Click here to view the embedded video.

Amiright or am I right?

[via Prefix]

• Tastey Tuesday Lunchtime Covers (10)
• Blog Wars: The Genius Playlist | Round 1, Battle 2 (14)
• Blog Wars: The Genius Playlist | Round 1, Battle 1 (18)
• Best Album of 2002 Poll (21)

Following up on last year’s irresistibly charming “All Yr Songs“, Toronto’s Diamond Rings offers up “Wait & See”. Instantly you will notice that the fluffy cheese that was so warmly welcomed with its predecessor is pretty much gone. It’s grounded, more serious, yet you can’t help but feel it’s still filled-up-to-here with charm, fully equipped with the ironic cheapo drum machine that had initially pulled us into “All Yr Songs”.

John O’Regan, the man behind the drum machine, will be releasing “Wait & See” on a 7″ single, backed with “On Fire” via Tomlab. You can stream “Wait & See” below; I’d recommend it:

• The Absolute Best Songs of 2009 (646)
• pmaCAST #20: There’s Something Living In These Lines (11)
• Diamond Rings – All Yr Songs (0)

Sigur Rós frontman, Jónsi, will be releasing his solo album, Go later this spring. If you recall, back in December, Jónsi gave away the gorgeous first single from Go, “Boy Lilikoi“, which you can still download if you follow that link.

The sunny and lively musical arrangements on Go are credited to Nico Muhly, who worked with Grizzly Bear on the gorgeous arrangements on Veckatimest; he is also responsible for the arrangements on Antony & The Johnsons’  The Crying Light. Jónsi and Nico’s brainchildren are a dream to listen to. “Go Do”, the latest one to sprout out, is cacophony of banging drums and other rattling percussion that is being lifted by the light and subtle beauty of a flute; it epitomizes the coming of Spring. So then it makes perfect sense that Jónsi will be releasing a Go Do EP on March 15th, a month prior to Go’s release. I really can’t think of a better way to usher in spring.

Stream: Jónsi “Go Do”

UPDATE: There is now a (super fantastic) music video!

• Sigur Rós’ Jónsi – Boy Lilikoi (9)
• pmaCAST #18: Post-Labor Day (5)
• CLICK HERE TO TRY DRUGS (famous sounding words) (0)
• Best Songs of the Decade (2000-2009) (159)

Yeasayer’s sophomore release, Odd Blood, kicks off with an awful track. Let’s just put it out there. “The Children” is the weakest song on the album – a plodding, strange, positively uninteresting tune with only slightly better lyrics. You may hear people try to tell you that it’s actually a good song. Or that you don’t “get it.” Those people are ridiculous. It’s a bad song. It ignores everything Yeasayer does well, and consequently pays the price. It sounds like a something made on GarageBand in about half an hour.

It is followed, however, by nine tracks of near perfection.

“Ambling Alp,” the album’s second cut, is on the fast track to being one of the top songs of the year. It builds on the groundwork constructed on debut All Hour Cymbals, expanding the band’s sound and taking it to levels of clarity that album never reached. “O.N.E.,” the album’s second single, is an upbeat showcase of Chris Keating’s vocals and the band’s remarkably diverse backing instrumentation. “I Remember” is a slower song, wistful and beautiful, that will be tugging heartstrings on its fair share of mixtapes in the years to come. There’s something for everyone here, but more importantly, there’s everything for someone. Like Bitte Orca and Merriweather Post Pavilion did last year, Odd Blood will introduce Yeasayer to the masses without alienating existing fans.

There is an air of inevitability surrounding the release of Odd Blood, as if it were a logical step in the development of Yeasayer as a band, or their fanbase, or their commercial success. I would argue that this confidence is unfounded – at least in a vacuum. There are countless impressive young bands that fail to deliver on the promise of a strong debut, countless buzzable albums that fall flat when they reach real ears. The fact that Yeasayer has managed to create an album this strong is a testament to their ability to grow as artists, to take risks that won’t always be met with praise. The mixing on this album is noticeably different from their debut, providing more space while simultaneously dropping some of the reverb from Keating’s voice. The tracks are peppered with odd textures – a splash here, a loon cry there – and Yeasayer isn’t afraid to anchor a tune with handclaps or puncture it with falsettos. But they have managed to sonically expand without changing the heart of their music, with popping off-rhythms and worldly melodies still making the backbone of nearly every song.

Maybe the decision to start the album with the weakest track Yeasayer has ever recorded is a calculated one. Starting with a whimper, rather than a bang, essentially wipes the slate clean – it immediately removes all expectations for greatness, replaced for a sudden and desperate desire for the album not to suck. If this is the first impression that the band wanted to have, we think to ourselves, how terrible must the rest of the album be? The boiling hype that has been swirling since All Hour Cymbals turned heads in 2007 is immediately reduced to a simmer, with the hopes that we haven’t messed something up and burned it already.

