Music

Artist, Ai Weiwei has released "Dumbass," his first single from his forthcoming album, The Divine Comedy—a rock album inspired by the 81-day incarceration in a Chinese prison that shot Ai Weiwei to international fame . 

This morning, Zooey Deschanel premiered She & Him's latest video for their song "I Could've Been Your Girl" on her co-founded site, hellogiggles. She writes, "After seven years and four albums with She & Him, I figured it was about time I took a crack at making a video for a song I wrote."

Sometimes when you get albums to review, they send you a download link for the album and you can have it and load it up in your iTunes. It's a nice little bonus to have after the review is done. It's a treat. When I got sent Hanni El Khatib's Head In The Dirt, it was a streaming link. No download...

It is so great to have David Bowie back. His latest video, directed by Floria Sigismondi, portrays a Christ-like Bowie singing in a bar full of holy men and women engaging in sin-like behaviour. Featuring Marion Cotillard as a dancing temptress to an angry priest played by Gary Oldman, Cotillard develops stigmata, and the whole party becomes a bloody work of art at the hands of Bowie, the Prophet. 

The Pastels' new single, "Check My Heart," from their forthcoming album Slow Summits premiered this week. Shot on 16mm film with minimum set-ups, "Check My Heart" is the story of one early spring Saturday in Glasgow, Scotland, where "lives overlap, connect, coincide, the music is a constant; sometimes only playing in our heads."

"Check My Heart" released on 7" yesterday, which includes the b-side "Illuminum Song." Both songs will be available digitally as a bundle from May 27th.

"Gypsy Babe", the most recent cut from Vancouver-based, dreamy siren Jody Glenham, was filmed at Venice Beach, California last summer but finally was edited a few weeks ago in Los Angeles. The song is looking like it will be included on the Dreamer EP which is due out in September. 

I didn’t expect much before listening to this new Grapes of Wrath album, High Road. I was forced into learning about the Grapes of Wrath when my sister-in-law gave me a shirt autographed by all four members from the early nineties. My knowledge of them is still cursory at best, but I have a deep appreciation for their album Now and Again. High Road has quite a bit in common with Now and Again. The songs here are strong, have dynamics, but are very overproduced.

Labels just don’t know how to handle club music producers, which is a shame because the overhead on signing two dudes who travel with generally nothing more than their laptops is minimal, especially when compared with a five or six piece band.