RIP White Stripes, I will love you guys forever

Today, The White Stripes officially announced that they are breaking up. On their website, Jack stated that they reached this decision "mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way." Jeff Weiss memorialized them far better than I ever could in one of the most well-written, moving pieces of music journalism I have read in a long time. If you're a fan, you absolutely have to read it, and if not, maybe you will be converted.

The Union Forever: R.I.P White Stripes (1997-2011) on Passion of the Weiss

As my own tribute, I will just provide my favorite White Stripes performance of any song of all time, a cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene", live at Blackpool Lights. It perfectly sums up everything I love about them. Listen to Jack's banter before the song and witness his pure genius. And the song itself is so raw, played straight from the heart and full of his soul.



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Strike Hard, Young Diamond on iTunes!

If you missed it, go back and check out my earlier post on Wildlife and their debut album, Strike Hard, Young Diamond. If you did see the earlier post, here is your reminder as promised.

If you live in Canada, download the album on iTunes right now (seriously, do it). If you live outside of Canada, download the album from their Bandcamp page.


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Changing format, yet again

I know I suck at this, but such is life. There's way more music that I want to recommend than I have time to really research and write about, so I'm gonna try just posting videos or mp3s and a sentence or two about them. It's easy to do, so I will pretty much recommend music as often as I find it. As mentioned below, I'm writing full length posts for Silence Nogood (look for the posts by "McIntyre"), and I'll continue to link to the posts as they go up.

It's less in depth this way, but I'm still getting the music to you, which is the most important part.

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On Vacation

Sorry everybody, I've been a terrible blogger.
I neglected to post regarding the fact that I am on vacation until August 7th, and have barely any access to internet! So yeah, thats why there's been no posts. Blog'll be fully operational again the 2nd week of August. See you then.

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New Posts Soon

I've found quite a few new bands lately, so expect to see a lot of posts of that variety in the very near future, I'm just waiting on permission to post their mp3s. Soon, I promise.

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Blog Changes

I'm undergoing some significant changes in my personal habits and musical habits, and it's going to significantly impact the blog, so I thought I should let you guys know. First off, I've had a bit of a falling out with my computer, and have been spending much less time on it, reducing the amount of internet music digging I do. This is why posts have been so infrequent lately, I've simply been finding significantly less bands.

Second, and more excitingly, I have acquired a record player (actually, it's on its way, the first one i bought is being returned). This coming weekend, I'm planning on spending some quality time at some record stores in Sacramento with pretty extensive used vinyl collections, and hope to make some great discoveries.

The result all this will have on the blog: posts will most likely be less frequent, but more in depth, and more posts on older (but fairly obscure, no posting classic rock) artists. Definitely don't expect to see the posts on current indie bands go away, just more infrequent. Basically, I'm going to go for an approach of focusing more on the discoveries that I really like, rather than a brief daily post on a pretty good band.

I'm pretty excited about this new direction, and I hope all of you regular readers (all 10 of you) stay on board.

-Tim

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Whoo!

I am pumped, I just got a review of Boat Boat published on Indieshuffle.com, a relatively big time indie music website. Check out my review, and check out the website in general, its a fantastic site that writes about a lot of great music.

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Morning Benders Album Incoming!

And now for the most exciting piece of news to come out so far this year: The Morning Benders have given us a taste of their upcoming album, Big Echo! I am a huge Morning Benders fan, and they are one of the few bands I have seen live twice. I saw them once at the Coffee House in our fine city of Davis, and once more recently at this year's Outside Lands. At the Outside Lands show they played almost entirely new material, only "Waiting for the War" and "Patient Patient" from the first album. What I heard I loved, and this track "Promises" further confirms that. In a world where so many second albums really don't live up, I have very high hopes for Big Echo. "Promises" definitely has a different feel from most of the songs on Talking Through Tin Cans, and I from what I heard at the concert, so do most of the new songs. I love the percussion, and Chris's vocals are as great as ever. Take a listen for yourself:
Promises - The Morning Benders
They have a bunch of US tour dates on their Myspace. If they're coming to your area, I'd highly suggest you go, they put on a very good show. Album drops March 9th.

Contra, early and cheap!

Quick bit of news. On Amazon MP3's daily deal for today is Contra, the new Vampire Weekend album a day early, and only $3.99. The low price is usually only in effect for 1 day, so move fast!
Update: Price still low!

Jack White Related News!

(Picture: MTV)

As anyone who knows me knows very well, I worship Jack White and everything he does (including The Dead Weather, which I know a lot of Jack White fans didn't like). For that reason, I was thrilled to see on You Ain't No Picasso that Jack White had told Rolling Stone that he would be most likely putting out a solo record "Eventually, yeah, for sure." With anyone else, I think that would be too vague to excite me, but with him, even the slightest hint of new material is enough to get me worked up. When asked whether a solo album would mean he was playing all the instruments, he replied

"Maybe so. I've never done that. I thought about that. That might be the challenge — to differentiate from anything else that I've done....That would be the thing for me to do... think about a solo record. I wouldn't know until I get there."

Personally, I think that would be pretty sweet.
Whole Interview
You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as Your Told) - The White Stripes
Ball and a Biscuit (live VH1) - The White Stripes (Youtube link)
Level (Video version) - Raconteurs (Youtube)
Treat Me Like Your Mother - The Dead Weather
Will There Be Enough Water (live at Outside Lands) - The Dead Weather (Youtube, I was like 10 feet away from this guy! Awesome show, and this was for sure the highlight)

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