It’s mainly Fran’s voice that makes me smile, but the whole band is…pretty important, last time I checked. So! Travis makes me smile. Watch the video for Closer, the first single off their upcoming album, The Boy With No Name coming out on May 10th [via torr]:

My thoughts while watching the video:

• Supermarket…oookay…
• Damn, I really don’t want to work in a supermarket. Again. (My first job was bagging at Stop & Shop in high school)
• Fran…is a giant chipmunk? This is a weird supermarket.
• …This song is very pretty.
• Aw, everyone is like, HAPPY AND STUFF, and full of so much joy, they have forgotten the suckiness of being in a supermarket!!! Fran’s singing heals all emotional wounds. Wow.
• Fran is sweeping his arms around. Why that makes me happy, I don’t know.
• CAMEO, OH DEAR GOD.
• Aha…pwnd.
• Muzak kills everything.
• Kissing between random young peeps feels oddly serious for me. Should’ve just stuck with hugging. Yay! Hugs!
• I want a happy hug.
• …Now I am filled with sadness.

I didn’t say they were deep thoughts or anything.

Most of Travis’s videos are great, not in the groundbreaking sense but in the “it will make you smile and maybe laugh a bit” sense. Which is good for those times when you realize life sucks. …Which is most of the time. Especially when, after listening to this song, I thought about who I have in my life that I wouldn’t mind leaning on. Or rather, wouldn’t mind me leaning on them and crushing them with my lead-like density (yes, I’m thinking of the physical sense of leaning on someone, not the…I dunno, mental lean-age). And there are very few people who fit that description. It’s possible that I could gain more of these people, but I think I’m more likely to lose the ones I have now.

…

In conclusion, woo Travis!

I don’t know why I haven’t listened to Josh in forever; there’s no good excuse. The first time I listened to him is memorable because it was kind of…random. In 1998 or 1999, I received a free cd from mp3.com and out of the gazillion mp3s on the cd, Josh’s was the _only_ good one. The. Only. One. Out of a lot. I guess it’s not like the other ones sucked, but…well, maybe they _did_ suck, a judgement I made after sampling a few seconds of each track because I have the attention span of an excited puppy. Here’s the song I was drawn to, off the album “Dressed Up Like Nebraska”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000006CBY:

Josh Rouse – Dressed Up Like Nebraska [removed]

There are other good songs on this album, but for some reason I didn’t like most of them. I wore out the songs that I loved (roughly three of them) and then not long ago while cleaning out my CDs, I sold it on Amazon. Hm. It had a good resell value. Anyhoo, it’s probably time for me to listen to his newer stuff.

…I just realized I didn’t actually verbalize what his music sounds like. Wellll. That’s what the mp3 and video are for. Sorry. Too lazy to write real stuff.

“Chris reviews Josh Rouse at Joe’s Pub”:http://musicsnob.blogs.friendster.com/chris_music_snobbery/2006/01/josh_rouse_joes.html

[PS: "Hipsters are so nice and soft":http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/081703/so-soft.gif]

Good! Or kinda good!

“Beat Surrender”:http://www.thebeatsurrender.co.uk/daily/recordbox/fall-at-your-feet-magnet/
“New Noise”:http://www.new-noise.net/us_240.html
“Music OHM”:http://www.musicomh.com/singles6/magnet-3_1205.htm
“Angry Age”:http://www.angryape.com/reviews/2005/11/magnet-fall-at-your-feet
“Music Emissions”:http://www.musicemissions.com/display_review.php?id=2
“Manchester Music”:http://www.music-dash.co.uk/releases/release.asp?item=2662
“Room Thirteen”:http://www.roomthirteen.com/cgi-bin/cd_view.cgi?CDID=2796
“Outline Online”:http://www.outlineonline.co.uk/page.asp?pageid=50

Not so good!

“Channel 4″:http://www.channel4.com/music/outandabout/index.jsp?id=18
“Rock City”:http://www.rock-city.co.uk/content/EEFuZuFZAFhLoOdmmy.shtml
“Drowned in Sound”:http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/6911
“The Communion”:http://www.thecommunion.co.uk/release_reviews.php?id=729

Something that bothers me, even though it doesn’t make much of a difference: Magnet is just Even Johansen and not the whole band. One dude!

