"Heavenly Father"- Bon Iver

Though last year's soaring LP Repave by Volcano Choir essentially acted as a new Bon Iver effort, it's really been three years since the act Justin Vernon came to fame with has issued anything new. In the run-up to Repave's release in September, Vernon expounded on the silence surrounding Bon Iver, saying "I really have to be in a specific headspace to even begin to illuminate an idea that would create another Bon Iver record, and I'm just not there." At the time his words were effectively a death knell, terrifying fans (myself included) that a follow-up to Bon Iver Bon Iver would never come.

Today then is a cause for minor celebration amongst Bon Iver torch-carriers. As previously reported on the blog, Bon Iver is contributing a new effort to the upcoming Zach Braff film Wish I Was Here and today Line of Best Fit points out the song "Heavenly Father" has officially debuted. In terms of sound, it owes at least a bit of rent to Repave closer "Almanac" which was similarly constructed around an electronic figure. That said, the synthesizer in "Almanac" was far more confident and forward-moving than the electro manipulation we hear in "Heavenly Father". The piece hiccups and stutters in shifted pitches as Vernon's familiar ache floats atop. At times invading hi-hats tics make you think "Heavenly Father" could launch into trap territory if given enough time. But the song doesn't have that kind of certainty. Vernon's perpetually wondering if he can ever come to accept a higher power, or so it seems. "I was never sure how much of you I could let in," could be a religious skeptic's call to the Lord or an explanation offered to a former lover why things didn't work out. With "Heavenly Father" Bon Iver show why love and religion aren't the right answer for everyone, they're riddled with far too many questions that can never fully be answered.

(You can listen to "Heavenly Father" now through the All Songs Considered Media Player on NPR and look for the Wish I Was Here soundtrack to drop digitally July 15.)

"Little Mouth"- Los Campesinos!

"Sedate" isn't exactly what you expect or maybe even want from manic indie pop band Los Campesinos!, but it's precisely what you get on "Little Mouth", their cantering effort for the upcoming film Benny & Jolene. Featuring Craig Roberts (of Submarine) and Fresh Meat's Charlotte Ritchie, the movie concerns a young indie folk duo struggling to become the next big sensation. 

Seen in that light Los Campesinos!'s contribution to the film, which opens tomorrow in select cities, starts to make more sense. Though "hyper-literate" may be a faulty word to use in this scenario, Kim Campesinos' need to make up the distance between her and a significant other is its own struggle. Each hour away feels "more like two." Robbed of a physical presence she lingers on details of nearly dry spit settling in a flower bed and specks of dirt still clinging to rough hands. When you no longer have someone you care about around, any shred of their existence is accepted. Melodically whispered over a panoply of: gentle guitar strumming, inconspicuous piano trilling, and nibbling percussion, Campesinos' problem is one that's crushingly personal, but instantly relatable. In that sense "Little Mouth" is a welcome fit into Los Campesinos!'s glum, but steadily maturing catalog.

"We Love Our Hole"- Bonnie "Prince" Billy & the Cairo Gang

(From Stereogum)

Under the nom de plume Bonnie "Prince" Billy, indie-folk legend Will Oldham has proven he loves nature. Not in any "flowers in your hair," Mother Earth sense, but in the most simple way possible. Oldham's content to lean up against a mighty oak and let the Sun crackle on his face. He'd rather stare up in naked wonder at the hawks in the sky than face his troubles on the ground. He's compared himself to "a duck" and has declared "My Home is the Sea". Even on the despondent "Nomadic Revery (All Around)" from 1999's defining I See A Darkness, Oldham found time to lie down on the ground and gaze upwards.

Considering his unadorned appreciation of nature and his own filmic career, it's a small surprise he hasn't recorded a track for a surf movie before. Granted surf films aren't quite a dime a dozen, but still you would've thought by now some music supervisor would've heard a slow cresting Bonnie "Prince" Billy song and fast tracked it to a director. Spirit of Akasha, a new documentary about the 1971 Australian surf-classic Morning of the Earth, has provided Oldham with that opportunity. And joined by former collaborator Emmett Kelly (of the Cairo Gang), he's seized the chance. "We Love Our Hole" has every hallmark of a Bonnie "Prince" Billy work. From the tender double-tracked vocals to the taciturn guitar riff, everything is something you've heard before. But that's precisely why the effort succeeds. Billy and Kelly aren't chasing a new idea to the ends of the Earth. They'll wait until the wave comes to them and ride it into the sunset.





Backed with "I'll Be Alright", the "We Love Our Hole" single is out through Empty Cellar on June 17.

"Here"- Pharrell, Johnny Marr, & Hans Zimmer

Orchestral folk-singer isn't exactly a hat you'd expect omnipotent singer/rapper/producer Pharrell to don, but on Amazing Spider-Man 2 track "Here" he wears it extremely well. After manning the boards on faux-disco cut "It's On Again" with Alicia Keys and Kendrick Lamar, "Here" sees Pharrell working with the far more random duo of Smiths-guitarist Johnny Marr and go-to film-scorer Hans Zimmer. Even knowing ahead of time that the three would be working together on the superhero flick's soundtrack didn't stop me from marveling at the credit list when I first saw it. If I was forced to create a more-random trio to craft a song this year, under penalty of death, I'm not sure if I could.

