It’s been ten years since The Strokes released the raw, genre-defining album “Is This It”, which has since been named the Best Album of the Decade by NME, among other titles and accolades. Holy shit! Ten years? It still sounds hip today, which cannot be said for a lot of other popular releases from 2001.

Stereogum brings us this compilation of covers in tribute to the album, each track covered once by an artist from a different perspective. They’ve released similar compilations, like a tribute to Radiohead‘s “Ok Computer” and another to Bjork‘s “Post”. It’s all quality stuff, featuring some really cool indie acts covering their influences.

Some of the tracks are really incredible re-imaginations of The Strokes original songs. For what is probably the catchiest example on the entire compilation, The Morning Benders give “Last Nite” a slowed-down-disco treatment, complete with a retro beat and bass line. The song’s melodies get a major buff-up from what sounds like a vocoder, but could be pitch-correction software (I’m not experienced enough to know). Either way, this cover is primed to blow up on your local MP3 aggregator.

Another standout is Owen Pallett‘s cover of “Hard To Explain”, a richly layered landscape portrait of what was originally something like a Polaroid photo. The strings are intense, accompanied only by a piano and Pallett’s voice. In the online liner notes, he refers to a Regina Spektor quote comparing The Strokes to classical composer Mozart. (Whaaat?)

The song that I heard first from this compilation was tweeted by Heems, or Himanshu Suri, the Indian-American third of Brooklyn’s stoner-rap trio Das Racist. His cover is a rhyming rant about multiple instances of NYC police brutality, rapped over a beat that samples “New York City Cops”. It’s sometimes unintelligible, but a fitting cover of the song that was yanked from “Is This It” after 9/11 to show support for NYC’s finest.

Other tracks that will remain in heavy rotation on my iTunes for the next couple of weeks: Deradoorian’s dub-reggae cover of “Trying Your Luck”, Peter Bjorn & John‘s true-to-the-original cover of “Is This It”, and Real Estate’s chill/surf/folk take on “Barely Legal”.

Download the compilation and read the artist-submitted liner notes at Stereogum.

Peter Bjorn & John – “Is This It”
Chelsea Wolfe – “The Modern Age”
Frankie Rose – “Soma”
Real Estate – “Barely Legal”
Wise Blood – “Someday”
Austra – “Alone, Together”
The Morning Benders – “Last Night”
Owen Pallett – “Hard To Explain”
Heems – “New York City Cops”
Deradoorian – “Trying Your Luck”
Computer Magic – “Take It Or Leave It”

This song is a burner, clocking in at over 8 minutes long, so you should scroll down and hit play first before you read any further (presuming you wanted to read anything anyway…it’s not terribly insightful just so you know).

The Horrors’ latest album “Skying” has been extremely well received, including by ourselves, with the praise being extremely well-deserved.  From The Horrors‘ first album to this, their third, they’ve gone through a huge transformation not only stylistically but sonically too, which has been the most dramatic change, going from made-up Goth-Rock to monolithic Electronic-Shoegaze anthems like “Dive In”.

The album’s out on August 9th and joining its predecessor “Still Life” is another track you can have for free by the name of “Moving Further Away”. You probably still have about five mnutes of the track to go, eh?

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The Horrors – “Moving Further Away”

Buy the album from Amazon – Vinyl / MP3 / CD

There are a lot of people who still hate The Horrors for having the audacity to be lauded by the British music press before releasing a single note of music. When their first album dropped, it was subject to a wave of negativity that meant it never really had a chance. It didn’t help that it wasn’t very good either. They were then dropped from their record label, looking for all the world like another victim of the build-em-up-to-break-em-down machine that is the NME.

However, the band were then picked up by XL records, and were put in a studio with Chris Cunningham and Geoff Barrow, tasked with making an album that would salvage their credibility, and fashion a new identity for themselves. The resulting album was “Primary Colours”, which took almost everybody by surpise as being one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2009. I say almost everyone, because there must have been someone at XL doing a massive “I told you so” dance.

Much has been written since about the emergence from the chrysalis of the goth-punk of the first album, but it put the band in an almost unique position. Having basically flopped after too much hype and pressure on their first album, the “difficult second album” for The Horrors really did have a lot riding on it. Then, having absolutely smashed expectations with it, the pressure for them to deliver a worthy follow up was even higher. The Horrors are probably the only band in recent memory who have had to endure such weight of expectation, pressure and negativity on every album from their debut onwards. Which makes the fact that “Skying” is such a brilliant record all the more astonishing.

The album opens with some looped percussion, building up for a few short bars until a wash of synths and fuzzed guitar crashes over a baggy beat underneath, like Reni from the Stone Roses filling in for Colm O Ciosoig from My Bloody Valentine. Then Faris Badwan starts singing and you realised that the band has shifted in its stylistic identity again. This new Horrors Mk III sees a much poppier disposition, but is in no way damaged by it. Listening to opener “Changing The Rain” takes you through a verse/chorus structure until you come to…wait for it… a key change. For The Horrors to be employing Westlife’s favourite trick on their opener marks out very clearly, very early that this is going to be a big, ambitious and unapologetic album.

Throughout the album, the textures are markedly less inhospitable as those used on “Primary Colours”, and a brass section makes an unexpectedly welcome appearance, particularly on the luscious, early-Verve like intro to “Endless Blue”.  As a whole though, each instrument is used to enhance and serve the songs, even at the most sonically epic parts of “Skying”. Just like “Primary Colours” had its towering centrepiece “Sea Within A Sea”, “Skying” has “Moving Further Away”. While lead single “Still Life” is the likely to be the biggest song from the record, and has been (rightly) receiving heavy rotation on Radio 1 in Britain, “Moving Further Away” is likely to be the one remembered by Horrors fans as the song that blew them away most at gigs.

The song courses along on a motorik-inspired beat and some propulsive keyboard strokes, with a guitar figure circling in and out of the sonic pallete until two-minutes in, Badwan breaks into a verse, and a fuzz guitar comes searing in to accompany it. The most remarkable part of the song though, is where it all melts away into a delicate, feedback heavy guitar solo, and then into a lake of shimmering keyboards, and seagull noises. To this reviewer, it sounds like The Chemical Brothers covering Suede’s gargantuan “The Asphalt World”. The guitar slowly creeps back in, then builds and builds up to a crunching riff that repeats ad infinitum, Badwan intoning over the top. It’s exciting stuff.

The only weak point on the album is “Monica Gems”, a late-in-the-running-order bit of filler that comes across as a bit glam to begin with, but crumples into a squall of guitar and unfocused verses. Musically, it’s the closest thing they have done to their first album since it was released, with the mess of guitar front and centre, and is weaker for it. It is by no means a bad song, its 60s backing vocals being a particular highlight, but it pales in comparison to the high bar of quality set by the songs around it.

All in all, “Skying” is a remarkable release from a band that didn’t seem to have a hope just five short years ago.  In that time, the band have done nothing less than write and record two of the best albums released by a British band in the last decade. And that first album? Well, rumour has it that the band themselves have had it deleted, which shows a remarkable ability to admit their own failures. Respect.

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Oh how the love between a man and his shopping cart can really take its toll.

This new video for Cloud Nothings‘ latest single “Nothing’s Wrong” shows just how far that love can go, and the lengths us guys will go to just to keep the wee guy all to ourselves, but I do have a few gripes about the vid.  Firstly, everyone knows that only green shopping carts are protective of their owners and this video portrays blue shopping carts in a positive light, something they should not be portrayed in.

Secondly, that old dude wasn’t even trying to catch Mr Sweatband-Headband-Beard-Hoarder, he was doing that fake TV/Movie running where you flail your arms around and run on the spot.  Thirdly, why do all the dudes in the house beat him up?  He was only trying to steal some supplies for the impending apocalypse, I do that every three weeks…..granted I do it at night with a crowbar and a ski mask so maybe that’s why I get away with it, but still.

Fourthly, this is another video by Cloud Nothings that doesn’t seem to mean shit and has no basis on anything, other than:

“I once had an idea for a music video.”
“Oh yeah, what was it?”
“Well it’s about my relationship with Bruce, my shopping cart”
“…..duuuuuuddeeeee, let’s do it!”

Case in point, below.

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(via P4K)

Keeping raw talent and power confined to a tiny space like this is unfair.

What were you thinking, Dodge?  Stick them out in the garden or something where their sound can carry through the trees and soar on the wings of an eagle (cheesy enough?).

This new and untitled song (although I’m gonna go ahead and call it “We Can’t Get Old Too Soon”) was performed for Laundro Matinee and unleashed a couple of days ago, and it’s typical Cloud Nothings doing what they do best; jingly, jangly, Lo-Fi Hobo-Rock, catchy and seemingly always improvised.

