WEEK IN REVIEW: 7/15-7/21

Week In Review is the feature where Kyle (that's me!) goes over current events in music and beyond. It's pretty much the only news post on this blog and as such it is both the best and worst written news you'll read here. You can follow me on Twitter here if you feel so inclined. I promise daily opinions on a whole buffet of topics you don't care about at all.

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*Refused recently made their network television debut with a performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. It's a great performance and all, but it seems like the last thing I would ever expect Refused to do. Reading their breakup announcement that swore up and down that they would never re-unite and stated their disillusionment with the money grabbing culture of music has never felt more.. fake

"The New Noise"

"The Shape of Punk to Come"

*The Alchemist's new video featuring Danny Brown and Schoolboy Q is weird and completely NSFW. I'm completely baffled by it's existence.

*Dan Deacon's new video for America cut "True Thrush" has a very interesting and joy inducing premise. 1 team made a 13 second scene and a 2nd team is shown that scene and has 1 hour to re-construct it from memory. The following team is shown the proceeding scene for a total of 19 different scenes. Don't even bother telling me there's a better music video that comes out this year unless you hate un-relentlessness  fun and America.

*Menomena released a taste of their upcoming 5th album Moms with the track "Heavy Is as Heavy Does". They've lost a member since their last album but their sound doesn't seem to have changed for the worse if this new song is any indication. The explosion of noise towards the mid-point of this song is straight up terrifying. Menomena is one of the most consistent bands of the past 10 years and it appears that they're getting ready to deliver a great album once again.

*The short list for the Polaris Music Prize was announced this week, notable nominees include Fiest, Drake, Fucked Up, Grimes, and Japandroids. I can't exactly explain to you why an American cares about an award for the top Canadian album, but I can tell you that I'll be really disappointed if Fucked Up doesn't become the first repeat winner. 

*Coachella has announced a new "festival at sea" called the S.S. Coachella. Tickets are more than you make in a fucking year and will sell out 12 seconds after they go on sale... good luck!

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*Is it just me or is America increasingly becoming an awful place? My heart goes out to all the people affected by the awful tragedy in Colorado that were just trying to see a movie with their friends. 

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WEEK IN REVIEW: 7/1 - 7/7

Week in review is the weekly feature where Kyle goes over the most noteworthy news events in the worlds of music and beyond. If you think I missed something you can be a prick and tell me about it on twitter. Though, I can't guarantee I won't just block you.

*Animal Collective has unveiled newer artwork for their upcoming album Centipede Hz. It's a huge improvement from the artwork they originally revealed a few weeks ago by most accounts. Personally I kind of liked how terrible the last one was, because the general feeling I have is that the worse an Animal Collective cover is, the better the album winds up being. The only real question surrounding the album art at this point is when the Rolling Stones sends their cease and desist letter,

*Spiritualized has released a new music video for "Little Girl". It features a young girl running away from home and falling in with all sorts of unscrupulous characters. The imagery in this video is a little too obvious to me... a young girl on the road to independence does not need to physically be on a road. At least she's wearing a helmet when she's doing a wheelie at a high speed, I guess.

*Christopher Owens has decided to leave Girls. I guess that means that Girls is no longer a band, but does anyone even kind of care about this? Chris Owens was basically the only member of the band anyway and he's already said that he's going to continue to make music. The real question I have is why he didn't just fire whoever he had the issues with in the band. Does he not know that he's basically in charge and could have pulled a Corgan? guess not.

Sorry for the abbreviated version this week but not much really happened. I guess I could tell you about the shoe that M83 designed or Coachella remaining in Indio, CA but I really don't care about this things. Hopefully next week is more noteworthy or I suddenly broaden my interests in life.

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Week In Review: 4/15 - 4/21

First off I'd like to apologize for the absence of this feature last week, but I was busy last weekend and couldn't get around to it. I'll do my best to make it up to you right now with all of the things that mattered to me in the past week.

1. The music video for The Flaming Lips ft Prefuse 73's "The Supermoon Made Me Want To Pee" from their new all collaborative compilation The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends is wonderfully bizarre. It depicts a place that is somewhat like Earth, but through a thick haze of weird. Eventually a space-man goes on a mission to the moon but things go wrong and he dies and drifts to a far away planet. You then see a caveman (and I mean all of him) take the spaceman's skull out of his helmet and proceed to urinate all over it. Does anyone else feel that the Flaming Lips are just trying to be weird for the sake of being weird in recent years? I fear that Wayne Coyne may legitimately be a crazy person. 

2. Also this week in music videos I've been watching the video for Death Grips' "I've Seen Footage" with a ton of regularity. It's pulsating 90s-esque beat and dance party chorus has elevated it to one of my favorite songs on their excellent major label debut The Money Store. The video featuring hundreds of tour photos in a little over 3 minutes is almost the perfect primer for getting someone into Death Grips, as long as that person isn't an epileptic. The video also pretty much confirms that MC Ride has graffiti-ed Death Grips somewhere in every venue that they've ever played in.  As long as I've got you here, check out some of Death Grips' set at Coachella too.

3. WTF

4. Here's a heartbreaking story about a 10 year old boy who was beaten to death by his stepfather. He's said to have tied the boy to a chair and duct taped a sock into his mouth and beat him with a stick until he died in his family's basement while they slept upstairs. This crime was apparently in retaliation for the child falling behind on his homework. I guess this goes without saying, but murdering kids isn't cool and you shouldn't do it. At least the father confessed to the crime which should avoid a lengthy and painful trial. Interestingly enough, the boy was running down Sycamore street that afternoon and a neighbor intervened. The boy told him that he didn't want to go back home, the boy's stepfather reportedly told the neighbor to tell him that "Daddy promises nothing is going to happen". 

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