Tap Into Free Energy

Shortly after the digital release of their debut album, Stuck On Nothing, Free Energy took over SXSW and made their television debut on Late Show with David Letterman and performed on Fuel TV’s “The Daily Habit.” Now the guys are taking over a stage near you this Spring and Summer! The band has just announced new dates with Mates of State and their shows at NXNE following their dates with Jukebox the Ghost (all dates below). Don’t miss your chance to see one of the year’s most exciting bands live!

Folks...for those of you living in Jacksonville...the band is actually coming through the here. It's not everyday a DFA band comes through this hell hole, so do yourself a favor and go see this band...go see this tour...it's massive!

Produced by DFA’s James Murphy, Free Energy’s debut album, Stuck On Nothing, was released digitally March 9, 2010 and will be available physically May 4, 2010 on Astralwerks/DFA Records.

Tour dates...
04/22: Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick Café
04/23: Chicago, IL @ Beauty Bar
04/25: Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock
04/26: Madison, WI @ Annex
04/27: West Liberty, IA @ Secrest 1883 Octogonal Barn *
04/28: Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom *
04/29: Lake Geneva, WI @ Knotty Pines Farm *
04/30: Monticiello, IL @ Kalyx Center *
05/01: Maquoketa, IL @ Codfish Hollow Barn *
05/08: Lancaster, PA @ Chameleon Club $
05/14: Lewiston, ME @ Bates College
05/26: Boston, MA @ The Middle East Downstairs + ^
05/27: Hamden, CT @ Space + ^
05/28: Philadelphia, PA @ The First Unitarian Church + ^
05/29: New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom + ^
05/30: Washington, DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel ^
06/01: Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 + ^
06/02: Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbor + ^
06/03: Atlanta, GA @ The Star Community Bar + ^
06/04: Jacksonville, FL @ Jackrabbits + #
06/06: St. Paul, MN @ The Grand Old Day Festival
06/08: Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree + #
06/09: Nashville, TN @ The Exit In + #
06/10: Bloomington, IN @ The Bluebird + #
06/11: Ithaca, NY @ Castaways + * #
06/12: Providence, RI @ Jerky’s + * #

Tour with Mates of State
06/15: Northampton, MA @ IronHorse ~
06/16: Rochester, NY @ Water Street Music Hall ~
06/18: Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls ~
06/19: Cleveland, OH @ Grop Shop ~
06/21: Cincinnati, OH @ 20th Century ~
06/22: Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall ~
06/23: Minneapolis, MN @ 400 Bar
06/24: Minneapolis, MN @ 400 Bar
06/25: Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
06/26: Denver, CO @ Bluebird
06/28: Salt Lake City @ In the Venue
06/30: San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall >
07/1: San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall >
07/2: Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex >
07/3: Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex >
07/4: Tucscon, AZ @ Club Congress
07/6: Lubbock, TX @ Jake’s
07/7: Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater
07/8: Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
07/9: Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon
07/10: Birmingham, AL @ Workplay
07/12: Athens, GA @ 40 Watt >
07/13: Ashville, NC @ Orange Peel
07/14: Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar

* = Daytrotter Presents: Barnstormer III
+ = w/ Jukebox The Ghost
# = w/ Drink Up Buttercup
^ = w/ Miniature Tigers
$ = w/ Blood Feathers & Elder Brother
~ = w/ Todd Barry
> = w/ Nick Thune

Download: C'mon Let's Dance

autoKratz Kick It Off

autoKratz will follow the success of 2009's debut Animal with Kick, a brand new EP set for release on Wednesday 28th April. Jagz Kooner got behind the controls on the A-Side and has helped the band to create a dark and pounding electronic anthem. The track guests the XTRMTR-era guitar eruption of Primal Scream's Andrew Innes, coupled with the Kitsune-signed outfit's typical arsenal of battering electronics.

The EP shows an exciting development of the autoKratz sound, indicative of why the band's second album due later this year is so brimming with promise.

