While we admit that our DVRs haven’t been set to record FX’s motorcycle-gang drama, Sons Of Anarchy, we’re reconsidering skipping the series now that we’ve learned about the amazing crop of cover songs that have premiered on the show. In the past, they’ve revisited the beloved music of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Leonard Cohen, and now TwentyFourBit has brought us the latest song to premiere on the series: The Kills and Dead Weather frontwoman Alison Mosshart’s lovely, raspy-voiced take on Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World.” Listen to a slew of fantastic Sons of Anarchy covers we’ve missed, many of which feature music supervisor Bob Thiele’s band the Forest Rangers, after the jump.
On her debut album, Mrs. Jack White and former supermodel Karen Elson offers a collection of dark, country-tinged tunes that belie the fact she was ever known for anything else.
Produced by White in his Nashville-based Third Man Studios, The Ghost Who Walks features murder ballads and tales of lost love reminiscent of everyone from Cat Power and Jenny Lewis to PJ Harvey. The record also includes two tracks originally written for Elson’s superb political cabaret troupe the Citizens Band, while her backing band counts members of My Morning Jacket and the Dead Weather among its ranks.
The Dead Weather, Jack White’s third-best band, are pumping up their image as bluesy analog throwbacks with an unusual method of pre-release album streaming for Sea of Cowards. For the next 24 hours on the band’s website you can watch a live camera feed trained on the resolutely spinning new record, with someone popping into the frame every 15 minutes or so to flip sides. There are occasional technical snags; a brief error message simply read “There is some dust on the needle.” Of course, because it’s a constant stream, you also have to listen to the album all the way through or risk hearing cut off versions of the songs.
With a streaming method so intertwined with concepts of time, we’ve gone one step further and attempted to pinpoint the exact best times for listening to the individual songs on the album. Hopefully you’re nocturnal, because something about the sun being up and people walking in the streets doesn’t match up to the misanthropic murder fantasies and violent ideas belched up from the Dead Weather’s grimy underworld. Sea of Cowards isn’t exactly conducive to daylight. Or joy. Or sustained human interaction.
Sure, there’s something to be said for pushing boundaries, constantly seeking out strange new sounds, and generally compiling the ephemera of the musical universe. But if there’s one thing any music fan with a taste for hooks knows, it’s that the folks at Pitchfork have a habit of often missing the forest for the trees. While the online indie-music kings at the site spend their days approaching music from a nigh-on scientific standpoint, some of the year’s best music can end up getting the shaft, simply because it isn’t weird or progressive enough. So, we weren’t all that surprised to see that a lot of our favorite albums of 2009 were omitted from Pitchfork’s top 10 albums of the year list. However, the fact that many of them not only also failed to appear in the site’s top 50, but even the honorable mentions, was a little too much to let slide.
Stephenie Meyer, the author of Twilight, discovered some “awesome CD’s” this summer. Her website was updated over the weekend, displaying a new post containing a few music suggestions for her readers. In her own words:
“No matter how busy I am, I can always listen to music, so I have a longer list of recommendations here. So, awesome CDs I discovered this summer:
Animal Collective — Merriweather Post Pavillion
Silversun Pickups — Swoon
White Rabbits — It’s Frightening
The Dead Weather — Horehound
Grizzly Bear — Veckatimest
Meese — Broadcast”
Her other suggestions include The Weakerthans and Elbows, “Seriously, Elbow owns my iPod right now.” Stephenie Meyer is, perhaps, the most advanced music listener among her literary peers, since she goes on to later express her love for Jack’s Mannequin, The Fray, and Blue October in the same post: Read More »
With his new film, An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim turns his lens on three of rock’s greatest living guitarists: Jimmy Page, Jack White, and the Edge.
It Might Get Loud follows the six-string savants over the course of a year, offering insight into their techniques, influences, and approaches to their instrument. Ultimately, it brings them together on a Hollywood soundstage, for a jam spanning three generations of guitar heroes. Among other highlights are an air-guitar moment with Page, a U2 recording session, and a song written onscreen by White.
A Flavorpill playlist? Check. Poorly Photoshopped album art? Double check. A song by Betty Wright in which one can “feel the afro in her voice?” Hell yes.
Pitchfork reports that Jack White’s label Third Man Records is expanding into NYC next week with a brief “record store experiment”:
The increasingly ambitious music-making-and-selling empire is set to take over a New York City storefront for two days only, July 16 and 17. You’ll be able to buy all sorts of Third Man records (including the Dead Weather’s debut LP, Horehound, out next week) and merchandise. The quickie shop will be located in the Lower East Side, at 131 Chrystie Street, and will be open for business between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
It’s a time-honored (if not entirely proud) musical tradition: Rock stars find fame with one outfit, then reach out to their colleagues to form another. The resulting supergroup becomes a crucible for sonic perspectives and raging egos; sometimes there’s an amazing meeting of the minds, and sometimes there’s Zwan. But even the most disastrous examples can’t keep the next generation from giving it a shot. Or three. We’ve rounded up some of these recently-minted marriages and checked out their bloodlines, examining which bands beat the sum of their parts. Read More »
. For the next 24 hours on the 
