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Hmmm... this week's 10 CDs were grabbed at random, and we're off to a rocky start.

First up:
1 The Sharp Things "A Moveable Feast"
This is a large local chamber pop ensemble. They've been playing together since the mid-'90s, and it shows through in their musicianship and ability. But resembling as it does the more-stylized portion of Elvis Costello's output, I just never got into their stuff.

Then:
2 Matt Nathanson "Some Mad Hope"
3 Erika Jayne "Roller Coaster"
4 Test Your Reflex "The Burning Hour"

Just ... no.

5 Von Südenfed "Tromatic Reflexxions"

The Fall's Mark E. Smith teams up with producers Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner for some messed up punk rock-tronica. I'm not sure if I mean "messed up" in a good way or a bad way. I think I hate it. Judge for yourself here.

6 John Doe "A Year in the Wilderness"
The Aimee Mann collab on "Unforgiven" is nice. I love her.

7 Apostle of Hustle "National Anthem of Nowhere"
Praise Apollo. An album that doesn't make me want to smash my hard drive in the first five seconds of listening. AoH is one of the thousands of bands associated with Canadian juggernaut Broken Social Scene — for some reason, I really like the various satellite groups (Feist, Stars, Metric, etc,), but the allure of BSS itself has eluded me.
But, back to the Apostle. Album opener "My Sword Hand's Anger" manages to sound both tribal and techno, employing an intriguing mix of style. And the rest of the album is just as endearingly contradictory: laid-back intensity, smoothly hard-charging, rocking with brass section are just a few of the descriptors that apply.

8 Mogwai "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait"
Ok, I have to cheat a bit on this one. It's a soundtrack by the Scottish instrumental post-rock outfit for a French experimental film which consists of a full-length soccer game shot entirely from the perspective of head-butt machine Zinedine Zidane. It's a little difficult to make the "10 CD Snap Judgement" on this one. So, by reputation and expectation, I'm giving this one a thumbs up.
And but actually, I'm digging the album's chill noodling. It's music to think about, however, so I'm going to need some more time to digest.

9 Las Romanticas "America"
The album cover features a woman with water running all down her face (I think its rain, not tears), and the music therein sounds just like you'd expect from a record called "America" by a band called "Las Romanticas" featuring a soaking wet woman on the front cover. Folksy americana, just barely country western. Kind of Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, minus everything that makes Clyne so exciting and fun to listen to.

10 Charlotte Kendrick "North of New York"
Exactly what I'm not looking for from popular music: Extreme first-person confessionals with gag-worthy metaphors by a nice-sounding but ultimately bland girl-with-guitar who's a little bit country.
Sample lyric: "I've got good directions and there's no room for luggage in the backseat of my heart." This makes me want to stab teddy bears.

So 2.1 out of 10.

Bonus! Because this week was so bogus, here's a funky take on Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't (It's Over Now)."
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I can understand how people can hate hate hate Kanye West. He's arrogant and full of himself, and he's always got a grievance against someone who's done him wrong.

I love it, though. I am a firm believer in being your own cheerleader. Kanye does it with charm and style, and he has the freaking talent to back it all up.

Idolator has a few tracks from his latest complaint compilation. This time his target is the journo-entertainment complex. It's vintage Kanye.

On this track, he raps over Peter, Bjorn and John's "Young Folks," and, seriously, it's like the sonic equivalent of Lays potato chips — betcha can't listen just once. Wired pointed out a few months back that the whistle riff is actually the "asian riff," you know, that pentatonic tune they play in movies, that is most probably a western invention, to indicate an eastern orientation. But that meme is so ingrained in our culture, so it's really no wonder that the song is so catchy.

—eh, www.amNY.com

BV has photos from The Breastfeeders at Mercury Lounge.

A Montreal band singing in French, something about these guys reminds me of Stereo Total. Whatever. Upbeat rock in French with a slightly retro feel. It's good.

