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13 Mar 2010 14:00

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Music: Saturday Mixtape: Is Titus Andronicus the best of 2010 so far?

  • 1. It’s big, it’s messy, and it’s not really about the Civil War. But man, is it a lot of fun. “Four Score and Seven,” an eight minute track off Titus Andron­i­cus’ excel­lent sec­ond album, “The Mon­i­tor,” has a lot of every­thing, but doesn’t feel like a dirge. That says a lot.
  • 2. It’s pretty awe­some to see Lou Reed used this well this late in his career. This Goril­laz tune, “Some Kind of Nature,” is one of the Vel­vet Under­ground singer’s best per­for­mances – guest or oth­er­wise – in years. It’s a credit to Damon Albarn that he fits in so well.
  • 3. Man, we missed Ted Leo. Leo isn’t at the height of his “Bal­lad of the Sin Eater” pow­ers, but he feels a lot closer to that point on “Even Heroes Have to Die” than he has in a while.
  • 4. And now for some­thing dif­fer­ent. We stum­bled upon Ger­man pianist Nils Frahm ear­lier this week, and while his neo-classical solo piano impro­vi­sa­tions aren’t exactly the kind of thing that will burn up the charts, they’re always interesting.
  • 5. Both James Mer­cer and Dan­ger Mouse sounded like they were in dire need of a side project, and Bro­ken Bells has proven to be the exact tone both were look­ing for. “The Mall & Mis­ery” has a lit­tle of every­thing in mod­est serv­ings – pretty pen­sive synths, calm­ing strings, a lit­tle slide gui­tar, a lit­tle more surf gui­tar, and a few riffs that cut through the mid­dle like a New Order song. It’s full of ideas, but none that scream at you.
Posted by Ernie Smith • View Comments • Permalink


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13 Mar 2010 11:42

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Tech: A hat tip to our friends at Apture, and their latest upgrade

  • As might be clear to the peo­ple who reg­u­larly use Short­Form­Blog, we’re big fans of the Apture con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion tech­nol­ogy, and we’ve actu­ally been test­ing out the newest ver­sion on the site for months. How­ever, and this is big news, they’ve launched a pub­lic beta, with some significant(ly awe­some) changes. You might notice that the bar on the bot­tom of the site has been replaced with a branded pop-up bar on the top with really cool social func­tions at your fin­ger­tips. They’re really excited about it (and have some awe­some ideas about con­text), and so are we.
  • » Want to see some­thing cool? Select this text: “Elvis bananas.” Then hit Control-C/Command-C to copy it. You should see some­thing really awe­some hap­pen. Just sayin’. source
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28 Jan 2010 11:48

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About, U.S.: Our plans for world domination, State of the Union editon

  • Over the last few weeks, we’ve been hang­ing out with AOL News/Sphere. Cool guys. Any­way, this morn­ing we posted a break­down of the State of the Union. We’ll be work­ing on more stuff like this in the future – we’ll keep you posted. Thanks for tak­ing a stray kit­ten in, guys. source
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23 Jan 2010 23:57

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Music: Saturday Mixtape: Are the sad-sap Eels not made for these times?