If that’s the case, it’s a brilliant switcheroo. Post-“Children” there’s not a song that falls flat. Some set themselves apart, sure, but there isn’t a single dud track in the back nine, none that beg for the skip button. It’s an album that sparkles, that changes the more you listen to it. The band tries on lots of different outfits – fast and urgent, slow and ethereal – unpredictable around every turn. Where tracks on All Hour Cymbals often bled together, eschewing individual song personalities in favor of a singular album identity, Odd Blood manages that balancing act perfectly. You can understand the forest, but the trees are pretty damn fun on their own.

Average Reader Rating: 8.3
Rate Odd Blood

To enter to win a copy of Yeasayer’s Odd Blood on LP (or CD), all you have to is leave a comment and retweet this review. Have you heard the album? If so, rate the album (above) and leave a comment with your thoughts on this review and the album in general. If you haven’t heard the album, comment about your expectations, or listen to it above. Make sure to leave a valid email address in the comment field. Entries will be accepted until February 18th.

• Yeasayer and Arcade Fire this Monday! (3)
• Yeasayer Odd Blood Album Stream (2)
• Yeasayer – Ambling Alp (Music Video) (NSFW) (9)
• Yeasayer – Ambling Alp (6)

Over a year after “Solid Gold” first blew up on everyone’s radar, the Golden Filter have announced that they will finally release an album. “Hide Me”, the first official track to appear on their forthcoming, Voluspa LP (no word on “Sold Gold” or “Thunderbird” being on the album), has just been released as a free mp3 single.

This is the moment Golden Filter fans have been waiting months for, download it below. Voluspa is out April 26th through Brille records.

• Through The Golden Filter, You See The Golden Light (3)
• The Golden Filter – Thunderbird (6)
• The Absolute Best Songs of 2009 (646)
• Remix-A-Day: Little Boots and Little Boots is Golden (6)

One Life Stand is like that drinking buddy you used to go out with every weekend until he met the girl of his dreams, became inseparable, and now only comes over to drink one or two beers then insists on going home early knowing he doesn’t even have to try anymore. And while you can’t help but be happy for him, you have to admit he was a lot more interesting before falling in love.

Hot Chip scales back in One Life Stand with sparser arrangements for a more cohesive, organic, and mellower sound. And as life often reflects art and art life, frontmen Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard have made it explicit in interviews that this album is a result of their being more “settled and happy.” The lyrical content includes some of the band’s most personal songs yet, with songs about family members (“Brothers”), parents (“Alleycats”), aging (“Slush”), and, as the album title’s campy pun suggests, an overall theme of having found true love.

Although still retaining signature electro elements, this is not a dance record in any conventional sense. But dance-record-in-any-conventional-sense was never Hot Chip’s shtick anyway, and they’ve fully embraced that in One Life Stand. Don’t get me wrong, most tracks on the album are just upbeat enough for a headbob, but that’s as far as Hot Chip seems willing to take this one. Fans looking for an expansion of the dance sound they cultivated in singles like “Over and Over” and “Ready for the Floor” will be disappointed at the minimalistic, more melodramatic tone of the album. Moreover, as a result of their moving away from the synth-heavy sound of their previous albums in favor of instrumental simplicity (expect a lot of sparse piano, guitar, and drums), the album misses the electronically experimental edge Hot Chip achieved in their other albums with songs like “Colours,” “Boy from School,” and “Shake a Fist.”

What the album does have is unity. Considering Made in the Dark’s bipolar mix of upbeat electronica and soulful R&B elements, switching from jagged beats to finger-snapping ballads between or even within each track, One Life Stand’s laid-back pace shows a more developed, mature consistency. However, with too much filler between the good tracks, the uniform quality causes the album to run blandly together. On my first listen, I had hardly realized that more than half the album had played because it at times all sounded like the same song. For this reason, this commitment to a singular sound is both the album’s greatest and worst asset.

And for being the opposite of all the changes Hot Chip has made, “I Feel Better” is the album’s best track. With its loud, bombastic bassline and auto-tuned vocals, the track nearly crosses the threshold into Eurotrance territory but Taylor’s clean backup vocals give it that warm Hot Chip spark. The track is driving, euphoric yet ominous, and the perfect tune for that epic slow-motion dance we all secretly do in our heads. Knowing that Hot Chip is a phenomenal live band, this one will kill live. “I Feel Better” represents the direction that I wish Hot Chip had taken One Life Stand – a more refined sound yet still with an electronic punch without sacrificing any emotional complexity. Other tracks to try out are “One Life Stand,” the title track and too-obvious Hot Chip single, “Take it In,” a sparkly gospel-influenced hymn, and “Slush” – whose introductory backup hum-in-ahs (62x) sound like a wonky vocal exercise but segue into a slow-paced, melodious piano beauty .