You can hear track by Les Breastfeeders (which, by the way, there's something wonderfully cheeky about that name) here.

— eh, www.anNY.com

Via gothamist:
The Knitting Factory has just announced that they're offering tickets for sale via text message. That's pretty neat.

—eh, www.amNY.com

My friend Adam tipped me off to this one (slightly NSFW, depending on where you W):

Simple beats with a breezy melodic sample under Avalon's droning raps, with a novelty somewhat lewd theme, make this song a candidate for song of the summer.

—eh, www.amNY.com

I was going through some old CDs last night, and I found a compilation I had made for a CD circle in August 2004.

I gave it a spin, and it held up ok. One or two of the songs I was over by September 2004, but some of them are to this day some of my faves. Wanna know what was on it? Of course you do:

01: "I Don't Do Drugs" DJ Danger Mouse and Jemini
Between the Grey Album and Gnarls Barkley, the mighty DM collaborated with rapper Jemini for the well-received, but comparatively small-beer "Ghetto Pop Life." It's a shame, because the album is hooky and clever.

02: "Sweet Virginia" Gomez
At the time, I was really into Gomez. We have since drifted apart, but there are no hard feelings.

03: "A Time for Emily" The Elected
All songs with my name in the title are automatic favorites. The Elected and I had a really intense start — I loved his (this is Blake Sennett of Rilo Kiley's side project) first album to bits, but he took a turn on the second one, and it was clear that we wanted different things.

04: "Can't You See I'm Soulful" Eleni Mandel

05: "Heaven" The Rapture

06: "Cheating on You" Franz Ferdinand
I'd like to say I was on the vanguard with this one, but Franz's killer debut album had already been out, like, six months at this point. Needless to say, we're still very good friends, I had trouble connecting with their follow up, but I am eager to see what they do next. They'll be at Bonnaroo this summer.

more after the jump...

I freaking love The Strokes. In an age dominated by pop princesses and flash-in-the-pan blogebrities, these five sullen New Yorkers are bona fide rock stars. Sadly, they've announced that they're taking the rest of 2007 off (although we still have my boy AH, who's coming back to Webster Hall June 18).

But the band's left us with something to remember them by: A brand new video by Warren Fu for "You Only Live Once."

Check it here.

The sci-fi theme is wonderfully unexpected from a band so cool. Fu, an art director at LucasFilm, creates a pitch-perfect homage to "2001: A Space Odyssey" complete with rotating obelisk. I love it.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Here's the new White Stripes video. That's all I've got for you today.

—eh, www.amNY.com

"That's not a banjo, that's a mandolin!"

The video for Paul McCartney's new single "Dance Tonight" was directed by eccentric auter Michel Gondry.

In a related note, 40 years ago June 1, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" hit record store shelves. Idolator has the snarky commentary. And true, boomers are very excited about their own selves (I went to a press preview for the Whitney's Summer of Love exhibition this morning, which drove home that point exquisitely), but there's no denying this concept album's place in music history. From 6th to 8th grades, "Sgt. Pepper" and "Help" were the only albums I listened to. Not the only Beatles albums, mind you, only albums period. I was a weird kid.

—eh, www.amNY.com

But chances are you probably haven't. Unless you read Malcom Gladwell's "Blink," in which he apparently discusses how the lack of a coherent marketing campaign is what sank Kenna's 2003 album "New Sacred Cow."

Kenna's playful synthy indie-tronica sound wasn't so far off from contemporaries in The Rapture and other disco-punk bands that did gain some sort of recognition, so it was sort of puzzling and disappointing that Kenna didn't take off. In fact, I sat in at a DJ class for a story a few months ago, and the DJ/teacher pulled up the song "Freetime" (video below). After illustrating his point to the class (I think he was showing how to match up beats when mixing between two songs), he made some throw-away comment to the owner/manager who was sitting in on the class with me to the effect of, "I've never heard this song before, but I like it."

