Though nothing will keep us together
We could steal time, just for one day
We can be heroes, for ever and ever
What d’you say?
- David Bowie

On Tuesday, I mentioned The Current’s album of the week: War Child presents Heroes. Turns out that it wasn’t the only charitable album to come out recently. The second is called Dark Was The Night and it was produced by Red Hot, an AIDS awareness foundation. I thought I’d take a little time today to give a short review the two albums.

War Child presents Heroes

First, the charity:

“War Child was founded upon a fundamental goal: to advance the cause of peace through investing hope in the lives of children caught up in the horrors of war.”

The concept behind the album is not necessarily new, but pretty cool anyway. All of the songs on the album are covers, but the original artist got to pick the artist that they would most like to remake their song.

Because of this, there are some fairly big artists playing on this album. From Beck to TV on the Radio; The Hold Steady to Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Franz Ferdinand. I highly recommend this album.

Dark Was The Night

“Red Hot was founded on the premise that even without a cure, AIDS remains a preventable disease and music is a great vehicle to raise money and awareness for it.”

This double album collects 31 tracks from today’s biggest indie acts. Produced by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National, the album contains both covers and original material from such bands as Feist, Ben Gibbard, Bon Iver, The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, Spoon, Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, and The New Pornographers to name a few. Seriously, I editted myself in the list of bands above.

Pitchfork gave the album an 8.6 saying if nothing else it ends up being a bit long – The Decemberists have an 8-minute song, which is topped by Sufjan Stevens’ 10-minute bout with awesomeness. I would definitely recommend both albums.

Today’s song comes from the Dark Was The Night compilation. It’s a duet between Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) and Feist. Check out Train Song.

And I want to walk around with you,
And I want to walk around with you,
Just you.
- Animal Collective

It’s interesting to me how far artists are willing to go with an idea. For example, all of the members of Los Campesinos! have changed their last name to Campesino. Or, Animal Collective, whose members go by names such as Panda Bear and Geologist. We won’t even get into Buckethead, other than to say that I don’t want to know what his face looks like, always being in a chicken bucket.

Do such drastic actions allow one to get that much deeper into their music, or does it lead to jumping beyond the boundaries of what is considered good music? I can compare it to certain pieces of modern art. The piece may make complete sense to the artist, but does it make sense to anyone else?

Animal Collective aren’t exactly known as the most accessible group around. In 2007, members Avey Tare and Kria Brekken created a fairly straightfoward album and then decided that it sounded better backwards, releasing it that way.

There’s not much of a point here. I’ve just noticed that the music I find myself playing here is a little on the weird side and I’d like to admit it so that you know I haven’t jumped off the deep end and only listen to the weird stuff.

In fact, I’ve got some interesting stuff planned for later. The Current’s album of the week is a new release from War Child International, “an organization dedicated to working to help children affected by war” which is a cause I would hope most people could get behind. I have a previous album of theirs called Help: A Day In The Life.

This album contains covers from many different bands including an awesome cover of David Bowie’s Heroes that isn’t by The Wallflowers. It’s instead by noeviltwin favorite TV on the Radio. Make sure to check it out.

Today’s song comes from Animal Collective and is called Summertime Clothes. Enjoy!

I gotta say. I’m disappointed with the quality of music that has come out so far this year. Don’t get me wrong, there’s good music – Bon Iver and Andrew Bird come to mind right away – but I’m finding it hard to find something to play here. I know, nothing’s worse than a blogger complaining about nothing to write about. I’ll move on.

Los Campesinos! are coming to Minneapolis! Saturday, April 4th, which is fun. Most of the concerts that I’ve made it to recently have been the middle of the week kind that force me to sacrifice sleep or skip a day of work (I always seem to choose the sacrifice sleep option).

Today, I’m going to play something by Antony and the Johnsons, but I feel like I should give a heads up / warning. Why? Well, he apparently is a love him or hate him kind of artist. There is no middle ground. It’s his voice that bugs people. Personally, I find myself getting lost in the orchestral backing music.

Good example just happened right now. I’m currently listening to the album trying to figure out what song to post. Erin walked in and asked what I was doing, saying that it sounded, “like the cat meowing.” Trust me, it doesn’t sound like a cat meowing.

Actually, a bit of coincidence, Antony and the Johnsons were in Minneapolis last night and stopped by The Current to do an in-studio session. I have not listened to it yet.

Now that I’ve scared you enough, you have to listen to the song. Check out Kiss My Name.

I wanna bring back the bison.
I wanna try.
- Matt & Kim

Happy Tuesday! Did you have pancakes for breakfast this morning? Wash it down with a Red Stripe? Hooray beer? Yeah, me either.

As a warning, I’m all over the place this morning.

I gave up on my wish that the new Matt & Kim album, Grand, would show up on emusic, so I bought the album over the weekend. Not just the MP3’s, the actual album. Sweet.

Sidebar – I stopped writing the previous sentence to go to emusic to verify that Matt & Kim still haven’t shown up. I don’t want people to comment on this saying, “Hey, this album is on emusic, you e-idiot!”

I was listening to the new album while running at the gym yesterday and decided that this is some good running music. Why? Well, Matt kept repeating, “Don’t slow down,” on the song, Don’t Slow Down. Amazing how that synced up, huh?

There was an interesting interview with Matt from Matt & Kim in Pitchfork about a month ago where he talks about the commercialization trend of current indie music. There are a lot of things that current indie bands do that they could never get away with even five years ago.

