LCD Soundsystem: “Bye Bye Bayou” (Alan Vega cover)
LCD Soundsystem has made many homages to Suicide (the musical act, not the Swedish pastime), frequently appropriating the New York  duo’s spooky sense of pulse. So, it’s nice to hear James Murphy cover a tune from Suicide singer Alan Vega’s 1980 solo debut. Murphy flattens out the original’s bluesy shuffle but does a pretty impressive job of capturing Vega’s beatnik-Elvis-impersonator singing style.

Julian Casablancas: “River of Brakelights”
Remember how the Strokes were going to save classic rock? That was a misinterpretation. On “River of Brakelights,” the second song to leak from his forthcoming solo debut Phrazes for the Young, Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas reveals that he actually wanted to save classical rock. Powdered wigs and fugal pretensions aside, baroque counterpoint hasn’t had such a solid chance of cracking the Top 10 since Falco walked the Earth.

Slava: “Dreaming Tiger”
The Chicago/Brooklyn-based production team honors the glory days of Brian Eno and David Byrne’s creative union by pairing lush synths and house percussion with mantra-like vocal samples. “Dreaming Tiger” could have fit nicely on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and not just because the title sounds like it was lifted from postcolonial literature.

Big Boi featuring Gucci Mane: “Shine Blockas”
If Big Boi’s endlessly delayed Sir Luscious Left Foot ever lands in stores, there won’t be any surprises left (maybe a few skits?). But if it’s any consolation to Def Jam, “Shine Blockas,” the umpteenth awesome track to leak from the Outkast rapper’s solo record, should garner multiplatinum YouTube views.

Over the last 15 years, Kansas House, a tiny four-bedroom home in Arlington, has seen members of bands that recorded for almost every D.C. record label—Dischord, Teenbeat, Slowdime, Simple Machines—crash on its floors, perform in its living room, or be thoroughly revolted by its rat-infested basement.

Kansas House is not a club. Shows happen there once or twice a month. But the experience of seeing a show at Kansas House is different. At the Black Cat, for instance, you buy a ticket and see a band. But anyone who’s crammed into Kansas House’s tiny living room to watch Black Eyes, Q and Not U, or Trans Am could be forgiven for feeling  like they were part of a movement.

You can still feel that way, at least for a few more months. On Dec. 1, Kansas House’s epic run will finally come to an end. The building is in the process of being sold to an Arlington development firm. Eventually, the house will be demolished to make way for mixed-use development.

Read More “I Think We’re Not in Kansas House Anymore” »

Pressing a record is a pain in the ass. Really, it is. You have to record the music, get the tracks mastered, press the records themselves, have them shipped from the pressing plant and so on and so forth.

So after taking the better part of a year just to get the music part right, it’s understandable that True Womanhood might want to forgo the pains of creating a physical product. Especially when there are quicker, more efficient ways to get the music out there. The moody D.C.-based band leaked two new studio tracks around the internet yesterday–posting a yousendit link on facebook and passing the songs around to interested parties via e-mail.

The two songs–”Magic Child” and “Dignitas”–were recorded by the band in three studios over the course of seven months. “Most of it was recorded [in Brooklyn] at Death By Audio, some of it was recorded in D.C. at our houses, and the vocals were recorded in Baltimore, with J Robbins,” explains guitarist/vocalist Thomas Redmond. “The last time we recorded [for a demo CD, sold at shows throughout '08] we did it in my living room. We used really shitty equipment. We bought the cheapest–literally the cheapest– mics we could get on Musician’s Friend, set them up haphazardly, and made due. So this time it took a while to figure out what was the right sound.”

Download link after the jump:
Read More “True Womanhood Leak Digital 7″” »

Sometimes, when you’re bogged down in the day-to-day grind of terrestrial life, sipping a Starbucks coffee and idling in traffic, it’s easy to forget that we’re all just standing on a tiny fleck of rock floating aimlessly through an incomprehensibly vast cosmic void.