I also must expose my own ignorance here: it wasn't until today that I realized that Kenna is American. I always just assumed, given the Eurotrash sound, that he was British or something. But he's actually the son of Ethiopean immigrants to Virginia Beach. You learn something new every day.

So, anyway, we all missed out on something special the first time around. Luckily, there's a second album coming down the pike. "Make Sure They See My Face" will be out on Interscope Records June 19. You can hear tracks from it on his MySpace, or if you attend his show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden on June 7 ... with Nelly Furtado.

This trip down memory lane comes via this post on a song of the summer. Someone in the comments suggests "Out of Control" as a contender. I myself am at a loss. Nothing I'm listening to is particularly summery. Oh, well. It'll come to me.

—eh, www.amNY.com

This is just some video that some guy did, but I really like this song. Apparently, from what I can tell from the scant research I did, it was used on "The O.C." — which now that it's no longer on the air, I'm thinking I should watch someday. I do love soapy teen dramas, and "Degrassi" just wrapped up its 7th (lackluster, I might say) season.

Anyway, back to the music, I first heard this song on an airplane, on one of those "hip contemporary" mixes. I do like listening to airplane-provided radio, if only for the challenge of finding something listenable during the flight. Well, this song was a pleasant surprise. I memorized the line: "right now, the sun is trying to kill the moon" for later googling, and was thus introduced to Joseph Arthur. The song is "Honey and the Moon," by the way.

This is all relevant because Arthur and his Lonely Astronauts are at Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night. He recently did an interview somewhere where he talked about naming The Lonely Astronauts (which is apparently the name of both his record label and backing band?), but I can't find it to link to it. Anyone know what it might have been? Bueller?

—eh, www.amNY.com

Idolator makes a good case against the blog-hype machine.

Stereogum has up an interview between Zach Galafinakis and Fiona Apple. It's heavy on the weird.

Pitchfork interviews Sir Paul McCartney. I don't often get starstruck, but I think I would have a hard time even forming words talking to McCartney.

Adult Swim goes indie and offers a CD full of music for free download. The TV on the Radio track is a tad disappointing, but the rest is pretty cool. Les Savy Fav's contribution kicks ass.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Sketch comedy group The Human Giant — featuring local comedians Paul Scheer, Aziz Ansari and Rob Huebel — recently took over the airwaves at MTV for a 24-hour marathon of, basically, whatever the heck they wanted. MTV has up the in-studio performances they hosted with the likes of Ted Leo and Albert Hammond Jr. Check it out.

I spoke with Paul Scheer when their sketch show debut on MTV a month or so ago, and one of the things we talked about that didn't make it into the article was the synergistic relationship between music and comedy these days.

Here's the lost Q&A:
Q: To come back to SXSW [The boys had just gotten back from SXSW], it seems like the past couple of years there's been this association between independent rock and, for lack of a better word, alternative comedy [it seems no one who practices what could be called this likes this term], would you say that's true?
A: I would totally agree with that, I feel like it's the same audience for the most part. We find out a lot of times that the musicians in those bands are huge comedy fans, we were hanging out with Death Cab for Cutie in Bumbershoot, and they had seen all of our stuff ... and not even our stuff, they knew everything about "Mr. Show," and just knew everything little cool thing, and you know I think the fans are the same way, I think the excitement of independent music is people finding things before other people do, and that's kind of the way the comedy scene is in New York right now, Upright Citizens Brigade has the same kind of music feel, it's black box theater, it's not a cheesy two drink minimum kind of standup place. It feels like you're gonna go see a show, or something.

—eh, www.amNY.com

So I've been hearing this song everywhere (partly because I made it my ring tone). I love it, but what kick-started my Gary Numan revival was a British show called "The Mighty Boosh". Vince Noir, one of the main characters, is obsessed with Numan and anything glam.

