No One's First, And You're Next

No One's First, and You're Next collects material that was first recorded along with, but not used on, the last two Modest Mouse albums. The eight songs on the EP are all fantastic and could have easily found their place on either album, but none of the tracks seem to deliver the top 40 appeal of Float On or Dashboard, which feels like a polished and full version of their traditional sound. And if there's any proof necessary that the band is invested in the content and not just dumping off unused material to go through the motions of making an album, it would be vocalist Isaac Brock's delay to release the first single until the vinyl was the shade of orange that he had in mind.
It's a given that any time a band breaks through to the mainstream, they risk alienating fans. If that was the case for Modest Mouse over the last 5 years, this album might help them win a few fans back.

Modest Mouse MySpace

Renfro

Renfro's Mathematics is a beautiful and slow album that uses floating melodies and vocals that seem to hover and glow over a crunchy electronic glitch. While the use of field recordings (such as sizzling noodles or subsonic sounds from space) in their music could be a distracting gimmick, Renfro manage to avoid becoming a victim of their own devices by disguising the sounds in the music, rather than accentuating them.

Renfro MySpace

Out Of Season

Portishead vocalist Beth Gibbons spent some of her time during the band's hiatus in the early part of this decade to collaborate with former Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb. In 2002 the pair released Out of Season (Webb uses the pseudonym Rustin Mann) which spotlights Gibbons' haunting voice supported by moody and jazzy instrumentation. While the tracks Tom The Model and Funny Time Of Year parallel Portishead songs, Romance and Mysteries are examples of how Gibbons and Webb managed to showcase their talent without falling back on their respective trip-hop or synth-pop genres that would have been a safe, and more than likely boring, approach to the collaboration.

Beth Gibbons MySpace

Mongolian Hip Hop

NPR ran an interesting story on the growing popularity of hip hop in Mongolia as a means of voicing social concerns and nationalist pride.
It's nothing I'll be rushing to get on my iPod, but it's a great reminder of the importance of free speech, and the ability to use art to contribute to social change.

NPR story here

The Beatles - Yesterday

The rerelease of the Beatles catalog along with a signature edition of Rock Band has stirred up more Beatlemania than I've seen since the Beatles Anthology documentary series in 1995 (I'm too young to have witnessed the real thing in the 60's). Whether you like them or not, there is no denying the impact that they've had on several aspects of the musical world, including fashion, marketing guitars and, of course songwriting.
Yesterday isn't my favorite Beatles song and I probably wouldn't even rank it in my top ten, but i'm not naive to it's influence on pop music, let alone the emotional command it has on listeners. It's also the most covered song of all time according to BMI.
I'm also fascinated by the story of how Paul McCartney came up with, then evolved the song.

Morphine

Morphine was jazz and poetry. And rock and roll. Throughout the 90's They managed to record five studio albums, completing the last one just before vocalist and bassist Mark Sandman passed away of a heart attack while performing in Italy.
Ten years following Sandman's death, the band's music holds up well. Tracks such as Buena, Cure For Pain and Whisper could be mistaken for modern releases.