The band notes that due to the extremely short turnaround between today and the release, vinyl will not be ready for a simultaneous release on March 10th. The band is promising "180 gram vinyl and cool deluxe packaging." The album was also described like this:
Mama, I'm Swollen finds Kasher at his literate, lyrical best, where references to both Poe (“Going To Hell”) and Pinocchio (“Donkeys”) are intertwined seamlessly within his own tales of characters grappling with the moral quandary of being human, adult, and playing a role in ‘civilized’ society. Musically, Cursive is as smart and sophisticated as ever, the songs’ rousing, cerebral content complemented by moments alternately hushed and exhilarating (the cathartic “From The Hips,” the noisily melodic romp “I Couldn’t Love You”), eerily moody and jaunty (the almost prayer-like “Let Me Up,” “Mama, I’m Swollen”) – moments that often occur within the very same song.
From the charging bass lines of album opener “In The Now” to the quiet first chords of confessional closer “What Have I Done?”, Mama, I'm Swollen is a natural progression that remains distinctively Cursive: a fluid amalgamation of the band’s sound past, present, and future – a band that both your punk kid sister and English lit grad student best friend can call their own.
One of New York’s finest rock trios, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, are returning in April with a new album called It’s Blitz — and Rolling Stone has the scoop with an in the studio story in the next issue (on newsstands this week!). “We’re always going to have Yeah Yeah Yeahs hooks and energy,” Karen O tells us. “But we came up with something new that we’ve never heard before from ourselves. Less angst and more positivity, man!”
It’s Blitz, the follow-up to 2006’s Show Your Bones, was produced by Nick Launay (who oversaw the band’s 2007 EP Is Is) and TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek. Recording went down in the band’s native Brooklyn and in Texas where — no joke — the crew lived on a pecan orchard. It was certainly a far cry from the sessions that produced the trio’s raw 2003 debut Fever to Tell.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are already booked for two of the year’s biggest festivals, Coachella and Bonnaroo, where they’ll certainly be road-testing their newest tunes. The last time the Yeahs rocked New York City (an August ‘07 gig at Webster Hall) they tested out a new song and brought one of their sweatiest, passionate performances yet. Before the set ended with “Maps,” Karen O gave fans a little preview of this newfound positivity: “This brings us to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs love song,” she wailed as her parents looked on. “Love is real and this is for each and every one of you!”...www.rollingstone.com
Not, perhaps, the sort of thing that I write about here very often, but The Rakes always sounded round these parts as one of the best bands to emerge from the whole post-Libertines/post-punk/Britpop Nouveau thing of a few years ago. They seemed to have a fair bit more wit and interesting angles than most of their contemporaries, and maybe a healthy affinity to Elastica.
That said, I can’t pretend to remember much about The Rakes’ second album, so the arrival of their third didn’t initially cause that much fuss. It’s really good, though: it’s called “Klang!”, possibly due to it being recorded in the band’s new hometown of Berlin. “Klang!”, however, is not much like Krautrock, being instead a lean and determined reiteration of the Rakes’ skills: choppy riffs; bug-eyed social observation; very short songs.
“Klang!” has ten songs, the longest of which comes in at less than three and a half minutes. The titles are pretty good value in themselves: “The Loneliness Of The Outdoor Smoker”, “Shackleton”, “Mullers Ratchet”, the last of which apparently refers to a genetic disorder which manifests itself in asexual populations and is not the sort of thing you get dealed with so catchily in, say, a song by The View.
And as something like “That’s The Reason” belts past, the infectious bristling economy comes across as a neat rejoinder to the new Franz Ferdinand album, where their schtick seems so tired and needy. The price of success, maybe: if “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand” finds a band so anxiously trying to cling on to fame and overcompensating as a result, “Klang!” showcases one unburdened by any such expectations.
Frankly, The Rakes’ time of hipness may have past, but the quality of these clipped dispatches – and the unglossy punch bestowed on them by Les Savy Fav producer Chris Zane – suggest a longevity uncommon in British bands of their generation. The best thing of many good things here is a song called “1989”, a roisteringly nostalgic knees-up which may have something to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall, which faintly resembles “Hong Kong Garden” with its gothic portent replaced by something at once blokey and somehow cerebral.
Everything flies past in a blur, but occasionally you catch Alan Donohue’s blurry narratives through those precisely ringing and strutting guitars, that mathematically chundering bassline. In “Shackleton”, he seems to be comparing himself to “Harry Hill on happy pills”, and though I’m fairly sure there’s more erudite references in here, that one sticks out this morning. Good record...www.uncut.co.uk