Even left a message in “his guestbook”:http://interactives.alxnet.com/cgi-bin/slither/Driver.py/WebTools//Guestbook/Guestbook.render?guestbook_id=39227. He’s playing two shows this week, but they’re in Norway so you’re probably not going! Hopefully he’ll be in the US for SXSW (and then make his way to other parts of the country), although he’s not listed on “their page”:http://2006.sxsw.com/ yet.

(Boy, I’m really slow with this one.)

So I’m sitting here, as I have been for the past few hours (someone, please remind me that ensuring that your legs are receiving adequate blood flow is a good thing), not really doing anything productive but not twidling my fingers and staring into space either. All of a sudden, “The Bees”:http://www.thebees.info/ pop onto my playlist. Not spontaneously–they were always on it, I just never listened to their songs.

…Which is absolutely ridiculously, because I love this song:

The Bees – Chicken Payback [removed]

My simple description of the song: you’ll either love it or hate it. It’s overly upbeat and bouncy, which I suppose is the best way to sing a song that goes “PAY THE CHICKEN BACK BACK, PAY THE CHICKEN BACK, ETC” until you realize you’ve heard the same nonsensical phrase over and over again. Actually, this is one of those “high risk of annoying the hell out of me” songs, but I like it so far. Let’s not kill the mood.

After seeing reading about meaty music, I thought about food-y music overall. I guess Weird Al’s Food Album is an obvious one (“EAAT ITTT, JUST EAT ITTT”) but I also thought of Beck’s “Steve Threw Up”. IT’S FUN, LISTEN:

Beck – Steve Threw Up [removed]

HAHA, VOMIT. Vomit is funny. Unless it’s coming out of you. In which case, it’s not that funny.

PLONE!

WHOAA PLONE!

Whoa. Where did that come from? What the hell have the members of Plone been doing for the past three years? One of them, Mike Bainbridge, combined powers with ex-Broadcast-er Tim Felton to create Seeland and release… a…7″. Hopefully there’s more to come because two songs IS NOT ENOUGH. I’ll find out how sweet the Plone and Broadcast combination is soon because I obviously Warpmarted that sucker already (bought some Broadcast albums as well; why not?).

There’s a cute Broadcast interview at bbc.co.uk from 2003. I’m not sure why I thought it was cute.

Remember to buy yer Broadcast tickets!

Kaiser Chiefs seem to be one of the next hot new British band thingies…oh, you know what I mean. They’re Franz Ferdinand-esque, aka fun hyper dancey rock type stuff. You can download a song clip on their official site:

Kaiser Chiefs – I Predict a Riot

Hooyeah, a whole 49 seconds. That’s almost 5/6ths of a minute! I like the song but I’m disappointed I can’t listen to the whole things in iTunes. You can buy it online but…naaah. Watch the video instead:

I Predict a Riot – Windows Media | Realplayer

Mm, pillow fight. If I weren’t lazy I would record that into an mp3, but you know. [twiddles thumbs] Their album is scheduled to come out March 7th in Europe with no details of a US date so I guess I won’t have to think about whether I want to buy it or not anytime soon.

Doves are (is?) one my favorite bands and are releasing a new album soon (March 1st in the US, February 21st in the UK). New album means TOURING! Right? If you live in the UK, sure! As for the rest of us, we’ll have to find out later. I’ve seen them twice before and they’re awesome live (photos from the first concert). Diana would recall when Jimi told the audience at Hammerstein Ballroom to jump the barricade and being such Doves-loving slaves we proceeded to hop over, making disgruntled security guards in the process. Actually, I stayed behind, but Diana went over. I was guarding our stuff. OUR STUFF!

You probably didn’t care about that last paragraph, especially if you don’t know what Doves sound like. They sound like…well, I’m not sure how to describe them. They fit under the “rock/pop/alt” category but have a range of styles in their songs (a note if you stick around reading this blog: I’m nearly 100% incapable of describing music or not describing it in a stupid way). Here’s one I like in particular (warning: it may sound too happy for some people):

Doves – Pounding [removed]

That song isn’t really representative of the rest of their songs, but I really like it. And here’s that video, aka the subject of this post:

Doves – Black and White Town [via torr]

I like the video. It’s not something I’d watch over and over again but it doesn’t suck. Crappy music videos depress me.