The Weeknd: "Initiation"

Though you'd figure a band naming themselves after everyone's favorite time of the week would be one of the many sunny indie pop bands offering summer jams well into the fall, that is clearly not the case.  Instead they opt for a semi-psychedelic (borderline witch house) update on modern R&B.  Since the most forward thinking R&B artists these days seem to be the ones looking backward toward 60's soul standards, artists like The Weeknd and Frank Ocean that are doing something legitimately different while keeping their eye on the future are obviously the new cutting edge.

NSFW warning:  this video is delightfully chock full of what appear to be those slightly unwell American Apparel models in various states of undress.





The Weeknd - 'Initiation' video (nsfw) by MarcosFantu

Chris Young: "Save Water, Drink Beer"

Don't let the fact that Chris Young won the 2006 season of Nashville Star throw you off.  Though Nashville Star was positioned as the country version of American Idol - before AI turned their own focus to country music and made NS irrelevant - the talent on that show was far more authentic and less teeny-bopper than the Simon Cowell juggernaut (first season winner Buddy Jewell has also gone on to legit chart success, but not as much as third place finisher from that same season, Miranda Lambert).

Chris Young is on his third album for RCA Nashville, which has netted him his fourth #1 chart single, "Tomorrow".  Maybe I'll celebrate that song mañana, but for right now it's the weekend which means rationalizations for drinking are still in order:

Real Estate: "It's Real"

With all the cat love being bandied about indiscriminately on the internet, it's nice to see a canine take center stage every now and then.  In fact, this new video for Real Estate's "It's Real" posits a scenario where family movie reels are entirely pet-centric, a scenario which would be positively sickening if it were kitten-based.

Real Estate have been one of the big underground success stories of late, their laid back, sunny jangle pop appealing to both the chillwave zeitgeist as well as your more trad indie pop fans, and it doesn't hurt that their sophomore album, Days, is brilliant from start to finish, with nary a throwaway cut to be found.  You really have to be one of those anti-hipster types who instinctively recoil from anything Pitchfork co-signs to dislike this  band.

Pterodactyl: "School Glue"

Star Wars fan rehashes have long been played out.  Raiders of the Lost Ark was remade shot-for-shot years ago.  In fact, one could make a very good case that the whole tongue-in-cheek homage thing has been done to death and needs to be retired.  But if there's one last turd allowed out of the poop chute before we shut 'er done I nominate this Superman nod, a mischievous romp through the opening scenes of the 1978 classic which essentially laid the blueprint for all modern superhero movies.


Pterodactyl - "School Glue" from stereogum on Vimeo.

Co La: "Egyptian Peaches"

Matthew Papich takes a time out from being a member of Ecstatic Sunshine to indulge his Co La solo project.  "Egyptian Peaches" is custom engineered for the beach.  Leave that John Grisham bestseller at home - it's the same as the last one anyway - and bump this elastic groove instead.


Co La-Egyptian Peaches by NNA Tapes

Thurz: "Niggas"

Shit, now this is different.  Ambient rap.  Thurz raps nearly a capella over a windswept background for most of  "Niggas"' duration.

Smoking Section has a free download for a limited time of the full length L.A. Riot.  Get it, bang it, sleep it off.

Childish Gambino: "Bonfire"

Now this is more like it.  After hearing several treacly, emo-to-the-nth cuts off Donald Glover's upcoming Camp, I needed something a little feisty and gratuitous to restore my faith, to reassure me that Childish Gambino was not turning into a self-absorbed troll of high school poetry introspection.  And here is that reassurance.

Get More: Childish Gambino, Music, More Music Videos

TesseracT: "Eden"

I admit when it comes to prog (as opposed to technical death metal) I'm not always on the ball, at the top of my game.  I just started hearing about TesseracT maybe a year ago because Rob from Metal Injection is always talking about them.  I don't quite like this the way I like the new Opeth but for a band that apparently used to play Meshuggah-style djent this is pretty impressive artistic growth.  I suppose.  This cut is off their first album and I can't be bothered to dig for old demos, so I'm kind of guessing that their early djent stuff sucked.  Most of it does.  Fuck I'm cranky.

Big End Bolt: "Grip Vice Torture"

Technical death metal from Russia!  How do they manage to get in sufficient practice time when they spend all of their days on the bread line?  It's because metal is food too, people.

Uh, so, not really much to talk about here.  Big End Bolt's first album, Mechanical Race Creation, just came out in September on something called Coyote Records... this video is the first I've ever heard of them... mmm, they're Russian, did I already say that?... fuck it, I'm just going to link to their Facebook page and pretend I did somebody a service somewhere.

Ice, Sea, Dead People: "Ultra Silence"

PTO.  For most people it stands for "paid time off".  For me it usually stands for "passed the (fuck) out".  I'd intended to get caught up on a lot of writing over the past five days, but instead I couldn't be bothered to even keep up with my regular posting.  Is it too late to pretend I was out of town and preoccupied?  Fuck it, I'm talking into a void anyway.

Playing catch up - here or elsewhere - always puts me in a shitty, antagonistic mood, so this seems a good opportunity to clear out my backlog of heavy shit.  Ice, Sea, Dead People do not sound like Iceage but they ply the kind of amped up, infectious upbeat post-hardcore that would make both bands great tour mates.  Also they both start with Ice and I don't really need my free association skills being taxed too heavily right now, thank you very much.  Hopefully the above image is of the correct album.