na: harvey milk, bishop allen
Today’s new arrivals, pumped full of AllMusic Guide review chemicals and, mostly, scrubbed free of 17Dots-enhanced commentary. Lazy, you say? You betcha.
Harvey Milk – My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be
So, is this the best AMG review you’ve ever seen?
This is a bit of a weird one. Ex-Sugar bassist David Barbe and his Buzz Hungry mate Brooks Carter recorded this (the real Harvey Milk was murdered many years ago), but it’s hard to say just what this is. Thick, slow, drunken blasts of grunge kind of come and go without much form or structure, and occasionally a moaning voice — like the ghost of Marley haunting Scrooge — kind of rumbles and belches its way in the background. I repeat, what is this?
Anyway, if you’re going to download one track today and you like Mogwai + Holst + bad karaoke as much as me please please please make it “The Anvil Will Fall.” Trust me.
Pixies – Surfer Rosa (Remastered)
Little known college rock band sounds a bit brighter due to a remastering job. If you haven’t listened to these guys before, it’s always a good time to get familiar. For those who are familiar, I’d say this is probably unnecessary.
Camp Lo – Black Hollywood
A colleague from Stylus said that it “reminds me a little of Fishscale if cocaine was switched with diamond heists.” He may be talking it up a bit because it’s one of his favorite rap groups of all time, but I’ve been impressed on my first two listens.
Bishop Allen – The Broken String
AllMusic says:
The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Boston quartet undertook an ambitious one-EP-a-month project in 2006, self-releasing a staggering 58 songs over that time….The Broken String ups the ante considerably, reworking ten songs from the EP cycle and two new cuts into lustrous indie pop notable for its versatility, clever lyrics, and offbeat instrumentation.
Alamo Race Track – Black Cat John Brown
AllMusic says:
You may not understand what Ralph Mulder and company are making a minor racket about when they launch into a song like “Lee J. Cobb Is Screaming A Lot,” but you will feel the energy they’ve derived as students of 80s new wave, mainstream rock and pop. Comparisons to The Strokes and Radiohead are swirling, but don’t believe them. ART is more like an edgy, sometimes slap-happy Peter, Bjorn & John.
So what happened with Drag City?
hey mike: total bummer, right. here’s what yancey said on the emu message board earlier today:
Hey everyone. Yeah, I’m sorry to say that it’s true. All of Drag City’s content has been pulled from the site. Obviously, like you, we love their music and are saddened by their decision. We hope to get them back at some point, but that’s entirely up to them. Feel free to let them know how you feel. Fortunately there are still 11081092380928390 other great records to download, but it is a drag that Drag City’s catalogue is no longer among them.
Is there any way the community could get warning if a label was going to leave? That would probably cause a jump in their downloads, which might make them reconsider. Content gets pulled away as if it’s a spur of the moment thing, when (I am guessing) it most certainly isn’t.
To put it another way, wouldn’t everyone (Emu, users, and the label) be happier if there were an announcement that it was a label’s last month on Emu?
Emphatic YES!! The label would see a spike in revenues as well as eMusic — you know there would be a LOT of booster pack purchases (even at the newer, higher prices) to grab up stuff that’s been stashed. And we users would happy to spend the money to get what we can, while we can.
You guys could totally leak it to us here on the blog. Make us work for it too – give it to us in riddle format. We’re smart folks, we’d figure it out. Pretty please? *blink* *blink*
HARVEY MILK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My favorite band EVER now has ALL of their albums available in print at the same time for the FIRST TIME EVER!!!!!! Yes yes yes. Even “The Pleaser”, their WTF homage to ZZ Top!!! HELL YES!!!!!!
(also, yeah, there was a masaki batoh and a royal trux record just waiting to be downloaded, and now… nothing. sad.)
sorry guys, as you might imagine that’s all i can really say about the matter. rest assured, we want to do the best we can by our customers and our labels. as yancey says, the best thing that you can do is contact labels that have left us and register your sadness.
Bishop Allen. Yay.
I hope that they release their first album, “Charm School” on Emusic as well.
Also, LOL at: “Little known college rock band sounds a bit brighter due to a remastering job. If you haven’t listened to these guys before, it’s always a good time to get familiar….”