Trooper, a new beer, has the Iron Maiden seal of approval + Jason Molina tribute album and fresh linkage
Little Broken Hearts suggests that maybe Jones isn’t looking to head back, but instead shake things up even further. If she is able to find a musical partner like Danger Mouse that she connects so well to, we’re due for yet another fantastic record from an artist many of us wrote off years ago.
We compiled all of this week’s tour date announcements in one handy column.
Wilco meets Popeye, Fiona’s new album in the works and more.
Rome is an album that you must listen to from beginning to end as a whole, for the tracks that blend common themes will give a deeper understanding of the entire listen. Reflective of what became the musical basis for Italian Western films in the 1960s and beyond, the combination between Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi succeed in producing a record of substantial triumph.
For the second consecutive year at Hidden Track, we concocted our innovative little experiment for the year-end Best Albums list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.
To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of well over 100 nominees, whereby most everything our contributors recommended made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently and blindly vote on the whole list on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees as some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we deployed our egghead algorithm for rating albums: (two times the average rating) + (the total number of votes). At that point, we took the top 25 highest scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2010. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.
We’ve come to the end of our week long countdown, let’s check out our Top Five…
5) LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
Sounds Like: Dance Yrself Clean, I Can Change
Key Tracks: Modern spacefunk, Talking Heads with an indie twist
The Skinny: James Murphy and company’s third full-length finds the eccentric front man exploring the benefits and trappings of stardom accompanied by the funky dance-pop we’ve come to know and love. Not at all a departure from the first two records, This Is Happening takes the LCD sound in a slightly more laid-back, introspective direction. Gone are some of the dancehall sounds in favor of a more organic, live band-sounding approach which brings the seemingly more personal material to life beautifully. Murphy’s impassioned vocals are direct and honest, particularly on the monstrously catchy single I Can Change. This record has all of the things we love about LCD – the Talking Heads-esque bounce, Murphy’s staccato delivery, thick, ever shifting soundscapes – but with a maturity and comfort that shows Murphy growing as an artist and a person.
READ ON for the final four albums in our countdown…
With Bono fully recovered from back surgery that forced U2 to postpone their North American tour, the Irish rock band has announced plans to head back into the studio to
With all that Danger Mouse has tackled of late, he’s giving T-Bone Burnett a run for his co-production, co-mastermind skills. And unlike prior recent collaborations like Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells, Dark Night of the Soul features Danger Mouse at his most haunting. Perhaps it’s an ironic show of foreboding that DM’s collaborator on this project – Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse committed suicide last March.
After a handful of high profile warm up shows, which included a number of SXSW appearances, James Mercer (The Shins) and Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) will take their new
It’s been a three years since the Zach Braff-approved, indie-darlings The Shins put out their third full-length album Wincing the Night Away. Since its release and support tour, the Portland