Check it: In this clip, zookeepers Vince and Howard debate musical tastes.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Silver Lung, "These Are Powers"; Lonely China Day, "Sorrow"; The Death of Jason Broady, EP; Fields "Everything Last Winter"; Au Revoir Simone, "The Bird of Music"; The Naked Brothers Band, "TNBB: Music From the Movie"; The Hero Cycle, "Lakes and Ponds"; Thee More Shallows, "Book of Bad Breaks"; Faber Drive, EP (This made me want to angst someone to death); Paul Rodgers, "Live in Glasgow" — ok, this last one I have heard of, and so have you.

This week I went back to the pseudo-random selection method of the first week. And I ended up with a bunch of bands that I have never heard of before in my life. An exciting prospect, but the jaded music critic in me was braced for 10 albums of unadulterated crap.

It wasn't that bad, but there weren't too many cuts that I'd revisit.

Fields is interesting. Dark and moody rock with a lot of interesting things going on in the melody. And there's a flute.
They just played Coachella and their album just came out May 8, so maybe if I was paying attention, I would have heard of them before. Anyway, they're streaming selected tracks on their website.

Thee More Shallows was an awesome surprise. At number eight, it had to grab me right away, or I was going to eject it 30 seconds in (as I did with Faber Drive). There's a lot of complexity to this album, and mixing of elements that you might not think would go together: some electronica noise over top of a straightforward rock score in a way that doesn't mesh, but totally works. And something about the singer's delivery reminds me of They Might Be Giants. I guess they're sonic kin to Bloc Party; there's a certain electrified paranoia that the two groups share. I don't know. But I like them.

They happen to be playing Luna Lounge May 26, Pianos May 28 and Maxwell's June 1.

And, lastly, that photo at the top of this entry? That's The Naked Brothers Band. They're from a kids show on Nickelodeon. The show is adorable; I watched it with my little cousins. It's about these two brothers who are in a band (no one gets naked, though) and all of their management and crew are also kids. It's kind of like "Bugsy Malone" if, instead of gangsters, the film was about the music business.
Anyway, the CD sounds like a CD made by two ten-year-olds. I'm never going to listen to it again, but it was cute to hear. One of their songs is called "Hardcore Wrestlers with Inner Feelings," which is pleasingly David Foster Wallacian.

—eh, www.amny.com

Last night, I caught this Brendan Benson song on a commercial for Sears.com: "What I'm Looking For". (The commercial itself is nothing special, so, unsurprisingly, there's no YouTube footage.)

Benson is allegedly huge in the U.K., but not so big over here, sadly, even though he is American. He achieved a little more recognition with The Raconteurs, but Jack White is the above-the-title name, there. Here's hoping Sears boosts his profile — although, do you really want to be "the guy from the Sears commercial"?

—eh, www.amNY.com

LA Times is reporting that Amazon.com is opening a digital music portal, which will sell tracks DRM-free.

From the article:

Amazon.com Inc. said none of the millions of tracks it planned to sell would be encumbered by software that restricted copying. That means people could play the songs on iPods or any other music player and burn them onto CDs an unlimited number of times.

EMI is thus far the only major label to agree to distribute their music DRM-free, so Amazon's catalog will also draw heavily from smaller boutique and indie labels. Getting the big guns of the large online marketplace behind the issue, however, ought to put pressure on other majors to follow suit.

Apple's iTunes store also offers EMI's catalog DRM-free, but they do encode music distributed by other majors.

If you want to think globally, but act locally, indie mecca Other Music also offers DRM-free music from their digital music store (and you don't even have to go through their snobby staff).

—eh, www.amNY.com

Rob Crow is a man who's always busy. He and Zach Hill (of Hella) are The Ladies. HIs band Pinback, which has been dormant since 2004, is promising a new album later this year, according to their label Touch and Go. He also fronts doom metal outfit Goblin Cock. And he finds time and inspiration to be a solo artist.