Between the internet and commercial backing music, I’ve found myself consistently surrounded by good, indie music. I see it as a good thing. The ability for indie groups to make a little cash while keeping their ticket prices down only helps the industry.

Today’s song surprisingly comes from Matt & Kim. It’s the longest track on their new album, and my initial favorite. Check out Lessons Learned.

And you must confess that at times like these,
Hopefulness is tantamount to hopelessness.
- Los Campesinos

Thursday was an interesting day for me. It’s no secret that I’m not very good at taking care of my teeth. Well, I take care of my teeth fine if you ignore all the pop I drink. So I had me some cavities that needed some filling. After my dentist had been working for a while with his drill, he tried to lighten the mood by leaning in and asking me:

“So, did you see American Idol last night?”

It’s hard to make someone laugh while their in the middle of getting a cavity filled, but I was pretty close. Unfortunately, my dentist was asking a somewhat serious question. Me? I’m a little more annoyed with American Idol this year than normal.

Most of that has to do with the fact that it’s preventing me from seeing new episodes of Fringe until April as well as having to see Randy Jackson wearing that ridiculous African/Hippie shirt when I happened to turn to Fox early on Tuesday.

Short piece of news here, apparently Santogold has changed her name to just Santi which is only half true because her real name was already Santi. Well, then she changed it to Santigold. Why? This guy doesn’t like she took his name. He’s quite the character.

Like I promised, you’re getting two songs today. One I heard in the car on the way home from work on Tuesday and the other is a band that’s been sitting in my eMusic saved for later (where bands go to die) pile. Check out Anya Marina’s All The Same to Me and PPP (Platinum Pied Pipers) with On A Cloud.

And how can we win,
When fools can be kings?
Don’t waste your time,
Or time will waste you.
- Muse

That quote fits the Grammys, right? I tried to watch The Grammys on Sunday night. Call it a research assignment. The problem is that I’ve never been one to watch awards shows in general, let alone the Grammys, so I ended up switching and watching 5-10 minute intervals. Here are some highlights of what I caught:

• Carrie Underwood singing the same phrase thirty times in a row. I caught the end of whatever song she was doing. It didn’t sound like a bad song, just a little over the top. Then again, if you’re at the Grammys you might as well play the song you play for your encores, right?

• Hannah Mont-err… Miley Cyrus and eMusic top-seller Taylor Swift singing with their eyes closed. This is when I realized that the Southern accent might have a decent chance of taking over the country.

• Kid Rock singing another classic rock rip off. This is where I said enough was enough. I can’t visit a world where Kid Rock is still a relevant player. Looks like I’ll have to cancel my tickets to the mobile home expo later this year.

• EDIT: I apparently missed a pretty cool part of last night. Radiohead playing with the USC marching band. Let’s see if I’ve figured out how to embed youtube here.

In other news,  rumors about a new Muse album (and tour!) in September have started up. That would be fun. Last I heard, they had been moving it out to 2010 at least.

I don’t really have a song right now. The eMusic credits don’t refresh until Wednesday afternoon, so I’ll double up the music in my next post this week.

I’m all out of love,
I’m so lost without you…
- Air Supply

Only two days until Air Supply plays the Rochester Mayo Civic Center! I’d go, but it’s on Sunday night and I have an early meeting on Monday. Really, that’s the only thing keeping me from loving me some air supply. Seriously. No, not really.

I’ve heard that they’ve already descended on my little town and are resting in a local hotel. Resting is probably the appropriate word. Who’s picturing old guys sitting low in hotel room chairs blasting soft rock right now?

Sorry if I’ve bummed you out about not being able to see Air Supply on Sunday. I didn’t really have much else to talk about. I could rant about how iTunes has become beyond bloatware and is currently taking my computer hostage, but that’s probably better suited for another day.

Today’s song comes from a band whose album came out on January 20th, and was kind of lost in the shuffle because of it. They’re called The Boxer Rebellion and they’re out of England. They’ve got a very The Fray feel about some of their songs, but not in a bad way. You know, like with The Fray. Check out Evacuate.

Do this thing, this type of thing,
Put a little money in this type of thing,
I’ve got nothing to worry about,
Nothing to worry about.
- Peter Bjorn and John

I remember when Peter Bjorn and John first came out I assumed that it was a duo between Peter Bjorn and his cohort, John. Only later did I find out that it was a trio – Bjorn was not a last name, but the first name of the third member.

At some point last year, Kanye West decided that he wanted to hitch his wagon the PB&J train and asked them to be his backing band for a show in Sweden after he used Young Folks as a backing track. Yeah, I know. Old news, but it does lead up to the next part.

Apparently PB&J passed along their new single, Nothing To Worry About on to Kanye, who proceeded to upload it to his blog. I wouldn’t recommend downloading it from him, though. Apparently you may have to download a (probably) malware-filled program to get it. I picked up the song from the Amazon MP3 service.

This entire post up to now was just an excuse to play their new single, but I still have some things on my mind that I thought I’d throw out there.

The new Antony and the Johnsons album, The Crying Light, is getting  good reviews all around from reviewers and “Why would anybody listen to this?” reviews from the general public. I find myself somewhere in the middle. Yes, his voice is not exactly welcoming, and it’s nothing you should be playing at a party, but it’s really beautiful music. Will I actually pick up the album? I’m not sure.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, here is your song. Check out Nothing To Worry About.

P.S. If you click on the album cover below, it’ll take you to their website, which will prove that the mustache is making a comeback.