Friend by Cheyenne Marie Mize from Crash Avenue on Vimeo . "Friend" is the adventurous video debut from Cheyenne Marie Mize. Shot in her home of Louisville, Ky., "Friend" features giant puppets courtesy of Sean Hennessey and Squallis Puppeteers, cameos from her friends and collaborators Wax Fang, and the ornate ambiance of The Rathskeller Room in Louisville's famed Seelbach Hilton Hotel. Directed by Mike Fitzer and Produced by Sara Whittaker of the Bisig Impact Group. Cheyenne' s debut Before Lately will be out October 12th, 2010 [...]
La Scala are a local Chicago wunderband. I say that because they not only make some pretty nifty music themselves, as you will hear below, but they are the recording genius behind My Gold Mask too. Their latest album, The Last Carousel came out July 30th and it's a wonderful romp through 602s pop with a post-punk veneer. What La Scala has going on is truly authentic and original and I dare you to play some of this at your next party. You'll have at least 4 people asking you who this is, guaranteed. [...]
Suffragette City (David Bowie Cover) mp3 A Place To Bury Strangers We Were So Turned On: Maminal's Tribute To David Bowie .... buy it! I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow of Your Heart ..... buy it! Tracklisting: 1. I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart 2. Girlfriend 3. I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart (Secret Machines Remix ) 4. I Lived My Life To Stand [...]
Black Girls In Dresses mp3 Tony Castles No Service ... order it from Famous Class Records! Adequate Sheen mp3 We have yet another addition by our Man About Town, Mike Gutierrez. This was just too good to sit on any longer! If you've ever seen Tony Castles live, you know they are capable of being much louder, noisier, more chaotic than they [...]
Of Foam And Wave mp3 Caspian Tertia ... buy it! For my 600th post I fiddled around and wondered what to do and decided to give it away to Mike, my guest writer, because sometimes stuff isn't very meaningful unless you share it. Rounding out the Stateside leg of their current tour before crossing the Atlantic to the Old Country, Caspian rolled into Chicago for a night of atmospheric post [...]
I Don't Need The Reason by My Gold Mask From their next four song 123 vinyl release, A Million Miles (From Where We Were Last) , My Gold Mask just continues to wow us here in Chicago and all of you around the globe who have been introduced to this amazing duo. Their record release show is November 13, at Schubas, so come out and celebrate with us! It's not difficult to see where the title of this new record comes from. They've recently been in NYC [...]
Alright my dears, get your calendars out! There's a load of shows coming your way and I'm just going to do a roundup of what I think you shouldn't miss. I'm totally inundated with emails about truly good bands touring and I really wish I had time and space to tell you about each one in its own post, but alas. These are the shows I'm honestly going to make, they're that good! September 17 - School of Seven Bells are playing Lincoln Hall and this is a must see show. I can not believe there [...]
Don't Do It mp3 Sharon Van Etten epic ... out October 9, pre-order from BaDaBing! Love More mp3 Sharon Van Etten completely won me over at Pitchfork Fest this summer and I'm so excited to see she's coming back to Chicago in November. I've received a pre-release copy of her new album, epic , and it is so lovely. I'll have a proper review up for you when it's out on October 9. Until then you can enjoy these two tracks and mark your calendars for [...]
There's been an interesting discussion over at bandcamp.com on their new policy of limiting free downloads and instituting a "power up" plan to help cover costs. With big artists like Sufjan Stevens and Amanda Palmer using the service and so many smaller artists finding success there, it's inevitable (I think) that changes would be afoot there. Some have taken great offense at having to pony up for the opportunity to offer their fans free downloads. Why pay to give something away? They hold personal convictions against paying for music or against charging for their art. Others have been [...]
The Milkman of Human Kindness (live) mp3 Billy Bragg, Live at Arenbergschouwburg , 2008 (thank you Internet Archive!) Uh yeah... so sometimes I'm not exactly the calm, intelligent music reviewer Tart you all know and maybe (?) like. Sometimes I'm a ridiculously, hand-wringing, babbling, about-to-cry, crazed fan who's stood in line for 20 minutes to meet her musical hero for the first time. And then it's my turn and god knows what I said, something about "Milkman of Human Kindness" being a magical song, and introducing him to my gurl, and then some more babbling on about [...]