Which is why it’s good to keep a few Om records around. When it comes to invoking thoughts of the infinite, the California-based bass-and-drums duo is second only to Carl Sagan.

In part, this is because Om’s songs are really long. At 19-minutes, “Thebes,” which opens the band’s just released third LP, God is Good, is so epic that it to puts most takes of “Dark Star” to shame. But some credit should also be given to bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros—stoner-rock’s answer to Alice Coltrane. His devotional chanting and endlessly unspooling low-end elevate Om’s music beyond the realm of mere fuzzy-headed riffage and into the realm of sensual, spiritual thinking.

Om w/ Six Organs of Admittance, Lichens
@ DC9
1940 9th Street, NW
9 p.m. $14

No, not together, although that would be kind of funny.

The Points—pictured here, covered in beer and spit—recently posted five new demos on their MySpace page. Three chords used to be all The Points could handle, but these scuzzy, blown out recordings prove that the band’s aesthetic has evolved a little bit over the last year. “Now I Want It” has at least six chords.

Also, The Points are playing Friday, Oct. 16th.
@ Quarry House Tavern

Is Antelope broken up? Hard to say for certain. It’s been a minute since the band’s full length LP, Reflector, came out and they haven’t performed a show in almost a year. Then again, Antelope (which includes City Paper contributor Justin Moyer) has never really been in a hurry. Reflector came out two years after the band’s last 7″ single. Not exactly a hot-on-the-heels-type situation.

Whatever the status of Antelope may be, singer/guitarist/drummer Bee Elvy has been keeping busy. He recently posted some new material to his Website. Three video clips find him chanting over some house music-inspired synth bleeps.

Charlotte Gainsbourg: “IRM”
Having exhausted pop music’s reserve of rakish Euros—Jarvis Cocker, Air, Neil Hannon—on her last record, 5:55, Charlotte Gainsbourg has hopped over the pond and tapped Beck to produce her new one, IRM. Unsurprisingly, it’s weirder than her last. At least the title track—a Silver Apples-cribbing 2 minutes of metallic bonging and electronic squiggles—suggests that’s the case. “Leave my head to magnetize/ Tell me where the trouble lies,” she sings.

Michael Jackson: “This Is It”
The title track from Michael Jackson’s upcoming concert film, This Is It, basically gives fans what they wanted most of all: the Jackson of 20 years ago. Rumored to be a demo recorded during the sessions for either Off The Wall or Dangerous, the song has been posthumously polished a la “Free As A Bird”—adding syrupy strings, and maybe even a few extra Jackson bros to make it fully closing-credits-worthy.

On Fillmore: “Master Moon”
Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and Dazzling Killmen bassist Darin Gray—working together under the name On Fillmore—conjure up the ghosts of Martin Denny and Les Baxter on this exotica-tinged tune from the duo’s upcoming record, Extended Vacation. If Disneyland is looking for a fresh tune to blast through the Haunted Mansion’s PA, they may want to consider licensing this.

Lightning Bolt: “Flooded Chamber”
Lightning Bolt’s upcoming record Earthly Delights will be the duo’s first new release in four years. What have they been up to in the interim? “Flooded Chamber,” a track leaked from the album, suggests that drummer Brian Gibson and bassist Brian Chippendale were actually cryogenically frozen for most of that time, along with their zeal for repetition, blast beats, and distorted howls. In other words, not a lot has changed.

For more than a decade Kansas House has been on of the D.C. area’s most beloved D.I.Y. show spaces, hosting performances by bands like The Rapture, Q and Not U, Black Eyes, Love of Diagrams, Dismemberment Plan, and Golden, to name just a few. But in just 60 days the tiny corner house, located on 900 N Kansas St. in Arlington, will go silent forever.

“My house (Kansas House) just got sold and will eventually be destroyed,” wrote Collin Crowe, a tenant and a member of the band Buildings, in an e-mail announcing the end of the house’s existence. “We got a 60 days heads-up that we gotta move out by December 1.”

