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Whilst a Nuclear War may be about to break out in N.Korea, London was rather muggy. DiS stripped down to our shorts and made some Gumbo with Grizzly Bear's recipe and wrote about various other stuff.
Here's the highlights of this week on DiS as a Spotify playlist, with commentary from DiS' Editor:
1) CSS 'The Knife' (Grizzly Bear cover)
This week the fellas from Grizzly Bear were DiS' guest-editors. They picked their favourite three covers, this is my favourite from those Brazilian party kidz, which kicks this playlist off rather well.
2) Phoenix 'Love Like a Sunset - Part I'
Their fabulous new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was released this week. We have a review of that (by me, just as soon as I've done the other 42 things on my to-do list!) coming up very soon. Also, we have Grizzly Bear in conversation with them, which will be up on the site later today. However, before all that, I wanted to flag up this song, as this is THE song of the year so far, in my humble opinion (as posted on DiS' Twitter and on the boards earlier this week).
3) Women 'Shaking Hands'
DiS has been on a bit of a 'records we missed from earlier this year' review amnesty, which will continue for the next few weeks. Women's self-titled debut is by far one of the stand-out alt.albums of the year so far, read the DiS review of it here.
4) Sigur Ros 'Staralfur'
Did you hear the news that they have nearly finished making a new album?. Won't be out 'til 2010 tho [sadface].
5) Friendly Fires 'Strobe'
This album is still on heavy rotation 'round my place and I'm crossing a few fingers for them that it'll get nominated for some awards, as it's truly one of the finest debuts from a British indie-pop band in recent times. This week, they announced a bit of a WTF gig in the dark?!
6) Johnny Foreigner 'Salt, Pepper and Spinderella' (Bloc Party remix)
We put up Part 4 of the JoFo tour diary this week.
7) Patrick Wolf 'Hard Times'
Our verdict on The Bachelor came from Lauren Strain. She liked it. Read her review.. And if you missed it the epic three part interview I did with Mr. Wolf, it be here:
8) Crystal Stilts 'Love is a Wave'
Miss Roby declared this the "single of the week" in this week's single column. We concur. Nice things were also said about them in our Dot to Dot review. Oh and if you missed it, Dom Gourlay interviewed them earlier this year.
9) Deerhunter 'Game of Diamonds'
Cox and Co. released Rainwater Cassette Exchange this week, read Lukowski's review of it here.. This week we also uploaded to the internetz Brainlove's review of Deerhunter's show in London at the Scala last week.
10) Wilco 'Ashes of American Flags'
DiS was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of former Wilco member Jay Bennett. Jeff Tweedy had this to say about him: "We are all deeply saddened by this tragedy. We will miss Jay as we remember him - as a truly unique and gifted human being and one who made welcome and significant contributions to the band's songs and evolution. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends in this very difficult time." News story here.
11) Glen Campbell 'Wichita Lineman'
This is easily one of the greatest songs of all-time. Thanks to Chris Bear for reminding us on this fantastic roadtrip mixtape.
12) Grizzly Bear 'On a Neck, On a Spit'
This week's playlist obviously wouldn't be complete without some tracks from our guest-editors. Strangely Veckatimest, which was released this week via Warp, isn't on Spotify, yet. But you can read our 9/10 review of it here and listen to it on their myspace.
13) Department of Eagles 'Waves of Rye'
A little something from Daniel Rossen from Grizzly Bear's side-project Department of Eagles, taken from their fabulous album In Ear Park.
14) Grandaddy 'The Crystal Lake'
A classic. The former Grandaddy leading man has a new solo album. Sadly that's not on Spotify yet either but we did have an epic chat with him, which has been serialized on the site this week:
15) Feist 'My Moon My Man' (Grizzly Bear remix)
A rather delicious remix from this week's guest editors. This is a good opportunity to mention Daniel Rossen's mum Wendy, who said she was worried that Leslie Feist - who wasn't sounding too great on the radio, and maybe needs a rest - as part of her fascinating high-watermark-for-any-takeover-week column.
16) Alessi's Ark 'Woman'
There's an awful lot of mumbling under-people's-breath that Alessi might be the UK's answer to Feist and/or Joanna Newsom, and even a few brave souls suggesting she'll 'do a Laura Marling' and be up for the Mercury Music Prize this year. I'm still a bit 'whatevs' about her. Maybe, with all this high-end talk, the bar has been set unfairly high for the young lady, as, in his review of Notes from the Treehouse, new DiS contributor Richard Wink, had some rather nice things to say about her debut longplayer.
17) Speech Debelle 'Go then, bye'
An apt track end with, not just because of the title but also because she's also the face of the last ever Plan B magazine. Daniel Ross reviewed her new record Speech Therapy this week too.
And that's yer lot. Happy listening, reading, commenting and not thinking-about-nuclear-war.
Listen to this playlist here: Spotifriday #5
