Tons of exciting new releases this week!

Death From Above 1979:

Justin Townes Earle:

Tennis:

Rich Aucoin:

Delta Spirit:

Karen O:

Teenanger:

Interpol:

Ryan Adams:

Sloan:

I haven’t even had time to listen to them all. It’s a big week.

Late last week, Rdio released a fairly large redesign. There’s a bigger focus on their free streaming “stations”, the Heavy Rotation and Top Charts have been merged into one section called “Trending”, and collections have been renamed to “Favourites”, among other things. I’m still not sure how I feel about the changes. I really dislike the terminology changes. “Trends” on the internet are almost always bad (see Twitter), but fortunatley it’s possible to hide the “Top Charts” portion and just see what’s trending among people you follow, similar to the old Heavy Rotation. I also liked that Rdio had a focus on building a collection of music, and though “Favourites” is ostensibly the same thing, it seems like a change in thinking, a shift towards a more ephemeral list of things rather than a collection. Relatively speaking, of course; it’s still just a list of links to digital files.

Anyway. If this helps bring in more subscribers, I’m all for it. Rdio doesn’t release their subscriber numbers, but everything I’ve read paints a grim picture. I love Rdio, and I want them to survive. Because however bad their interface gets, it’s still better than the awful mess that is Spotify.

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I was incredibly sick this month and everything was beset with disasters. This month’s will be a little shorter, but it’s about Game Oven’s Adriaan de Jongh, designer of games Fingle, Friendstrap and Bounden.

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Cara Ellison is a treasure. One of the best games writers working today.

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As an impetus to keep posting here, and since tuesday is new music day, I figured I’d try a little round-up of new releases and other interesting musical happenings. Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

Notable new releases for the week:

Blonde Redhead:

Jennifer Castle:

The Wooden Sky:

Zeus:

and two new songs from The Julie Ruin:

Also:

A mixtape with three new songs from Jens Lekman:

Courtney Barnett covering the Breeders for the AV Club’s Undercover series, one of my favourite Undercovers yet:

And some early streams from:

Death from Above 1979 (worth a 10 year wait? Yup); Justin Townes Earle; Ryan Adams; and Delta Spirit.

Finally, there are box sets coming from Sleater-Kinney, with remastered versions of all seven of their albums, and Wilco, with a compilation of greatest hits and rarities.

Not a bad tuesday.

Last night I went to my first Summerworks performance of the season, Failure Fest featuring Army Girls and Cara Spooner. I try to see Army Girls whenever I can, but the description of this show made it sound like it would be something special:

Army Girls (Carmen Elle of DIANA and Andy Smith) once made an album that they abandoned, considering it a failure. Now, to face their demons, they are going to play the songs from that album while Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist Cara Spooner creates performative disruptions with/on/for them.

It turned out to be one of the most unique and fun shows I’ve seen in a long time. The “performative disruptions” turned out to be Cara Spooner messing with the band while they played - carrying Carmen’s mic through the crowd, forcing her to follow while singing; moving Andy’s drum kit across the room, piece by piece, in the middle of a song; wheeling the guitar amp through the crowd.

Summerworks and all involved did a great job with this show. Makes me wish I had time to go to more of the music series this week. I’m glad I went to this one, though. It’s not often you get to watch a show from behind the drummer.

How many times have I started this blog? I don’t know. Let’s try again.