Olympic Hangover

First Things First: No, that picture is not photo-shopped, and no, I have no idea where it's from, but I hope it was taken at the most Couture fashion show in Paris or something.

Now that the Olympics are over, I have no fucking clue what I'm going to do with the 2 hrs of each night/morning I've spent skimming through the primetime block of events(okay, sometimes it was less, if all I had to look forward to was that track and field shit. sorry, but I just don't give a fuck about Jamaica). Wait, I started this thing; problem solved. Now onto the music, which I've gotten into again now that I've de-glued my eyes from the tv.

First up is highlights from the Sunset Junction music festival, which I attended on Saturday and had a fucking blast at. It was my first year, and I learned two very valuable lessons:

1) Never ride the rides, even if drunk, semi-attractive girls run up to you and ask you to take them. They were built by hateful carnies and are designed to tear apart necks and kill spirits. Just say no to carnies!


2)Whenever the Cold War Kids come into town, fucking see them. They surpassed their live show hype for me, and made me 300% more excited for the new album next month. All the tracks they previewed were gold, but only one has been released for public consumption so far:


Cold War Kids-Something is Not Right With Me (right click to save)




[Bonus: Click HERE to stream part of another track, set to a rather cool video montage. If you need another reason to get hyped for the record or their return to LA in a few weeks, this might do the trick.]

Also playing at the festival this weekend was a local band known as The Henry Clay People, which is slowly but surely gathering a solid following on the Silverlake scene, thanks to the constant plays they've been getting on indie103. They've got some decent songs in their catalog, but the new single is very impressive, and should only fuel their fire:


The Henry Clay People - You Can Be Timeless (right click to save)

This past week brought two new LP releases of note. By now, I'm sure you've heard Bloc Party released their third album digitally, THREE DAYS after it was announced. Appropriately titled Intimacy, it finds the band stripping away the ambitious but flawed excesses of last year's Weekend in the City, with a heavy emphasis on their electronic elements. It's a pretty successful effort, and a pleasant surprise to have at all, but still, nothing comes close to the highs of Silent Alarm, though the one-two punch of the icy "Signs" and the red-hot "One Month Off" comes mighty close, halfway through the album. Here's the latter:

Bloc Party - "One Month Off" (right click to save)

Last week's other new release is a different kind of surprise. The Walkmen are best known as that band from the Volkswagen ad a few years ago (Their song "We've Been Had" played over that ridiculously over-exposed commercial where those hipster douches drove through their childhood), but their new LP is nothing short of a revelation. On a whim, I downloaded it last week, and it grabbed me immediately. Singer Hamilton Leithauser's ace songwriting and haunting vocals have grown on me even more with each listen, to the point where putting it on a best of '08 list seems a no-brainer. At the very least, in a summer full of sleeper albums, this may be the greatest one of all. You can download You & Me off i-tunes, and I really can't recommend it enough. Here's a taste:


------Song of the Week-----

The Walkmen - "Postcards from Tiny Islands" (right click to save)



--------------------------------------------

And now, lest The Walkmen steal too much of that other band's thunder, I present something just for fun:


Bloc Party vs Madonna - "Groovecopter" (right click to save)




---