The B-Side sees the official release of the ruthless "Skin Machine," a track which swept across the blogosphere like wildfire back in February. Furthermore, there's a devastating remix from Japanese Popstars who deliver an enormous main-room take on things, once again fulfilling the hype bestowed upon them and comes after they recently scored Pete Tong's 'Essential New Tune.'

On release, all tracks will be offered for free from the band's official website to thank the fans for their support, and will certainly give electronic music some serious food for thought as the band take to the road once more.

Download: Kick EP

It's The Magic Bullets

Someone has clearly forgotten to tell Magic Bullets that we're in the 21st century, because their self-titled album, is clearly the best thing to come out of 1987 that I've ever heard. Sounding something like Monochrome Set, Orange Juice, Wedding Present, and pretty much anything residing around the jangly warehouses of British pop bands of that era, Magic Bullets are a lost treasure from another time that's just been uncovered by pop archaeologists. Listening to Magic Bullets is like unearthing a time capsule and finding the entire Cherry Red catalog in it; quaint, unusual, and amazing all at the same time.

Embracing arty pop, soulful vocals, and more jangle than legally allowed in 2010, Magic Bullets are an awesome sight to behold and listen to. This is a band that clearly has no idea that Baggy, Britpop, Post Post Punk, Electro, Indie Rock or anything else even exists and the songs they write sound as though they're covered in Doc Martens, Gladioli, and button down cardigans. Magic Bullets is a classic without being a day over a year old, a lost treasure without ever being lost, a rare gem in a sea of diamonds.. This is a truly exceptional stuff that has just about left me speechless. I LOVE this album because it sounds so pure, so simple and so, so good. This is just indie the way indie was always meant to be and it's fantastic.

Lovelorn, heartbroken, and lost Magic Bullets sound frustrated and confused about love and life and the time and it makes for some darn fine songs as a result. With titles that sound like they're from the David Gedge Anthology of Jangly POP Anthems the songs are daft and adorable at the same time. With titles like, "They Wrote A Song About You," "A Name Sits Heaviest On My Heart," and "Sigh The Day Away," you can see what I mean and how you can't help but create a mental picture of this group and the troubles they're going through. This is teenage angst run through a Morrissey dictionary and played with enough weeping sincerity that you want to give the band a hug and buy them a beer.

Magic Bullets is amazing. I'm sitting here speechless at how this band has tapped into something that was popular twenty three years ago and nailed it and the fact that they're American makes it even more shocking. This is the kind of eighties revival I want to hear more of and the kind I wish would capture the imagination of music fans everywhere. Magic Bullets are a stupendous band and their self-titled album is just about the best thing I've heard this year. Wow...this is heck of a band and one heck of an album that really has me wondering if time travel isn't possible.

Download: Lying Around

The Language of Love

The Love Language, initiated by Stuart McLamb, is a fortunate by-product of the North Carolina natives rudderless mid-20s, where a tempest of breakup, inebriation, and incarceration found the abandoned songwriter embarking on a storage-space recording project to slow his seeming disintegration. The growing body of emotional fight songs, committed to MP3 with a high-school era multitrack recorder, became postcards from exile, a way to let his friends and former flames know he was getting along, battered but not beaten. The self-immolating beauty of the budget correspondences was exhausting and triumphant; McLamb's dalliances with rejection a ... [read more]nd redemption would be minted in a self-titled debut on Portland independent label Bladen County in March of 2009.

Soon afterwards, the mighty ensemble band version of The Love Language-a dysfunctional symphony of musical vagrants-disbanded to pursue personal projects. McLamb, who had roamed the state since recording The Love Language, moved back to Raleigh where Libraries engineer/producer BJ Burton adopted the one-man band and helped harness the extraordinary might generated during these sessions. Among the moments captured on the new album are Spector-esque walls of reckless sound, cavernous drums, middle-school percussion, and moody swells of stringed instruments, all decorated hastily with stray leads, which bleed beautifully all over everything.

