radiohead, right? Right. Though if you haven't already figured out that I'm a sucker for the powerpop-dancerock thing, then either you're new here or you haven't been paying too much attention. (I called this thing "That One Pop Gem" for a reason.) I'll readily admit that none them are the singularly most original, musically ground-breaking bands ever. But then again, very few bands are.

Secondly, given that this has been my standard response for about two and a half years or so, I've started to wonder if those three are still my favourites, or if I've just started to say that out of habit. I mean, I’ve found and fallen in love with a lot of new stuff as of late and, frankly, I just don't listen to OK Go or Franz as much as I used to. (Scamper is the glaring exception to this, but that’s largely because they split up and I went through a long denial phase wherein I listened to their stuff relentlessly.)

Then again, I think we all recognise that the "favourite band" thing goes a little beyond just liking (or even loving) the music, to a much more emotional spot. Take OK Go, who, for all intents and purposes, changed my life. It was (mainly) because of them that I (re)realised, hey, I like going to rock shows and seeing new bands and buying records and talking to other people and writing about music. I'm not exaggerating when I say I wouldn't know half the people I do without them. Cliché? Yes, but entirely true.

Then there's Scamper, who probably hold a nearer and dearer spot in my little powerpop-adoring heart. Brendan once said to me, "We don't have 'fans,' we have 'friends'", and I suppose that's innately true of a band that's popular on such a small, local scale. But when you're nineteen and stuck in perpetual "fangirl" mode and the guys from one of your favourite bands actually take the time to respond to you, it kind of goes down as "awesome."

And frankly, I could gush on and on about these two, and say nary a word on Franz Ferdinand. To be fair, I've never been a hardcore member of the Franz fanbase, they've barely toured my area in the past few years, and I certainly don't spend time chatting with Nick, Paul, and Bob. The much more, um, intimate connection (for lack of a better phrase) just doesn't exist here.

And yet, Franz Ferdinand has probably been just as influential as the other two, and I really do love them. I often forget to take note of that.

So why am I taking note of it now?

It's because of the Olympics.

Yeah, I know, that doesn't make much sense. Hear me out on this.

Franz, to this day, remains the only band I've discovered via MTV. I took a sick day during my senior year of high school, circa April 2004, and turned on MTV just for kicks when the video for "Take Me Out" came on. I thought the video and song were great, so I tried to find it (ie, searched for it on KaZaa), but came up short, because Franz Ferdinand really hadn't arrived in the US yet.

A few months later, on the annual family vacation to Orlando, we went to Downtown Disney and wandered into the Virgin Megastore. Franz Ferdinand's self-titled debut was sitting in the one of the listening booths and, remembering how much I liked "Take Me Out," I decided to buy it on a whim. (It was actually that or another terrible record that I will not name, which I actually did wind up buying later, but thank God I purchased Franz Ferdinand when I did and not the other record because my life would be so different now thank you thank you thank you.)

I remember sitting in the back of the rental car, listening to "Dark of the Matinée" for the first time. The whole record was like nothing I'd ever listened to before. I wasn't even sure if I liked it. Remember that whole "rerealising 'I like music'" thing? That only happened a few years ago, and didn't come into full swing until the latter half of my first year of college. Up to that point, I'd only really ever listened to the crap on Top 40 radio. This sort of indie dancerock thing was completely foreign to me, as embarrassing as it is to admit that.

"So, yeah," you're saying, "that's great and all, but I still don't see what this has to do with the Olympics." I should point out that all of this went down during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, back when Michael Phelps was making his first bid at walking out of there with nothing but gold. We all know that he didn't succeed that time around, but it was kind of amazing to watch regardless. My family would go back to the condo at the end of the day and watch the games before calling it a night.

In the meantime, I was utterly caught up with "Take Me Out." I listened to it incessantly, every night before I went to bed that week, after having watched Phelps swim. Good God, I was obsessed with that song : the minute-long intro, the way the tempo slowed into something that makes you want to strut, the searing guitars, the "Come onnnnnnnn……take me out!" in the middle of the song, the general sass of it all. I wanted to do nothing but hear that song on repeat again and again. And thus began my love for the New Scottish Gentry whilst everybody else had their sights fixed on Athens.

Franz Ferdinand went on to soundtrack most of my first year of college (indeed, "Michael" still makes me think of stretching out at the gym. Weird but true.), but it wasn't until October 2005, with the release of their second LP, You Could Have It So Much Better, that I got to see them live. It was a seminal moment for me, I think : it was my first concert at Madison Square Garden (at The Theatre, of course, not the arena) and the first time I'd gone into the city on my own to see a show. (Actually, that's not entirely true – my little brother came with me as well.) Possibly more importantly than that, though, is that a mere ten days later, I also saw this other little band that I really liked, OK Go, play in Boston. Oh, and this other little band that I'd never ever heard of before, Scamper, happened to open for them.

I mean, what are the odds of something like that happening ever again?

And I think that's when Franz Ferdinand truly became one of my favourites. I think I'd listed them off as my favourite band prior to that moment, but that was because I was listening to very little else so there wasn't much competition. I didn't get to see Franz play again until April '06, when I skipped a day or two of class to catch them in New York with Death Cab for Cutie and The Cribs (whom I really liked and ventured out to see at Siren '06). And I remember thinking, "Fuck, I really love this band!" I had been so caught up with my fangirling over other groups (*cough*) that I'd forgotten how much I really, truly love Franz Ferdinand's music. Hearing them play "L. Wells" for the first time, live, sort of changed my life. (Also, I got to meet Alex and he was a total sweetheart.)

