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8 posts tagged Spoon
After stumbling upon a Mother’s Day tribute post earlier today that featured an unsurprisingly great take on a Paul Simon tune by cover song pros The Morning Benders, it occurred to me that Simon’s oeuvre — a staple of my, and perhaps their, father’s record collection — has become a notable point of reference for a number of indie bands and solo artists of late. In the past couple years, The Tallest Man on Earth, Local Natives, Jens Lekman, Conor Oberst, Ezra Koenig, Spoon, and others have turned in reverent renditions of songs penned by “Jerry” of the famous duo once dubbed Tom and Jerry. Enjoy 9 standouts from the Rhymin’ Simon craze below:
In Other News
Video: Heavenly States (Ft. Spoon’s Britt Daniel) - “Berlin Wall”
Spoon frontman Britt Daniel has been raving about The Heavenly States’ LP Delayer for years, featuring the Oakland, California outfit’s 2008 effort on his best-of list that year and inviting the band to open for Spoon on a string of tour dates. Following one of their shared bills in San Francisco, singer Ted Nesseth invited Daniel to appear on the band’s next release, what would become their Oui Camera Oui EP, which was released this week. Daniel agreed, and now their excellent collaboration, a sparse folk tune that builds toward a sing-along-ready, foot-stomping finish called “Berlin Wall,” has arrived in the form of the new Kristoffer West Johnson-animated video above.
Spoon Share “The Mystery Zone” Demo
In addition to the release of this month’s Bonus Tracks 2008-2009 compilation, Spoon have kept up their monthly free MP3 tradition, posting December’s offering last Friday: an early acoustic take on Transference single “The Mystery Zone.” While most of the LP version’s melodies and lyrics remain intact here, the wonderful extended groove of the final product apparently hadn’t yet surfaced at this stage. Ultimately, I’m glad the tune took a new rhythmic direction, but it’s a real testament to Britt Daniel and friends’ well-honed songwriting/arrangement skills that their jams work so well unplugged and deconstructed. Stream it above (via Some Kind of Awesome) and download the MP3 on Spoon’s site.
For his forthcoming album of collaborative versions of Kinks classics, Ray Davies not only enlisted the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Alex Chilton, Billy Corgan, and other previously reported duet partners, but he flew out to Oslo, Norway, as well, to record “You Really Got Me” with Metallica. Odd pairing, indeed, but not exactly a surprise: Davies first teamed up with Metallica for a live performance in NYC last year, where he pitched the studio collaboration idea to the band backstage.
Also noteworthy is that the 14-track album, See My Friends, features Jackson Browne performing one of Davies’ most beloved songs, “Waterloo Sunset.” Stream very brief snippets here and check out the full tracklist below (via Hipsters United):
Back in February, Ray Davies revealed that duets with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Alex Chilton, and Lucinda Williams for a forthcoming album of reworked Kinks classics due sometime this year were already in the can. In addition to Springsteen’s version of “Better Things” and Bon Jovi’s “Celluloid Heroes,” however, Davies has recorded songs with what’s become an even more impressive list of collaborators for the forthcoming LP.
As Hipsters United points out, producer/drummer Kerry Brown revealed this week that Smashing Pumpkins mastermind Billy Corgan just recorded a version of 1981 Kinks hit “Destroyer” for the record. What’s more, an album update on Davies’ official site revealed: “Ray has recently recorded with Amy MacDonald, Paloma Faith, Mumford & Sons, Spoon and Frank Black.”
The to-be-announced collaborative album — which no longer includes a previously reported track by the Killers — is still on schedule for a 2010 release.
All signs are sadly pointing to this week being Conan O’Brien’s last as the host of the Tonight Show, but the Cone Bone is going out with a bang, at least, plotting farewell appearances by Barry Manilow, Tom Hanks, Will Ferrell, and a previously scheduled performance by Austin’s own Spoon on tonight’s episode.
It’s all uphill from Ke$ha, I suppose, but damn if Britt Daniel and company didn’t rock the f$ck out of Transference single “Written In Reverse” on CoCo’s Craigslisted Tonight Show set. (Plus, how ‘bout Max Weinberg’s Led Zeppelin cover licensing money grab FTW?! Better than stealing an unopened box of ballpoint Bics, I say.)
Watch Spoon on Conan here or below:
Here are a few of today’s bookmarked links of note…
- MGMT’s Andrew Vanwyngarden dropped a slew of deets on LP2 during a Q&A with Spin, including new song titles (“Lady Dada’s Nightmare”,”It’s Working”, etc.), influences (“The song is mostly about Ecstasy”), and more.
- Spoon put their 7th album, Transference, up on NPR’s site for free streaming, and unveiled a North American tour.
- Crumbler pointed us to Jet’s revenge for Pitchfork’s internet famous Shine On review. Not sure that “One Hipster One Bullet” will go over too well in the blogosphere.
- Flavorwire explored “The Weird Science of Billy Corgan.”
- Oh, and you heard about the free Dirty Projectors 7” right?
In case you haven’t heard, David Byrne takes his blogging very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that past entries to his official journal have taken on Czech Republic steel foundry/coal mine complexes, “The Kindle Experience,” and Bono. But in his latest rant/essay, Byrne goes a bit more apocalyptic. Check out “Internet Antichrist” here.
Whereas Fake Tom Waits joined Twitter in the early days, the real Tom Waits didn’t start tweeting until today. (It’s probably just an intern, but at least it’s an official ghost Twitterer or something.) Anti Records pointed their followers at the new page today with: “All the Wit and Wisdom of Tom Waits is now on Twitter! Follow @anti_tomwaits.”
So what’s he tweeting in there?