As I said in the opening though, Pharrell wears the hat of orchestral folk-singer incredibly well and not simply because he looks great in any hat. The collaboration works because no one is stepping on anyone's toes. Hans Zimmer's strings don't have the same massive oomph that marks his other superhero scores. They still glide skyward, but it never feels like an overreach. Likewise, Marr abandons his guitar wizardry for a plaintive acoustic figure that undergirds Pharrell's tender crooning. Lyrically nothing Pharrell is saying is revelatory; he generally sticks to unfettered declarations of love "on all existence." But he's so remarkably self-assured that you buy every word he's saying. By pulling back the curtains, "Here" places the spotlight firmly on Pharrell and he doesn't shy away in the slightest. 

(The Amazing Spider-Man 2 soundtrack is out April 22, but you can hear "Here" on Stereogum now.)

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.)

"It's On Again" ft. Kendrick Lamar- Alicia Keys

If there's a key to the city for soundtrack features, go ahead and hand it to Kendrick Lamar for 2014. In the same month he laid waste to the psychedelic wonderland of Tame Impala's "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" he's returned to decimate the Pharrell produced, Alicia Keys anchored "It's On Again" with the brute force of the Rhino. While the doleful, twinkling keys demand a degree of reverence, Lamar has none to offer. He's snarling before the first note can ring out, the veins in his head bulging as he offers a song "for the warrior, for you and I." He name checks "David and Goliath" and while his runaway success puts him far closer to the Philistine at this point, his intensity befits the scrappy underdog. He's willing to run through the flames because he can see what's waiting on the side. He'll land on his dreams, no matter how much exertion or exhaustion it takes.

For her part, Alicia Keys doesn't appear to be exerting herself at all. She croons over Pharrell's slowly propulsive dance beat with ease. Her breathless exhortations to "go on" disappear almost as soon as they are said, fading into a billowy cloud of silky disco strings and blooping keyboards. In that way Keys acts as the yin to Lamar's yang; a cold passivity to a red-hot ferociousness. She's willing to "sacrifice my ego" because she has no need for such inanities. She'll go it alone as a shadow in the middle of the night. Keys is no less of a warrior than Lamar, she's just far more reserved about her profession.





"It's On Again" is available through iTunes tomorrow.

What's New(s)?

Cloud Nothings and Wavves collaborative album "almost done"

Dylan Baldi's new album as part of Cloud Nothings Here and Nowhere Else is out next Tuesday (April 1), but evidently Baldi's not taking any time off between projects. According to Exclaim, the frontman has been operating in Los Angeles, working on a collaborative effort with fuzzy surf-rock king Hathan Williams of Wavves.

In talking about the project with Exclaim, Baldi says the album is "almost done" and the seeds for the collabo were sewn in Paris. "I woke up one morning hungover in Paris, which is where I usually live, and I just had a text on my phone that was like, 'Yo, wanna make a record together?' I was like, '...Okay!' And that was it. It sounded fun." Baldi went on to add that the partnering resembled a cross between the two artists' work with "another element that wasn't present in either of our music before."

While you wait for the project, check out recent clips from Cloud Nothings and Wavves, and look for Here and Nowhere Elese out April 1 through Carpark Records. 

New Zach Braff film to feature music from Bon Iver, Cat Power, Chris Martin, and yes the Shins

 

Last spring Zach Braff launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund Wish I Was Here, his first directorial work since 2004's Garden State. In the time since, the film received over $3 million in funding and premiered at Sundance in January.

Now Wish I Was Here has an opening date of July 18 in New York/Los Angeles with a wide-release the following Friday (July 25). In discussing the film with Entertainment Weekly, Braff opened up about the film's soundtrack which will feature a collaboration with Coldplay's Chris Martin and Chan Marshall of Cat Power. According to Braff the work will serve as the film's title track and is "one of the most amazing songs ever." In addition to that "amazing song", the soundtrack will include new songs from Bon Iver and Garden State centerpiece the Shins who will "change your life."  No word yet if the Martin/Marshall effort will do the same. Until it comes, you can always enjoy the video for the Shins' "New Slang".

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

"Backwards"- Kendrick Lamar & Tame Impala

"I feel relentless," "King" Kendrick Lamar snarls over a bed of lush strings and palpitating drum beats reconstructed from Tame Impala's 2012 psych tour-de-force "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”. Leave it to Kendrick to best describe his pace since he dropped the game-changing good kid, m.A.A.d. city in 2012. He could've comfortably rested on his laurels, taken a year off to enjoy the immense spoils his major label debut afforded. Instead he soaked the entire rap game in gasoline and struck a match, then took the BET Cypher to a cataclysmic new level. It seemed as though the only "fun" he was having in 2013 was sliding in on the chintzy beat of Schoolboy Q's "Collard Greens" from Oxymoron. But even then he was promising to swipe girlfriends and doing bilingual double-time in his lightning verse.

That relentlessness is put into 20/20 focus late in Lamar's first verse when he lets everyone know, "this is what I live for." Rapping isn't what he's doing in between commercial spots or movie cameos. It's his lifeblood carrying him towards "immortality." And even if he reaches it, with his workmanlike nature he'll start the race over. He'll appear with Imagine Dragons just to prove traditional rap can't pin him in. He'll pop up on a Sci-Fi film soundtrack and turn what was once effusive into something much more ferocious. Now Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker's tender coos aren't the focal point, they're a dire break from a verbal barrage. "I got my hopes up again, oh no... not again," Parker whispers from the bottom of a psilocybin canyon. That's all Kendrick Lamar does circa 2014 and he's yet to disappoint.

The Divergent soundtrack, which also features pairings between A$AP Rocky/Gesaffelstein and Chance the Rapper/Pia Mia is out March 11 and you can hear "Backwards" now through Pitchfork Advance.