  • 1. Most bands who aren’t Spoon would take a mainstream-rock-touching vic­tory lap like 2007’s “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga” and push even fur­ther towards suc­cess. But Spoon is Spoon, and Spoon makes songs like “The Mys­tery Zone” (and albums like the freak­ing awe­some “Trans­fer­ence”) which are chal­leng­ing (and avoid verse/chorus/verse bore­dom) but by no means inac­ces­si­ble. And that’s why Spoon rules.
  • 2. Pitch­fork hated the lat­est Eels album, and we think we know why. The level of direct­ness Mark Oliver Everett touches upon in the songs on “End Times,” espe­cially “In My Younger Days,” is super-high. It ditches the wry humor and straight up goes for the sad sap music. And at 46, the dude’s quickly look­ing like an elder states­man of the sad sap set. Through­out the late ‘90s, music this direct dom­i­nated indie rock (see Elliott Smith, Sparkle­horse, and well, Eels). And nowa­days, it feels out of place. In our opin­ion, though, that’s why we like it. Even if Pitch­fork hates it.
  • 3. Speak­ing of sad sap music, alt-country guy Ryan Bing­ham is gun­ning for Ryan Adams’ man­tle and might just win it, thanks to “Crazy Heart.” Bing­ham – who’s halfway between Adams and Bruce Spring­steen – wrote the movie’s theme song, “The Weary Kind,” which is des­tined to get nom­i­nated for an Oscar thanks to the long­stand­ing buzz the movie has.
  • 4. With a fre­netic attack rem­i­nis­cent of Dan Dea­con (with way more gui­tars thrown in for good mea­sure), Fang Island’s “Daisy” is the kind of everywhere-at-once tune we can get behind on its good looks alone. It makes us look for­ward to their full album, out next month.
  • 5. Are The Avett Broth­ers as pow­er­ful when it’s just Avett Brother? Seth Avett released a hand­ful of albums as Tim­o­thy Seth Avett As Dar­ling back in the day, and the band’s old label, Ram­seur, re-released them late last year. “Some Bad Dream” shows where The Avett Broth­ers were headed even if it wasn’t all the way there.
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01 Jan 2010 11:12

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About: ShortFormBlog turns one! Anybody want some cake or something?

  • Julius can now eat solid food! Today, Short­Form­Blog cel­e­brates its first birth­day, and boy are we excited. A lot has hap­pened in the last year, and boy, we’d love to tell you about it. Our crazy idea of mak­ing a blog focused on num­bers, quotes and other short stuff has been noth­ing if a lot of sta­tis­tics. So here’s a few:
  • 6,098 posts, including this one have been put on the site in the last year
  • 268k people have found their way onto the SFB site in the last year; neat
  • this is our most popular post of all time. People love Transformers, kids!
  • So, what’s next? Well, we’re gonna keep doing what we do best. Blog­ging and keep­ing you jerks informed. After a year of doing this, we’ve got­ten pretty good, and are always try­ing new things. That’s our plan for 2010.
  • Any ideas? As you might know, we’re totally open to cool ideas, so send us some! We’re all ears, espe­cially if the ideas are good and can extend our mis­sion of giv­ing the news in as short of a space as pos­si­ble. source
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26 Dec 2009 17:02

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Music: Saturday Mixtape: The best singles of 2009, in no particular order

  • Lots of great sin­gles came out this year – pieces of mem­o­rable mind candy wor­thy of (more than) a few min­utes of your time. Here are a few of our faves.
  • one Instant eupho­ria, in just a few words. What else could you want?
  • two Croc­o­diles hit our Jesus & Mary Chain soft spot; they get in easily.
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19 Dec 2009 14:17

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About: ShortFormBlog is stuck in its apartment. Julius is getting cabin fever.

  • We’re not going out today. We had a few things we wanted to knock off our Christ­mas list, but there’s no way Julius will be able to get out of this mess with­out being super-rusted. So we’re giv­ing up like the pathetic beasts of blog­ging that we are. We’ll be blog­ging next to an open fire cre­ated by bro­ken dreams.
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friendly nudge: 051 – my phone interview, part 2

From I Heart Recession

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12 Dec 2009 17:14

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Music: Near the end: Our Saturday Mixtape decade roundup hits 2008

  • 1. “What’s gonna hap­pen to you?” As we noted in last week’s mix­tape, Plants and Ani­mals was going to be a part of our 2008 list, too. And “Bye Bye Bye” may only be the sec­ond best song with that title, it’s cer­tainly a  close second.
  • 2. Cut Copy’s attempt to syn­the­size New Order into some­thing fresh and new worked sur­pris­ingly well for 2008. The record, “In Ghost Colours,” got a lit­tle beat heavy, but when they mixed the beats with pure pop, like on “Feel The Love,” it worked bet­ter than good.
  • 3. It’s funny how dif­fer­ent you feel about an album after a year. A year ago, we felt like Titus Andron­i­cus’ “The Air­ing of Griev­ances” was a great album, sure, but not one of the best of the year. But we kept find­ing our­selves com­ing back to it – repeat­edly. Ragged but by no means dull, these Jer­seyites bring pas­sion to every chord they touch, espe­cially on “Titus Andron­i­cus” (the song).
  • 4. Fel­low Jer­seyites The Gaslight Anthem also brought pathos with them on “The 59 Sound,” but they brought it with a lit­tle more punk and a lot more Bruce. The Killers’ attempts at Bru­ceisms were mis­guided, but they also paved the way for Gaslight’s suc­cess, so we’ll give them a break.
  • 5. We were really torn about putting Atlas Sound over Deer­hunter in this spot. Ulti­mately, Deer­hunter won. It’s because Brad­ford Cox’s full band has amaz­ing sin­gles even if their full records don’t hold together as well as his side project. At least that’s our take on the world of Brad­ford Cox. Any­way, “Noth­ing Ever Hap­pened” is sim­ply sick.
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05 Dec 2009 20:54