And so here we are, at the end of the summer of 2008. The Olympics have come and gone; Phelps has gone and got his record-breaking eight medals, and I haven't seen Franz Ferdinand play in over two years. Watching the opening ceremonies and tracking golds on vacation made me remember life from four years ago - fresh out of high school and moving on and rocking out to my CD player (I know, right?) at night. I guess much hasn't change - my family still vacations in Florida (and still invariably has run-ins with hurricanes), I still rock out at night when nobody's watching. I just happen to have graduated from college this time around.

The good news on the Franz front is that they're busy finishing up their third record, which will hopefully drop next year and include lots and lots of tour dates. Until then, they've dropped a new song, "Lucid Dreams," on our heads, which sounds enough like tracks from Franz Ferdinand to remind me why I fell in love with their sassy dancerock in the first place but new enough that I don't get bored.

Franz Ferdinand - "Lucid Dreams"

And really, that's all I could want from them. Four years on, and they're still making me dance. Hopefully I'll be saying the same things about them come London 2012.

New Tour Dates : Franz are on the road this summer.

The boys of the New Scottish Gentry will be oot and aboot this summer, playing a smaller-venue mini-tour...in the UK. *shakes fist* Plus some European festivals.

Dates as follows:

21st June - Fibbers - York, UK
22nd June - Adelphi - Hull, UK
24th June - Thekla - Bristol, UK
25th June - Moles - Bath, UK
26th June - The Orange Box - Yeovil, UK
28th June - The Point - Cardiff, UK
29th June - Faversham - Leeds, UK
4th July - Ollesummer Festival - Tallinn, Estonia
12th July - Bands Apart Festival - Ferrara, IT
18th July - Latitude Festival - Southwold, UK
19th July - Melt! Festival - Ferropolis, DE
7th August - Skanderbourg Festival - Skanderborg, DK
8th August - Way Out West Festival - Goteborg, SE
30th August - Electric Picnic Festival - Stradbally, IE
31st August - Hydro Connect Festival - Argyll, UK

Oh, apparently they're almost done with their new record, too. Always good news.

Look, Ma, I made a mixlist!: "Get On Your Dancing Shoes (You Sexy Little Swine)"

I made this dance mix a while ago, with the intention of making some "cover" art (so to speak) to go with it, but I never got around to that. I didn't actually get a chance to test it out on a live crowd of dancing people, though, until Saturday night (Sunday morning, actually), when I was dubbed the official DJ of the after party, mainly by default. (Seriously, how some of Boston's finest pop rockers and their closest friends and family(?) wound up at a house party, and none of them stopped to think, "Hey, maybe I should bring my iPod along, ya' know, for the tunes and dancing and such," is sort of beyond me.) At one point, someone told me, "You are the party right now."

Regardless, everyone (or at least those who were dancing) seemed to like my choice in dance tunes (though maybe I was too drunk to notice otherwise), which included this mix. I skipped over tracks three (great remix, but a little long) and five (because I wasn't sure how they'd respond to the Spice Girls), but it went well overall, I think.

1) "Dancing Shoes" - Arctic Monkeys
The boys from Baker kept demanding more Arctic Monkeys. When I finally wandered away from my iPod around 4:30 am, that's what they put on.

2) "Loser" - The Plasticines (Les Petits Pilous remix)
Wow, this song makes me want to dance. Also, I like when indie rock kids want to know what I'm playing, because it gives me some confidence in my faux DJ-ing ability.

3) "Sci Fi Kids" - Blitzen Trapper (Principal Participant 'Kingswood' Remix)
I think I stole this from Stereogum over the summer. A little slower, a little longer, but still danceable.

4) "The Love Cats" - The Cure
Somebody asked me what song this was. I just stared at him.

5) "Who Do You Think You Are?" - Spice Girls
Say what you want, this is great for the dancefloor.

6) "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" - CSS
I mean, CSS is great for a dance party. I don't know if I like this one more than "Hot Hot Sex" (also played that night), which I love mainly for the Portuguese rap at the end.

7) "Don't Start" - Franz Ferdinand
A lovely FF b-side that starts out quieter and then blasts in on the refrain.

8) "It's A Hit" - We Are Scientists
I think I've listened to this song too many times.

9) "Tits & Acid" - Simian Mobile Disco
The title says it all.

10) "Heart of Glass" - Blondie
Classic. My copy is a little quiet, though.


Mix with LCD Soundsystem, Peaches, some more CSS, and maybe a little Britney, add some indie rock boys and too much champagne, and call it a party. Just don't be like me and try to get to bed before you crash at 6:30 am.

In the studio: Franzypants news.

From Billboard.com:

"The idea of making a dirty pop record -- this is what has been on our minds," Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos tells Billboard.com of the band's ongoing studio sessions in Glasgow. A new, as-yet-untitled album is expected from the group this summer via Epic.

"It's the opposite of punk/pop, which took something that was wonderful and removed all the dirt," Kapranos says..."For me, the imperfections are what makes it perfect, like the cheapest, shittiest guitars through practice amps."

More here.

Kapranos also said in this interview with Rolling Stone that "I suppose we’re heading back to the idea of dance music. It’s more of a dance record than a rock record."

I've always thought of Franz as a dancerock band regardless, though I suppose You Could Have It So Much Better was more rock than their self-titled debut was.

In any case, I'm glad they've headed back to the studios. It's been well over two years since YCHISMB dropped and over a year and a half since the last time I saw them live. It'll be great to hear some new tunes this summer.