The effective average of McLamb's madness and Burton's discipline rendered an album in the classic sense, in which no song is expendable and no passage is without purpose. With Libraries, McLamb transitioned from a guy who could write a good album to an individual who can maintain a good band. The sooner we listen, the sooner we may figure this whole love thing out.

Download: Heart To Tell

Behold Holy Ghost!

Holy Ghost! are born and bred New Yorkers Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser. These two life-long friends bonded over a mutual love of hot sauce and music while in elementary school and have never looked back, playing in bands together ever since. After working as studio musicians and live players for DFA Records partners James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy and playing and recording alongside Juan Maclean, the duo formed Holy Ghost! based on a deep appreciation of analog synthesizers, Larry Levan era-disco, and the cheap thrills of infectious, hook-laden pop.

Holy Ghost! have just now emerged from the studio, armed with their debut EP Static on the Wire which will be released on May 18th. Until that date, the group are giving away their new single, the catchy-as-hell forward thinking disco-pop track “Say My Name,” which should keep your feet moving and your legs akimbo until the single is released.

So have at it...

Download: Say My Name

Windsor For The Derby Return!

Hey guys...

Been a hell of a weekend around POP! Stereo HQ. Lots of work getting done, restoring my yard after a brutal winter (the joys of a house), replanting, re-sodding, cleaning beds, pest control. Fun times indeed.

All that work has left me in a bit of a bind. I've got a TON of email and music to sort through so there are probably going to be a ton of posts between now and the end of the week, including a Ten Tracks You Need multi-part post.

So lets get sorted shall we... Check out new Windsor for the Derby!

In a day and age when many a band must carefully plot an air of mystery around themselves, it is with much grace that Philadelphia-Austin sonic craftsmen Windsor for the Derby have maintained their particular cult mystique over eight albums of subtle, biting and exploratory post-rock. We're proud to announce the latest from WFTD, Against Love, arriving June 22 on Secretly Canadian (June 21 in the UK).

In a world of “slow” movements that rail against mindless consumption, rock survivalists Windsor for the Derby represent “slow” music. For their latest outing, they began with a set of seemingly infinite drones and loops inspired by their early beginnings as a band. As those recordings were passed back and forth, the sounds were further sculpted by Dan Matz and Jason McNeely into their own leftfield brand of pop song. This became Against Love.

While they experimented with more formalized rock structures on their past few albums, Against Love finds the balance between experimentation and rock tradition more heavily skewed toward the former. The songs are filled with tried & true conventions. Nowhere on Against Love is this better displayed than within the psych-pop anthem "Queen of the Sun," full of warm feedback and synth built around a patient acoustic guitar strum.

Lyrically the songs are about how the modern world is changing the human condition, how we decide to land when the floor is pulled out from under us, and how hope is born from loss. The songs were shaped over months in backstage rooms, hotels, vans, and wherever else Matz and McNeely found time during WFTD’s European and American tours of the past two years. Tracks were finalized in Matz’s haunted Hope Union Studio, where disengaged clock chimes, spectral taps, and mysterious footsteps are a constant cause for another take; some left in the mix.

Download: Queen of the Sun

Acid Pauli Returns

Back in February, I posted a couple of tracks by Acid Pauli. If you remember Acid Pauli is better known as Console in the ever popular Notwist. He's a musician on a rampage and can't be stopped. Following several releases through 2009 (Marvin on Compost, Smaul 06 & Smaul 07) plus releases earlier in the year including Riverboat Tour. Now, he's at it again by providing us with summery tunes that are psychedelic and deeply thrilling.

His reputation continues to develop with his atmospheric tracks that are from another world. Throw in some strange influences to that ambiance and you have a guy that produces tracks that are out there and far more melodic than your average minimal techno track.

See for yourselves...

Download: Den Mahlstrom Rauf