If anything, One Life Stand is far from the beginning of the end for Hot Chip. A dramatic shift like this is infinitely preferred to a The Warning or Made in the Dark rehash, or an album of “Ready on the Floor”s. It is an album with a specific sort of mood, and thus takes a particular sort of state of mind to be appreciated (it’s probably no coincidence that the album is being released so close to Valentine’s Day). One Life Stand is the only Hot Chip album to be composed while not on tour, and with a slew of tour dates in European and North American venues and festivals in the coming months, hopefully they’ll be too busy to be lovesick.

Average Reader Rating: 7.1
Rate One Life Stand

To enter to win a copy of Hot Chip’s One Life Stand on LP (or CD), all you have to is leave a comment and retweet this review. Have you heard the album? If so, rate the album (above) and leave a comment with your thoughts on this review and the album in general. If you haven’t heard the album, comment about your expectations, or listen to it above. Make sure to leave a valid email address in the comment field. Entries will be accepted until February 17th.

• This Week’s Touring News (6)
• This Week’s Touring News (8)
• The Lost Cover Post (10)
• The 212 BEST SONGS of 2008 (33)

You can stream what is probably my favorite album of the year at Spinner.

• Yeasayer and Arcade Fire this Monday! (3)
• Yeasayer – Ambling Alp (Music Video) (NSFW) (9)
• Yeasayer – Ambling Alp (6)
• Yeasayer “O.N.E.” (XXXChange Remix) (13)

One half of Chiddy Bang, producer and sample mastermind, Xaphoon Jones sprinkled some of his magic over Birdman and Drake’s “Money To Blow” to massively effective results. This free MP3 is another leak from his anticipated follow-up to The Xaphoon Jones Mixtape Vol. 1. Grab it below:

• Wale – Back To The Feature, Review (7)
• Santogold ft. Lil Wayne & Drake – Unstoppable (Remix) (3)
• Radiohead x Kanye West – Testify (Xaphoon Jones Remix) (PMA Premiere) (7)
• Radiohead – Videotape (Xaphoon Jones’ Dubstep Remix), PMA Premiere (9)

Warp records is giving away this non-album Flying Lotus track, “Quakes”, for free, probably in light of Flying Lotus’ highly anticipated Los Angeles follow-up Cosmogramma — which will feature guest-vocals from Thom Yorke. Furthermore, Steven Darlington (who is Flying Lotus) has also collaborated with Outkast arranger Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Laura Darlington, who appeared on Los Angeles highlight, “Infinitum” will also lend a hand in Cosmogramma, which is out May 3rd.

Download “Quakes” for free below

Full track listing for Cosmogramma:

01. Clock Catcher
02. Pickled!
03. Nose Art
04. Intro//A Cosmic Drama
05. Zodiac Shit
06. Computer Face//Pure Being
07. ..And The World Laughs With You ft. Thom Yorke
08. Arkestry
09. Mmmhmm ft.Thundercat
10. Do The Astral Plane
11. Satelllliiiiiteee
12. German Haircut
13. Recoiled
14. Dance Of The Pseudo Nymph
15. Drips//Auntie’s Harp
16. Table Tennis ft. Laura Darlington
17. Galaxy In Janaki

• Tor & Sufjan Stevens – Illinoize (The Remix Tape) (7)
• Thom Yorke – Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses / The Hollow Earth (11)
• Thom Yorke – All For The Best (0)
• The Best Pop Songs of the 2000s (54)

Yeasayer’s inspired new album, Odd Blood is out on Tuesday and anticipation has been steadily growing for the past few months with every free mp3 single (download “Ambling Alp” and “O.N.E.”) and insanely awesome music video hit the interwebs. Now, one of the most prominent remixers around, XXXChange (of the Spank Rock crew), has flipped “O.N.E.” on its head, trading in Merriweather Post Pavilion-esque springs and blips for Spank Rock-ready bass and synth lines, together with handclaps and shakers.

“O.N.E.”, Odd Blood’s official second single (called it), is out on March 23rd, but like I said, you can already download it for free. The single will include XXXChange’s infectious dance floor filler, which Yeasayer are also giving away, download it below:

Odd Blood is out February 9th on Secretly Canadian. Pre-order the LP or CD at Insound.

• Yeasayer and Arcade Fire this Monday! (3)
• Yeasayer Odd Blood Album Stream (2)
• Yeasayer – Ambling Alp (Music Video) (NSFW) (9)
• Yeasayer – Ambling Alp (6)