First Listen: The Mountain Goats – “Damn These Vampires”

The Mountain Goats’ new album – All Eternals Deck – is out 3/29 on Merge, but today we’ve got the first taste in “Damn These Vampires.”  Merge offers this about the album’s themes and style:

“The songs cluster around themes of hidden things and the dread that hidden things inspire,” says singer/songwriter John Darnielle, “but also the excitement, the attraction, the magnetic draw that scary unknown hidden things exert.” The title refers to an apocryphal tarot deck, though Darnielle explains that the album’s fascination with the occult originates in having run across the word “occult” in a textbook in his nursing-student days. “‘Occult’ just means ‘hidden’ or ‘not immediately obvious’ in medical terminology. There was a nursing directive to be aware of ‘occult blood.’ I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard,” he says.

“Damn These Vampires” has an expansive, epic quality that bodes well for the album as a whole.  There’s a precision in that emotional punctuation that Darnielle uses so effectively elsewhere that leaves me with goosebumps…  So, grab your headphones, press play, and enjoy.

[audio:https://www.shh-listen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/The-Mountain-Goats-Damn-These-Vampires.mp3|titles=The Mountain Goats – Damn These Vampires]  Download

After that, check out this Pitchfork interview with Darnielle about the making of the album, and then head over to Stereogum to grab the new, twitter-released, non-album track “Tyler Lambert’s Grave.”  Enjoy!

First Listen: R.E.M. – “Mine Smell Like Honey”

Out today is R.E.M.’s first official single from Collapse Into Now (Out March 8th): “Mine Smell Like Honey.”  And longtime fans will be happy to hear that it’s got all those vintage things we’ve come to see in the post-Accelerate Renaissance: a hook-driven chorus with Mike Mills’ soaring voice, guitars that… jangle (seriously, can we find another word for Peter Buck’s style), and a confidence that shines through.  Yet, unlike the bombast of Accelerate, this track has a more relaxed, lived-in kind of feel… it’s the sound of a band playing for the sake of it, and with nothing to prove.  In short, it’s everything that made R.E.M. great in the first place.

And here it is… If you like it, consider picking it up on iTunes, Amazon, or wherever digital music is sold…

Recommended: Telekinesis

In a month of blizzards that blanket my house in snow and ice, it’s hard to feel like the Spring is ever going to come back – let alone the Summer.  Yet, two minutes into Telekinesis! – the 2009 release by the band Telekinesis – and it’s all sunshine, road trips, and slush puppies.  The band – whose only permanent member is Michael Benjamin Lerner – writes smart, hook-filled pop that Michael describes as “heart on my sleeve” type songs.  The result for the listener is pure joy… it is, I feel, fundamentally impossible not to feel good while listening to Telekinesis.

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Iron & Wine Visits Daytrotter

This week, Daytrotter released a lovely session with Iron & Wine, which you can listen to as well as watch.  Of the music, they write:

He takes the fog right out of us, counteracts our insecurities with the beautifully hushed uncertainty. It’s as if he has a way of gathering up all of the bumps in the night, all of the fire light and all of the tender touches of a young mother or father, of a dying grandmother or grandfather and bringing them all into the picture to put us at ease. It’s as if all of the things that we’ve ever feared in our lives – bringing life into the world, growing older and passing out of the world we lucked into, and all of the craziness in the whirlwind in between – are summed up in Iron & Wine songs, distilled into his leafy version of silence and love and shown to us in a way that makes them more enchanting than scary.

How could you not use a little more of that in your day?  So, have a listen – and then watch the session!

First Listen: Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean (Live)

One of the albums I’m most looking forward to this month – Iron & Wine’s Kiss Each Other Clean – comes out on January 25th.  But thanks to the excellent people over at NPR and WNYC, we can bide the time with a bit more cheer… as of right now, you can see the band perform the entire album live!  Why wait?  Head on over and check it out!