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I’d say I’m about 906% sure that the concept for this video for Cloud Nothings‘ latest single “Understand At All”, was to pay homage to the title of the song as much as possible, because I’ve got absolutely no clue what’s going on.

Well, I know what’s going on, I just have no idea what it means.  One thing I do know is that if I ever see this old due in the street (or if his name’s Reese and he wants his candy back) I’m just gonna let him do his thing, he will fuck you up!

I’m not sure what frightens me the most though; his initial freaky get up, his insane special powers, or the concoction he buys and then consumes.  Either way I’m not sleeping tonight, so maybe I’ll just listen and re-listen to their debut album, it’s a damn good way to spend a half hour if you haven’t heard it yet.

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It’s peanut butter jelly time album-proper-time for Cloud Nothings, the much-lauded and muchly anticipated four-piece from Cleveland, Ohio.  Do you have 30 minutes to spare ’cause that’s all it’ll take to get through this album?  Sit down, kick off your feet, wriggle outta those pants, put on your headphones and hope that your boss doesn’t mind when they saunter past.

Mastermind Dylan Baldi isn’t even 20 yet but he’s already amassed a huge and burgeoning following based on the plethora of songs he’s been steadily putting out over the last year and a half.  In 2009 he released “Turning On”, a collection of songs he’d recorded up until that point that made an album without it being an official album release.

Last year he announced his first official album was coming out early this year, and here it is, 11 newish songs that come in just under 30 minutes, and even though it’s short, that’s exactly how his homemade Garage Indie Rock should be done.  Nothing pretentious, nothing conceptual, nothing over-done.  Lo-Fi Garage rock with a Punk ethos.  Their self-titled debut is out on January 25 via CarPark, and thanks to the badass motherfuckers at The Fader, you can hear it all below.

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Can you name a Romanian indie rock band?  Nope, me neither, well not until today I couldn’t anyway.  Then I came across The Pixels. This four piece from Bucharest formed in 2006 and are on the La Strada label.  Having played at festivals alongside such names as UNKLE and dEUS, they released an album in 2008 called “Fire Exit” and are now preparing for the launch of their next album by releasing a new single “One Part”.  Let me tell you what an introduction to an unknown world this track has turned out to be.

I grew up as an Indie kid, always looking for the next band that I could rightfully call my own.  Hours spent scouring NME for groups my friends had never heard of and then going to the local record shop to ask them to order me in records before they even hit their racks.  One memorable day I even got my mum involved.  I can imagine that living in Romania at the moment must be a bit like that.

Lead singer Catalin Rulea’s vocals are a throwback to those early days,  bringing back many memories of shoegazing nights in sweaty basement nightclubs, trying to look cool, bobbing my head whilst drinking pints of Castlemaine XXXX.  Add a couple of strong guitar performances and they might have provoked a quick glance in their direction and a sigh of days gone past.

However, mixing it up by throwing a danceable electro backing onto it, suddenly I’m contemplating a brief flight over to try to recapture those lost years and see what else Romania has in store.  I bet the lager is better too!

Throw in the beautifully shot video by Dan Vezentan and you have a track that deserves to be played loud and often.

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The Pixels – One Part (Radio Edit)

I’m actively killing music and the industry of which it’s a part of, just like home taping did and still does (peeps still home-tape, right?).

Over the last couple of months myself and Riley from the awesome blog The Leaving Scene have been sharing some of the hardest-to-find and lesser-known Cloud Nothings tracks between ourselves and it’s been heightening my anticipation for their self-titled LP due out on January 24th via Carpark.

Back at the start of November we got our first listen to what’s to come from said album in the shape of “Understand At All”, and “Should Have” follows suit with its punchy chorus and bordering-on-nasally vocals.  With only a month left until the album drops, I’m sure we’ll hear more of the record before then, so keep your eyes peeled.

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Cloud Nothings “Should Have” by carparkrecords

This morning NME premiered a brand new track by Clevelanders (Clevelandonians?) Cloud Nothings from their upcoming self-titled debut album due out in January via Carpark.

Dylan Baldi, the 19 year-old dude behind Cloud Nothings, and his band of ravenous-for-the-jingle-jangle upstarts released “Turning On” last year, a compilation of sorts on Bridgetown Records, winning over many journo, blogger, music fan, and everyone in between.

This new jam is from his upcoming album and has the same skeeze-driven Lo-Fi sound as with his other stuff, but this time it sounds like he’s been recording in an actual studio. Cop it, right there below.  Yeah, just down there…you find it?  Got it?

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Cloud Nothings – “Understand At All”

(via NME)