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Music: Our Saturday Mixtape wants to live in Montreal or something

  • 1. This song has been embed­ded in our brains for approx­i­mately two weeks. Montreal’s Think About Life, who come out on paper as a com­bi­na­tion of TV on the Radio and Chromeo, is some­what hit-and-miss, but when they hit, as on “Havin’ My Baby,” it’s a sugar rush you can’t ignore.
  • 2. Land of Talk – a fel­low Mon­treal band fronted by Eliz­a­beth Pow­ell who comes off as a gui­tar super­hero live – mixes the low-key and the guitar-smashers deftly. The cen­ter­piece of their new “Fun and Laugh­ter” EP, “May You Never” mixes calm and chaos (and the gift of hazy atmos­phere) into a tasty stew.
  • 3. Dis­clo­sure: Plants and Ani­mals will be in the mix­tape two weeks in a row, because their 2008 album “Parc Avenue” is that good. “A L’Oree Des Bois” has this way of start­ing out loose and then expand­ing slowly.
  • 4. There’s a few obvi­ous picks that can go on this list: Arcade Fire, Bro­ken Social Scene, Wolf Parade, and so on. Hand­some Furs are sort of on the cusp of that, but we admit­tedly like Dan Boeckner’s non-Wolf Parade band a lit­tle more than the main act, espe­cially on “All We Want, Baby, Is Every­thing,” which man­ages to come across as unpre­ten­tious dance-rock. At least it’s less pre­ten­tious than Toronto’s Crys­tal Castles.
  • 5. The Lovely Feath­ers have a lit­tle of the Arcade Fire ris­ing huge­ness going on with “Low­iza,” but what’s really inter­est­ing is that the cho­rus sort of breaks into a group oy-style endeavor. It’s like they’re the Drop­kick Mur­phys doing “Neigh­bor­hood #1.” (Well, kinda.) It’s pretty awe­some to hear, actually.
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21 Nov 2009 18:47

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Music: Our Saturday Mixtape looks back at rock history’s greatest badasses

  • 1. Lou Reed is a badass because he man­aged to make a song like “Pale Blue Eyes” – an exer­cise in emo­tional nudity which few artists of his stature are will­ing to try – seem brave, not pan­sy­ish. It worked to strong effect in this year’s “Adven­ture­land,” by the way.
  • 2. Marc Bolan is a badass because he lived fast, died young, and still man­aged to have a career full of badass moves. From his start as an off-kilter folkie (Tyran­nosaurus Rex) to his peak as a glam god (T. Rex) who directly inspired the pre­vi­ous badass, his badass­ness set a pretty high bar.
  • 3. Paul West­er­berg is a badass because he never gave into the main­stream when he was cre­at­ing his great­est work. “Bas­tards of Young” is per­haps The Replace­ments’ catchi­est tune, but instead of actively try­ing to push it on MTV, they made this video to go with it. That’s badass.
  • 4. Josh Homme is a badass because he released this song as a sin­gle. And then his band, Queens of the Stone Age, played it at a drug rehab cen­ter last year. It really is the feel-good hit of the sum­mer. Or any year, really.
  • 5. James Mur­phy is a badass because he knows how to get down even though he’s get­ting old. Really, we could’ve picked any song Mur­phy did as LCD Soundsys­tem over the last five years and nailed it as evi­dence. But “Daft Punk is Play­ing at My House” works as both a sneer­ing homage to Daft Punk and a homage to being a badass. So it wins. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • View Comments • Permalink


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