The new Beach House album, Teen Dream, out on Jan. 26.

Local electro-retro-futurist Outputmessage dropped a four-song single yesterday, the third and final one leading to his upcoming album. You can pay what you want for it over at his bandcamp page, or stream it:

Teen Dream, the upcoming Sub Pop debut of the dreamy Baltimore duo Beach House, has leaked, and Gorilla vs. Bear has an mp3 of one of its songs, “Norway.” It’s less minimal, and a bit poppier, than the group’s usual fare, but just as gauzy and hypnotic. Not just one blog has described this as “gorgeous.” Right on.

Read More “More New, Free Music: Beach House, Outputmessage, and More” »

The former opinion comes straight from the RIAA, the latter is mine.

In a piece that we published today, I interviewed executives from Sub Pop, Definitive Jux, and Nasty Little Man, and music writers Jessica Hopper and Douglas Wolk about the state of music reviewing and copyright protections.

If you’ve never reviewed a copyright-protected promo, imagine the restrictions of DRM and then some: interruptions on every track during which a voice says, “This is a promotional copy”; poorly designed desktop media players; blood pacts.

Turns out labels know damn good and well that these sorts of restrictions interfere with the review process. And that made me wonder if labels are less concerned with pre-release coverage than they used to be.

The answer is yes and no. For an explanation, read Watermarks Break My Heart: Journalists hate them; labels love them. Why copyright protections aren’t going away.

Last month, mid-90s emo rockers Sunny Day Real Estate announced a reunion tour in support of their first two albums LP2 and Diary, both of which are being reissued by Sub Pop in September. (More on those special reissues at the band’s new official site.) The good news for Midatlantic emo junkies is that the tour will include a September 30 show at the 9:30 Club (buy tickets here).

New to Sunny Day Real Estate? Try “In Circles” (video below) off Diary. And for the latest from SDRE lead eccentric singer Jeremy Enigk, listen to “Mind Idea,” which Stereogum released in March. 

Fleet Foxes, they of the empyreal harmonies, are in high demand these days. The band’s self-titled debut LP, released a year ago, quickly earned a spot on the contemporary folk syllabus. Frontman Robin Pecknold, a social recluse whose lyrical incantations seem to echo along the slopes of some far-off mountain range, has managed to hook into a sound that Brian Wilson might have discovered if Brian Wilson were a hermitic goatherd. Actually, Pecknold comes from the wealthy Seattle suburb of Kirkland–but he’s spent plenty of time in the mountains, and used to be way into Lord of the Rings. His songs bear a sort of mythical seal, dealing with wanderers and wildernesses and grounded by an extraordinary reverence for kinship.

Lucky us: The capital has been selected as one of the 10 cities in North America Fleet Foxes will hit on their summer tour, Sub Pop announced yesterday. They’ll be playing at the 9:30 Club on Wednesday, July 29. Tickets for the show go on pre-sale at 10 a.m. tomorrow. In advance of the tour, the label today released the song “Mykonos,” off the band’s 2008 EP Sun Giant, as a single. It is a gorgeous song, all long shadows and ghostly harmonies singing of solitude and struggle. Pecknold’s brother Sean, whom the song is rumored to have been written for, directed the exceptionally groovy music video.

FLEET FOXES NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES, SUMMER 2009:

Read More “Fleet Foxes: D.C. Makes Summer Tour Cut” »

If Tim Rutili’s doesn’t have the most harmonious singing voice, but it’s certainly one of the most distinctive, or just the flat-out weirderst. On his records with Califone and the long defunct Red Red Meat his words are always slurred, as if he’s somehow singing them backwards and forwards at the same time. I had assumed that some degree of studio trickery was involved in producing this effect–maybe running the tapes in reverse and then patching the mix through a worn out catchers mitt?–, but no, apparently it’s all natural.

When Red Red Meat reunited last night to perform at Subpop’s SXSW showcase all Rutili had to do to get that strange, nasal, warble was to simply push air through his lungs. Anything else that’s involved remains a mystery. That voice really drives the music, though. Without him Red Red Meat’s rusty, lo-fi, folk-rock might just sound like pretty-ok grunge.

More, plus photos below
Read More “Red Red Meat/Obits @ SXSW” »

Four full-length records in about four years … don’t America’s indie rockers have TVs anymore?

But it’s clear that Oxford Collapse are having too much fun not to be churning out their raucous, sing-along pop tunes on automatic. The Brooklyn-based art pop trio are best known for keeping alive the poignant embers of guitar-driven ’80s college rock and “jangular” pop.

Oxford Collapse’s forthcoming album, Bits, is a departure from the trio’s past efforts. In Sub Pop-inspired PR poetry, the band’s previous work “reflected an almost preternatural awareness of the ['80s college-rock mindset] and was/is excitable and bounding against prison walls of their own device.” Um. Well that’s a charming way of saying that the new record sees the the band loosening up the creative process, overthinking things less and writing songs with greater urgency and compulsion.

In fact the band had 30 songs worth of material going into the studio for this record, forcing some spillage of the surplus exuberance onto two separate vinyl releases (the Spike of Bensonhurst 7-inch on Flameshovel Records and the Hann-Byrd 12-inch on Comedy Minus One).

If that doesn’t tide you over until Aug. 5, when Bits is released, then go see their joyous, blistering live show this Saturday, Aug. 2 at Black Cat, alongside We Are Scientists and Frightened Rabbit. Expect to be entreated with soaring melodies, frenetic guitars, and some of the noisiest heartfelt songs you’ve heard in a long time.

Here is Oxford Collapse’s video for “The Birthday Wars,” a track off of Bits: