What's New(s)?

Gucci Mane drops two new mixtapes today

 























Gucci Mane is no stranger to a multi-album release day. Last year in August, the ATL rapper issued three mixtapes under the World War 3 Volume 1 banner and today the incarcerated artist saw the trend continue with World War 3D.

Two out of the three color-themed records (Purple Album and Green Album) appeared today, and White Album with Peewee Longway will be unveiled on iTunes sometime soon. The former features all new tracks from Brick Squad associate and general oddball Young Thug, while Green Album sees the appearance of slippery trio Migos. Though Gucci mostly sticks to the role of zany curator, the two tapes have more than enough of Guwop to last until the next project inevitably drops.

(You can stream the Purple Album & Green Album(s) here and here, and listen to "Panoramic Roof" from Purple Album below.)

Real Estate offer an acoustic cover of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So"

 

No that's not a misprint seen above. In a live, acoustic session for the French music site La Blogothèque remarkably laidback indie-pop band Real Estate covered Weezer's biting 1994 classic "Say It Ain't So". Granted Real Estate members Martin Courtney, Matt Mondanile, and Alex Bleeker largely defanged the ferocious power-pop standard with their acoustic guitars and mellifluous vocals, but they still maintain the song's undeniable replayability. 

You can see the band tackle the Blue Album cut at the 17 minute mark here, which is preceded by a story of Mondanile and a blue-haired Courtney meeting at Warped Tour. In addition, Real Estate play choice tracks like "Crime" from new album Atlas and  "Easy" from 2011's Days, along with the unreleased effort "White Light" which is set to appear as a B-side on an upcoming single.

(Follow AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day and check back in tomorrow for more of the newest in new.)

What's New(s)?

Listen to a piece of Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross' Gone Girl score now

Trent Reznor has had a more than fruitful collaboration with musical-pal Atticus Ross and director David Fincher, winning an Academy Award for 2010's The Social Network and capturing a Grammy for 2011's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That mutually beneficial partnership continues with the score for the Fincher-directed Gone Girl, which Reznor and Ross premiered in part today on the website FindAmazingAmy. The site for the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's best-selling thriller is designed to resemble local-news coverage of the novel's main-case with clips from the film  and the Reznor/Ross score interspersed throughout.

In addition to the site, the film's first official trailer is now out which can be seen below. In the clip, lead Ben Affleck can be seen arguing with his missing-wife played by Rosamund Pike as Psychedelic Furs' frontman Richard Butler's tender cover of "She" slowly unwinds. It's absolutely gorgeous and fully goes against the grain of the trailer's grim tone.

Gone Girl is out in theaters October 3.

 

G-Side debut new single "Statue"

Huntsville, Alabama's own G-Side make workmanship seem colossally heroic. From 2007 to 2011 they released five albums of increasingly great music, culminating with the dark vibrancy of 2011's iSLAND. That dark-vibrancy wasn't just an artistic creation and in September of 2012 the duo of ST 2 Lettaz and Yung Clova parted ways.

In the time since the split, Lettaz and Clova have mended fences and now they're prepping for Gz to Godz, their 6th official release. To hype the LP, they've debuted the booming "Statue" which has all of the stomp you'd expect from the first single for an album. Produced by frequent-collaborators Block Beattaz, "Statue" mutates from calm horn-laden grinding to an almost gothic, Lex Luger-indebted churn without any growing pains. If they hometown ever does get around to building a statute of the duo, efforts like "Statue" will be the reason why.

Gz to Godz is still without a release date, but you can find "Statue" now through Audio Mack. 




TV's Andy Daly "directs" the video for Real Estate's "Crime

I am an unabashed fan of TV's Andy Daly. From his constant guest-work on show's ranging like The Office, Modern Family, and Eastbound & Down to his generally manic output on the stellar Comedy Bang Bang podcast, there are few (if any) comedic efforts Daly has done that I haven't sought out. He blends blind-confidence and barely togetherness in his characters that you know from the outset is going to end miserably, but you laugh anyway.

That disastrous line-towing is on full-display in the Funny or Die music video for Real Estate's loping "Crime" single, directed by WFMU's Tom Scharpling. In the video, Daly portrays a sad-sack version of Scharpling who is directing the effort because of "money trouble" he's currently experiencing. So to make an extra profit, the "auteur" Scharpling auctions off the "Crime" clip to 24-year-old Jared Frenkel's Blood Lords (about a gang of undead X-Gamers), an Iowa City ceramicist named Valerie Anderson, and senior-citizen Fred Dombrowski Sr. who just wants to see a "tribute to yesteryear." And if the revenue-stream weren't wide enough, Scharpling hooks a Thai restaurant and the Westboro Baptist Church. And though Scharpling rakes in the big bucks at the end, nothing quite goes according to plan.

You can watch the video now through Funny or Die.

(Check back tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s) and follow AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.)

In Revue- 'Atlas' (Real Estate)

I have a liner notes theory about albums I've carried with me for some time now. In my mind the "lyrical quality" of an album can be predicted by whether or not song lyrics are printed in the liners. While it doesn't help guide your decision to purchase an album, it lets you know how much the artist in question values lyrics. A rapper like Earl Sweatshirt bothers to print his knotty lyrics. The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle goes to great lengths in crafting his character studies and puts those stories front and center. In the height of his 60s fame, Bob Dylan would assure the poetic words he wrote would ring out of the liner notes. None of them are necessarily the greatest of their respective fields because their words are so much better, but because they care so deeply about them.

In hearing Real Estate's third LP Atlas I can't help but wonder how they didn't get around to printing the lyrics. Never mind it would be a tremendous boon to listeners who aren't able to move past the sheets of reverb, Atlas is above all a lyrical album. That sounds like a strange statement to be made about a band that's primarily been lumped into fields of "surf-rock" or "indie-pop" but it's absolutely true. Forgoing the positive pool-lounging vibes of their first two records, the New Jersey quintet has given us an album shading more negative. 

Everything is presented in 1080p HD quality on an LCD TV but now there's a subtle smudge on the screen. Contractions are Atlas' primary currency. Lazily spinning around in "Past Lives"'s centrifuge Martin Courtney worries "I can't see the sky." Opening number "Had to Hear" throws Courtney out the door and he knows "I can't go back." The loping drum beats and guitar strums of "Crime" leave plenty of room to realize whatever has been going on has been "pretend" and the concern "I don't wanna die lonely and uptight" is well-founded no matter what age you are. Even the saccharine sentiment of "I'm glad I'm with you" marking the distanced "Primitive" is prefaced by a direly uncertain declaration, "I don't know where I wanna be." These aren't dense lines to parse for weeks on end, they're more like koans. When struggle comes their importance is revealed.

And the notion of something succinct like a koan is an ideal frame of reference for the music captured on Atlas. Martin Courtney and Matt Mondanile's guitars gently ebb and flow; never feeling forced. Notes in suburban country shuffler "The Bend" perform the titular action without ever snapping. A last second turn to sky-searching guitar rock doesn't break kayfabe; it's earned after 4 minutes of languishing on the ground; wishing to be amongst stars. Closer "Navigator" is another one of those blissful shufflers where the Alex Bleeker/Jackson Pollis rhythm section is content to trot along. The repeated line "I'll meet you where the pavement ends," embodies their style throughout much of Atlas.

Nowhere does the group find better meeting places than in twin-highlights "Talking Backwards" and "How I Might Live". "Talking Backwards" is my early frontrunner for the year's best. Emboldened by a tenderly chugging bass, Courtney is able to untie his tongue long enough to admit "the only thing that really matters is the one thing I can't seem to do." It's a song of quiet obsession, where plans are made well in advance and talking is done for hours on end. Stripped of the band's earlier jangle there's nothing obsessive to find on the surface, just shimmering romantic pop. Cascading cymbal washes and almost silent organ swathes immediately posit "How Might I Live" as the antithesis. We've arrived at the bitter end, when the mute button needs to be switched off and "goodbye" must be said. That moment is never found though; instead the decision is made to just keep "rolling on."

"Rolling on" is the group's modus operandi for Atlas. "April's Song"'s hazy wobble doesn't send the band off-course at all. A mush-mouth on the aforementioned "Talking Backwards" doesn't stymie true romance. Not even landscapes sprawling across rambler "Horizon" can keep Real Estate distracted for long. In stripping past obfuscations, they've reached a greater clarity. Real Estate doesn’t need reverb to communicate; now they can speak for themselves.

"Talking Backwards"

"How Might I Live"

"Talking Backwards"- Real Estate

There's a moment in the video for Real Estate's new single "Talking Backwards" that's too perfectly choreographed in such an off-the-cuff clip. For a scant two seconds, the camera pans heavenward to capture a vibrant blue sky with clouds dotting it. It's a serene happening, seen through a grimy van windshield.

That metaphor, no matter how accidental can be appended to the band itself. On previous outings, tranquility hid underneath soft blankets of fuzz. With "Talking Backwards", the first song off of the forthcoming Atlas, the sheets have been stripped off as the band faces sunlight pouring in from the window. A "rude" descriptor like "jangly" no longer carries water. Martin Courtney and Matt Mondanile's guitars quietly chime as the drums pitter-patter and the bass hums. With this newfound clarity, Courtney's syrup-drenched lines stop sounding as sweet. The title reflects his inability to the say the right thing at the right time to a girlfriend who is "too many miles away." An idyllic walk home is ruined by Courtney's stammering. There's one line he can manage to get out right, "the only thing that really matters is the one thing I can't seem to do."

Atlas, the band's third LP, is arriving stateside March 4 via Domino Records.
 

What's New(s)?

Real Estate announces new album

Since releasing their sophomore album Days in 2011, New Jersey-based indie pop band Real Estate has been relatively quiet. Even the past few months were subdued, the silence only broken by the occasional album tease that never materialized.

Last night that silence was shattered with the announcement of their third LP, entitled Atlas. And in addition to unveiling the album, the group has debuted a new track called "Talking Backwards". With ringing guitars, Martin Courtney's distanced vocals, and restrained drumming, the song furthers the band's bid for jangle-pop royalty. You can find a Charles Poekel filmed video for the lush single below along with dates for a North American tour starting in late February. Look for Atlas to arrive March 4 in the U.S. via Domino.

Tour:

2/28 San Francisco, CA - The Independent 3/1 San Francisco, CA - The Independent
3/3 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
3/4 Vancouver, British Columbia - Rickshaw Theatre
3/6 Seattle, WA - Neumos
3/8 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
3/9 Boulder, CO - Fox Theatre
3/11 Los Angeles, CA - Fonda Theatre
3/19 Cambridge, MA - The Sinclair
3/20 Cambridge, MA - The Sinclair
3/21 South Burlington, VT - Higher Ground Ballroom
3/22 Montreal, Quebec - II Motore
3/23 Toronto, Ontario - The Opera House
3/25 Madison, WI - Majestic Theatre
3/26 Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line
3/27 Chicago, IL - Metro
3/28 St Louis, MO - Firebird
3/29 Nashville, TN - Exit/In
3/31 Atlanta, GA - Terminal West
4/1 Charlottesville, VA - Jefferson Theater
4/2 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
4/3 Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
4/5 New York, NY - Webster Hall

The National film Mistaken for Strangers receiving a theatrical release

The National haven't been accused of being comedic, but the band will be unloosening their asphyxiating ties just a bit for the theatrical release of Mistaken for Strangers. Out March 28 in theaters and on iTunes, the documentary filmed by frontman Matt Berninger's brother Tom will follow the exploits of the band while on tour for their 2010 High Violet. As Matt Berninger jokes about is brother in the trailer, "he's more of a metalhead, he think's indie rock is pretentious bulls***." Much of the tension and drama of the film stems from this outsider-view of the indie-rock world, a world where "shredding" is alien, and Tom's struggle to relate to his far-more famous brother.

Mistaken for Strangers is being released through Starz Digital Media and Abramorama. You can preview the film below with the official trailer.

Hear Ty Segall's Fuzz cover the Kinks

The impossibly prolific Ty Segall is something of a garage-rock hero at this point, so it makes sense the San Fran rocker would take to a cover of the Kinks "Till the End of the Day" like a duck to water. The original Dave Davies work was already speeding on high-octane energy, but in the hands of the frenetic Segall the song goes into overdrive. The loveable Britpop harmonies are obscured by Segall's manic wailing and the power-chord fed solos drop like a ton of bricks in this heavyweight setting. In Segall's hand, the song's refrain "we do as we please," comes close to mantra.

The cover is part of an ongoing split 7" series by the Brooklyn label Famous Class, called "Less Artists, More Condos." Segall's contribution is the 10th in the series and will be backed by CCR Headcleaner's "Free the Freaks" on the B-side. The split drops January 21 and all proceeds go to the Ariel Panero Memorial through VH1's "Save the Music" campaign.

Check back in tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s) and follow @AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.