The property is reportedly in the process of being sold to a Virginia based development company.

Sampling the thought streams of D.C. musicians past and present.

The Jet Age:

-Our brand new album, “in ‘Love’”, is out on October 27! Keep your eyes peeled for ordering info and tour dates!: http://bit.ly/CeTKL

-Surprisingly underwhelmed by the new Revolver remaster. :( -E

Sockets:

-Vintage episodes of American Gladiator just aren’t doing it for me right now.

-New Sockets column FORGOTTEN VINYL. First download is a posi disco raga by Charanjit Singh! http://bit.ly/2MKvoQ

Edie Sedgwick:

-Speedy Gonzales on the phone…trying to get me a licensing deal. Gonna need a big advance if I’m gonna sign with a stereotype…

-Hanging with Rodney Dangerfield and Trotsky tonight. Trotsky really pissed that Dangerfield called Marx’s dialectical materialism “a farce.”

Travis Morrison:

-http://bit.ly/oj8Tr AND http://bit.ly/ZFB1v. Weird day for a Washingtonian.

-my bus driver hit a squirrel today and mumbled at it for the rest of the ride. You can’t just jump out in the road like that.

This morning, I broke the news that Jawbox would be reuniting on a late-night TV show to be named later. It got named! This all set off a flurry of Tweets and blog posts: who knew so many people were pining for mid-’90s posthardcore? “This is all rather funny, isn’t it?” Jawbox singer-guitarist J. Robbins wrote in an e-mail today. “We’ve been kicking the reunion idea around for a while, not particularly seriously, since we decided to do the ‘Sweetheart’ reissue,” he wrote.  “When the Fallon opportunity came up, I think everyone looked at it this way:
1. it can be sort of a “diet reunion” – any time we’ve discussed playing again, we all agree that we’d want to be as good a band as we were 12 years ago. But 12 years ago, we could afford total immersion: we all lived together, rehearsed 3 times a week for 4 hours at a stretch and toured 6 – 8 months out of the year. It’s much easier to imagine doing justice to one song for one day than it is to imagine pulling off a full set and tour, particularly with [drummer] Zach [Barocas] being in NY and with the family and work commitments that we have. Maybe this will adequately scratch the reunion itch for those of us who are feeling it.
2. it’s such a weird idea, such an unlikely opportunity, why wouldn’t we do it?”

As to a reunion beyond the confines of late-night television, Robbins wrote: “I don’t think that doing the Jimmy Fallon show would really be a likely catalyst for that sort of thing. Or would it? I think we are all just playing this by ear and we’ll see how much fun we have. But it’s still unlikely given our number one condition, which is not to suck if we got onto a real stage in a room with people who give a shit about seeing us play. I think we’re all a bit taken aback that anyone is paying attention.”

A few days before all this, I spoke with Robbins about the upcoming reissue of For Your Own Special Sweetheart, Jawbox’s 1994 major-label debut.

Read More “Jawbox’s J. Robbins on the For Your Own Special Sweetheart Reissue” »

Jawbox hasn’t played a show in years, but there’s a chance you’ll be able to catch the band in action soon. Well, so long as you can stay up late enough.

Sources close to the band say that Jawbox will reunite on a late-night TV show to coincide with the reissue of the band’s third and finest LP, For Your Own Special Sweetheart. This is not a prelude to a tour, the same people say. I spoke to J Robbins last week, and he didn’t mention anything about this, but he did admit that a few one-off shows weren’t totally outside the realm of possibility. “We’ve entertained the notion of playing some shows, but that’s as far as its gotten,” said Robbins. “It’s conceivable, but only remotely, that we could play some shows.”

But playing on somebody else’s show? Looks like that’s a little more of a possibility.

Update: According to Billboard, Jawbox will appear Dec. 8 on NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.”

“Savory” video after the jump:

Read More “Jawbox to Reunite on Late Night TV?” »