His latest album, "Living Well," came out in January (and I've been holding on to this MP3 since about then ... which reminds me, I promised more coverage of Dungen and Mando Diao for Monday. Well, I'm a liar, but I'll try and get to it soon). The sound is kind of amped up Eurotrash-pop, in a way that's purely positive. Here's the first track "Bam Bam".

—eh, www.amNY.com

"It's a Little Bit Complicated" is out June 19. I got to listen to it today, though. I love my job.

The band's sophomore album is more Eddie Argos brilliance, with an autobiographical peak into his delightfully quirky outlook on life. Instead of Forming a Band or pining after Emily Kane, this time Argos contemplates domestic bliss and life as an established working musician.
Fortunately, he hasn't done anything to polish away his artless, ranting delivery. The whole thing works because of his unadorned exuberance — well, and the fact that his band rocks like there's no tomorrow.
Argos also has a charming way with words. There are a few gem phrases I want to share with you.
From "People in Love":
"People in love lie around and get fat"
"You can tell how bad you feel by how long you're in the shower"
From "I Will Survive" (not a Gloria Gaynor cover)
"Life is what you make it/and I've made mine a mess"

The band is streaming a few songs from their MySpace page, if you want to get a sneak preview. They promised the FBI would come track me down if I posted anything.

The band is on the road in Europe currently through the end of July, and there are no U.S. dates announced yet, but I'm sure they are forthcoming. Don't miss them when they eventually do hit the states, Art Brut is one of the most fun live shows I've ever been to. Argos is so charismatic, he could steal your wallet then sell it back to you and you'd still feel you came out ahead in the transaction. Not that he would.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Rob Harvilla breaks down exactly why Mims is hot, Venn diagram-style, for the Village Voice.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Bruce Campbell covers Duran Duran in this Old Spice commercial. Flippin' awesome! Although my all time favorite version of this song has to be Reel Big Fish's cover. It's a little embarrassing to listen to now, but they were seriously my favorite band for a long while. I think they were one of the first concerts I ever saw.

These guys are (obviously?) not RBF, but just some kids, kickin' it OK Go style.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Gothamist has up a delightful interview with Andrew Bird.

Some highlights:

On chickens:

Yeah, I had 26 chickens and now I have zero chickens. I wasn’t able to keep the raccoons away from the chickens. And then for a year after that happened the chicken feathers are still around from the massacre. There’s just hundreds and hundreds of sparrows around my barn and they were taking the chicken feathers and stuffing my chimney with them to make nests. And then I would have a fire and I would see the smoke coming out and I would see little feathers reminding me of how I let down the chickens.

On commercial licensing:

I’ve never said this publicly but when that car commercial comes around I’m going to have to say no. That’s where I’m going to have to draw the line. But Italian chewing gum? I’m okay with that. But car culture? I don’t to really contribute to that.

On socks:

Sometimes people give them to me, which is nice. Who doesn’t need a new pair of socks? We’re actually working on making our own socks instead of T-shirts.

He also talks about the band's recent Letterman appearance, which is below.

Bird plays Webster Hall tomorrow. The show is sold out, but those who look may find what they need.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Jambands.com has an interesting interview with Mark Ribot on the displacement of musicians from the Lower East Side. More than just whinge about the homogeneity of post-millennium New York City (although that's a valid complaint), Ribot gets deeper into the issue of what it means pay day-wise that all our small/midsized venues are moving to Brooklyn. He really makes some good and thoughtful points.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Last Thursday I tried to listen to and review 10 CDs in one day. As you'll recall, I got as far as slotting number 10, but I only got to listen to 9.

Anyway, I finally listened to ONO's "Open Your Box," a covers CD, on which old Yoko Ono songs were remixed by the Pet Shop Boys, Peter Rauhofer, Danny Tenaglia, and the like. My verdict: Serviceable techno, if you're into that sort of thing, featuring the enchanting vocals of the woman who broke up The Beatles.

Aren't you glad you waited?