Little Bird mp3 Pancake Breakfast ... release date: Oct. 5 The Ballad of Maynard Noe mp3 Well this ensemble is an interesting bunch. I can't quite make up my mind about Pancake Breakfast . But I am very attracted to his voice, the lead singer's. There's a certain folksy hokeyness to some of the song styles that reminds me of grammar school and right now with the weather getting crisp and the sun sitting in the sky like it is, that's not such a bad thing. You know me and nostalgia. [...]
Apologies (live) mp3 Grace Potter and The Nocturnals.... buy it! White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane Cover-Live) mp3 Check out their Daytrotter session too! Well, I've saved the best for last, as I'm totally in love with Grace Potter and The Nocturnals . Not all of these photos are the best, but I wanted to give you a feel for the amazing energy this woman has on stage. Even in a festival setting, with all that space and people coming and going, Grace had her audience captivated [...]
Mouthful Of Diamonds (Michna Remix) by Michna North Coast Musical Festival was a freakin blast! I wasn't sure I would love it, but oh yes, I did. There was dancing and disco and crazy costumes, and hippie kids, and good, old fashioned bluesy rock, and some out of this world amazing music! I took my camera and played photographer for the weekend and that was interesting . I had little to no idea what I was doing, mostly I tried to stay out [...]
Beautiful Struggle mp3 (Borrowers cover) written by Mark Addison, performed by Chris Hickey and see the nice write up of him over on Fingertips I'm on my way over to North Coast Fest again today, it was awesome yesterday! Grace Potter and The Nocturnals were the highlight of my day. And while I know being outside in such lovely weather is supposed to make a person happy, it only makes me cranky. I'm weird like that. I sort of hate nature. It gets all sunny and breezy and [...]
School of Seven Bells has a new digital EP coming out on September 14, entitled Heart is Strange. If there's one thing better than new music from this trio, it's remixes of their music. Some bands just create a sound that lends itself to recreation, and SVIIB is one of those bands. This Phantogram remix is solid. Enjoy it this Labor Day weekend, don't work too hard, remember how you got this weekend, eh? xoxo Heart is Strange (radio edit) Heart Is Strange (Pantha du Prince Remix) ILU (Phantogram [...]
For The Benefit Of Evil mp3 Red Hot Rebellion Uh yeah, what the hell was yesterday about? It wasn't until around 10 p.m. that I realized it was only WEDNESDAY! But once I got my ears on this classic-sounding track I began to unwind a bit. See, sometimes it just takes a good guitar solo and some sass to get that WTF out of your system. Red Hot Rebellion doesn't have an album out yet. They're that new. But the music is old-fashioned, garage rock. They call it "the soundtrack to a [...]
islands mp3 Fisherking (only available here for three days - go sign up for their mailing list after that and get it from them!) Fisherking hails from Sydney, Australia, a place that has brought many good bands to me over the past two years. I'm not quite sure why my fellow bloggers haven't tuned into the Aussie music scene very much. An Horse have broke through to US and UK/European audiences, thankfully, as have The Drones and a few other bands [...]
Colossus mp3 Lightning Bolt Earthly Delights ... buy it! Get Older mp3 Dan Deacon ... buy it! If you follow my insane twitter feed you saw me go apeshit over Lightning Bolt (and misspell it all day) at Pitchfork Fest last month. They seriously blew my mind with crazy, intense, good base-level noise. There are a few thousand of us women out here that respond to that kind of thing the way you guys do, I'm happy to report. It [...]
Today I bring you the first, in what I hope will be many guest posts, by a writer new to Chicago, Mike Gutierrez. He writes for QRO, Drowned In Sound, the Ampeater Review, and the Deli Magazine, and we're very proud to have him dashing around here at the Shack! He's also great company at a show, we had a blast at the Casiokids gig. They were really just too much fun, and even though I almost knocked down the guy in the monkey suit, I'm pretty sure he forgave me. No one could hold a grudge in [...]
Polly And The Billets Doux brought out their album, Fiction, Half-Truths & Downright Lies last year (I missed it, alas) but you needent! (get it on itunes , it's the only US distributor I could find, or Amazon has it as an import, ugh) They're on tour for you lucky folk in the UK, so go see them. And they're supporting on of my favorite groups, The Miserable Rich , in October in London. Jealous does not do justice to the mood I'm in just looking at that string of tour dates! [...]
Love Shack, Baby
Azealia Banks - '1991' [Listen]
Metric Debuts Album via Synthetica Hide+Seek, Tickets On Sale Now For Fall Tour
THE MASTERSONS — BIRDS FLY SOUTH
