Floor dancing pioneer Panther has digitally released Yourself which, until now, was made available only on vinyl at Panther live shows and quickly sold out. The album contains ten previously unreleased tracks and “You Don’t Want Your Nails Done” from his previous full length release, Secret Lawns.
Check out one of the tracks from the release below.
Buy Yourself at: iTunes
In honor of Chris Cohen, who is leaving Deerhoof to do The Curtains, the band made their new E.P. available as a free download last week. The E.P. features the band covering The Beatles, Canned Heat, Herman's Hermits, as well as My Bloody Valentine. These tracks are in addition to several live cuts found on the record. Enjoy!
10. Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers - Buy It
9. Andrew Bird - Mysterious Production of Eggs - Buy It
8. New Pornographers - Twin Cinema - Buy It
7. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - S/T - Buy It
6. Animal Collective - Feels - Buy It
5. Spoon - Gimme Fiction - Buy It
4. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy - Buy It
3. My Morning Jacket - Z - Buy It
2. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary - Buy It
1. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois - Buy It
Since finals are over I FINALLY had a chance to sit down and listen to Broom from SSLYBY. I can certainly say the album's great, and everything I had hoped for, considering how long I had to wait to give it a proper listen!
As one reviewer put it, "Broom might just be the best album I have heard in 2005 from anyone. From the opener, 'Pangea,' with its sweet ba-ba-da melodies, to 'Gwyneth,' the gorgeous closer, Broom is an insanely good debut." This is definitely a case that can easily be made.
The track "House Fire" is one of those sweet songs that you almost have to put on repeat, and listen to over and over again, until you fall asleep. I know because that's what I did last night. I can't get the song out of my head now that I mention it. That being said, you can do that with pretty much any song on Broom.
So what does this all mean? It means you need to buy the album and join the tape club while you're at it. Who knows what great stuff will land in your mailbox because of it!
2005 Mercury Prize Winner for Album of the Year
Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
The 1974 photo of Andy Warhol superstar Candy Darling on the cover of Antony and the Johnsons' second full length, I Am a Bird Now, is the perfect complement to the ghostly hymnals that flit and sigh behind its black and white shadows.A melancholy but arrestingly beautiful image, it depicts Darling on her deathbed; bright flowers float behind her upturned arm like a cluster of soft, pale moons radiating light onto the bleached sea of sheets in which she's drowning.
Besides being a tight aesthetic move, the image also links Antony to the early fabulousness of downtown New York, reminding the informed viewer not only of Darling's too-early death from leukemia, but the AIDS-related passing of the photographer himself, Peter Hujar in 1987 (the same year Warhol died, following routine gall bladder surgery). Klaus Nomi was already buried by then, and the Downtown scene was getting too close to saying goodbye to Cookie Mueller, Keith Haring, David Wojnarowicz, and Antony's sometime doppelganger Leigh Bowery (the subject of Boy George's musical Taboo), among others-- all victims of the AIDS virus.
This visual meditation on death and radical history smoothly conjures the family tree upon which pale, angelic Antony perches. The vocalist/pianist moved from California to NYC after seeing the documentary Mondo New York, lured by the 1980s cabaret scene it depicted. Quite fittingly, his first performance came with a musical troupe called Blacklips at the famed Downtown venue, the Pyramid. Jump now to 2003, when Antony opened for Lou Reed and sang the Velvet Underground classic "Candy Says" (yes, for Candy Darling) as an encore after most performances. Knowing all of this-- the very important history in that cover-- helps to understand the melancholy, sense of loss, and rapturous joy in these 10 tracks.
-Brandon Stosuy, February 10, 2005 via Pitchfork