—eh, www.amNY.com

The Gourds play Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night. The group's claim to fame is their cover of "Gin and Juice," which, thanks to a mis-attribution on Napster back in the day, is widely believed to have been done by Phish.

Other famous Napster mis-labellings:
Janis Joplin "Son of a Preacher Man" (probably Dusty Springfield, although the song has been covered by just about everybody but Janis)
Woggles "Video Killed The Radio Star" (The Buggles)
Violent Femmes "I Wanna Be Sedated" (Ramones)
Radiohead "Wish You Were Here" (Sparklehorse, although Thom Yorke does contribute vocals)
The Who "Teenage Wasteland" (It's called "Baba O'Riley"; There's a fantastic scene in an episode of "Freaks and Geeks" where Lindsay refers to the song as "TW" and gets totally told)
The Kinks "Turning Japanese" (The Vapors)

Remember any others?

—eh, www.amNY.com

I had so much fun doing 10 CDs in a day last week, so I figured I'd do it again. If we're not careful, we might have a regular feature on our hands here.

This week, I decided to go with all albums made by non-Americans. This meant the selection was less random than last week, when I just reached for 10 CDs at the top of the unorganized pile that is taking over my desk; I was picking out bands that I knew were foreign. I also tried my best not to be UK-heavy as well, because I really wanted to get to the more exotic-sounding albums.

While I hadn't listened to any of these albums before, I was already pretty familiar with most of the groups. So there were not a lot of surprises, but there were a few.

Here's the breakdown:
1&2 Dungen (Sweden) "Tio Bitar," Swedish/instrumental/Mando Diao (Sweden) "Ode to Ochrasy," English
Both of these albums, for me, were anticipated follow-ups to works I already liked. They did not disappoint. I'll have more on them next week.

3 Tunng (UK) "Comments Of The Inner Chorus," English
Energized ambient folk. Good, but not my cup of tea.

4 Puffy Amiyumi (Japan) "Splurge," English/Japanese
This was a big shocker. This Japanese duo has a fairly cheesy cartoon on Cartoon Network, which when you listen to their music, you can totally see how a group like this could be a cartoon. But they're good!

"Nice Buddy"

This song in particular has a real late-'90s "modern rock" vibe wrapped up inside its fluffy J-pop exterior. Although the aesthetic varies from song to song, and some of it is a little annoying. The lyrics in English definitely sound as if they were written by someone for whom English is a second language. But on the whole, superfun crazycool power-pop.

—eh, www.amNY.com

The rest is after the jump...

As you can tell from the vocals, Fujiya & Miyagi are not actually Japanese. The smooth synth-pop outfit is from Brighton.

—eh, www.amNY.com

Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs shot a video in Brooklyn last night. Miss Modern Age has more.

—eh, www.amNY.com

"Someone to Love," Fountains of Wayne

Somehow I missed "Stacy's Mom" and the whole Fountains of Wayne thing — although I did like their cover of "(Hit Me) Baby One More Time" — but fortunately for me it's not too late, and they even have a brand new album out, "Traffic and Weather."
This song is really cute. I like the storytelling element; it's reminiscent of a Ben Folds or Billy Joel creation (seriously, I was talking with my sisters last weekend about the creative genius of BJ (yes, we're from Long Island), and, come on: "Piano Man"? "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant"? Those are really evocative songs featuring incredibly complete characters). And it perfectly captures 20-something loneliness in this great big city of ours, not that I'm projecting, or anything.
Although, I kind of don't believe that Demetri Martin can't find someone to love. But, if he's looking, I think I know a girl...

—eh, www.amNY.com

Pitchfork has a new track from Islands up today.

Nick Thorburn (used to be Nick Diamonds) is predicting the band's follow-up to "Return to the Sea" will be ready for a September release date.

I have to say, the track is a little on the boring side, compared to NT's previous output (with both Islands and The Unicorns). But the leaked tracks that preceded Island's first album sounded nothing like how "Return" ended up, so I still have