This is fine.
Conveniently for us, Halloween just happens to fall on a Friday. So we’re jumping on the bandwagon and bringing you our top 5 Halloween songs. But here’s the best part – we are also creating an ATH playlist for your Halloween party. That’s right, we’re including the songs. Just fire up ATH Radio, and you’ve got yourself an instant party. Full list of zombie laden goodness after the jump.
Another one our favorite new bands, Crystal Antlers, will be playing at Beerland in Austin Sunday night. We had high praise of the bands opening set for the Kadane Brothers earlier in the summer so we are of course pumped for this one. You can read more about this show on the Beerland website.
In a time when every artist is more political than they should be, David Bazan (Pedro the Lion/Headphones) thought he’d follow the trend. Mr. Bazan has a new song streaming on his myspace page entitled “American Flags” and I bet you can’t guess what it’s about. This is the first new music we’ve seen from The Lion himself since his 2007 release Fewer Moving Pieces. Listen to the new song now.
Ben Kweller will be following up The Mountain Goats show at Antone’s on Saturday night with his own set at the classic venue on Sunday. Mr. Kweller is currently touring in support of his limited edition tour EP How Ya Lookin’ Southbound? Come In… Tickets for the show are $20 and can be bought from the Antone’s website. Preview the show with “Sundress” off ben Kweller’s 2006 self titled LP.
Download: Ben Kweller – Sundress [MP3]
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Long forgotten Texan, Ben Kweller, has finally released some new music, coming our way this time with a tour EP that you can pick up here. No matter where you find it, its good to have new tunes from this guy.
From his first days in Radish, it seems as if Ben has been trying hard to find his own voice. Sometimes it seems to depend on where he’s living, or who he’s hanging with at the time he’s recording. His last album definitely seemed to have a NYC vibe to it. This time, we find him going, dare I say, Ryan Adams. Although, you can definitely feel the influence of the road on this album, it seems almost as if BK has returned to Texas.
“Fight” is a twangy little number, accompanied by some slide-guitar. Of course, the lyrics are every bit Ben Kweller, using clever rhyming couplets a la Conor Oberst. The end half of the song has a definite honky-tonk feel to it as the piano solo courses through the latter half of the song. It’s strange hearing Ben’s voice on this track.
He continues the country-tinged efforts with “Things I Like to Do.” It’s almost exactly like the first song, at least in instrumentation, but this is the first song when you can clearly make the distinction between Ben Kweller and any other alt-country singer. There’s possibly a little too much slide-guitar on this song, but it’s one of the more warming songs on the EP.
“Sawdust Man” is the only song on this album that just doesn’t fit. It’s ridden by a piano throughout, which definitely makes it seem as if he is trying to pull of a little Dr. Dog. There are several moments when his voice clearly struggles to hit its note, which is really disheartening. For some reason, this some just doesn’t come across the way one would hope. We all make mistakes.
He scores a definite winner, however, with “The Biggest Flower.” This song maintains a little bit of that coutnry sensibility that has been driven into this EP, but at the same time, it brings back the pop element that made Ben Kweller so endearing to us all. This is probably one of the more mature songs hes written, which makes it the stand out track on this EP.
The EP is closed off with “Somehow,” another fine tune. One might describe this as a whiskey song. It seems as if the song is full of longing and loneliness, just judging the feel of the vocals. That’s not surprising considering this is an EP written around Ben’s most recent touring scheduling. It’s a fine close to a pretty decent offering from one of our favorite Texans.
And speaking of that touring schedule, Ben Kweller is coming to Austin on November 2nd. You can buy yourself a set of tickets over at Frontagate Tickets.
John Darnielle’s band, The Mountain Goats, will be playing a show at Antone’s on Saturday night in Austin. The show gets started at 9 pm with an opening set by Kaki King. Buy your tickets now for only $14. Don’t forget you can still download The Mountain Goats recent EP Satanic Messiah for free from their website.
If you haven’t seen the video yet of Bloc Party performing an acoustic version of “This Modern Love” behind a bar in Paris, I suggest you watch it now. The video was shot and produced by the La Blogotheque website as part of their excellent Take Away Shows series. The older tune is a reminder that Bloc party wrote some outstanding songs for Silent Alarm and their new album pales in comparison. Maybe they should’ve just made an acoustic album and not the techno/dance rubbish that is Intimacy?
Cruiserweight will be giving you one of many options for shows on Halloween night here in Austin. The local act will be playing at Emo’s with tickets on sale for only $10. The show is in celebration of the band’s recent LP release Big Bold Letters which came out on the 7th of this month. Check out “Balboa” from that release below.
Download: Cruiserweight – Balboa [MP3]
So maybe just maybe we talk about the Daytrotter website too much, but we’ll keep posting about ’em as long as they keep bringing us gems like this. For the second exceptional live set this week, we get Clem Snide front man Eef Barzelay. Eef performs two songs from his recent release Lose Big and two other previously unreleased tracks. Download MP3s of the performance now. Thanks again Daytrotter, you’re cool.
Download: Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree(live on daytrotter) [MP3]
Just read over on Sonic Itch & Ultra8201 that the Decemberists will be playing at Southwestern University in Georgetown this evening! Tickets for the show are $10 for students and still only $20 for all other ticket buyers. Doors look to open at 6:30 with the show following around 8 or so. Read more on the Southwestern events site. How did we all miss this one?
