Lifetime – Jersey’s Best Dancers

(allmusic)

Lifetime’s third and final full-length LP is a triumphant burst of upbeat punk rock that makes it clear the band called it quits while they were still at the top of their game. Slightly poppier than previous efforts, Jersey’s Best Dancers still finds the quintet rocking hard, and with songs like “Theme for a New Brunswick Basement Show” and “Turnpike Gates,” it also sees them sticking to the hometown topics that they’ve always treasured. Don’t go expecting widespread universal theories from this band, but if personal observations like, “And I’m so/And you’re so/We’re all so/All f*cked up” are the kind of self-affirmations that make sense, then this record will go straight to your heart. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s the sound of suburban youth who needed guitars to help soothe their souls. For those who were a part of the scene when Lifetime still existed, this is a nice bit of nostalgia, and for those curious about what the kids see in punk rock that helps change their lives, this makes it all a little more clear. Lifetime was never the biggest name in any genre, but they were still a commanding presence with their live shows and recorded material. They left a legacy whose final recorded moments, represented on this record, are as stunning as anything else the band created in the seven short years they existed.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IC5DK6PA

 

Lewis Black – Rues of Enragement

  

(allmusic)

It’s hard to get the full effect of Lewis Black’s gloriously bitter comedy if you’re only listening to him — watching the man work himself up into a lather with jowls shaking, beads of spittle flying from his lips, and his eyes bulging from his sockets as if his head is about to burst open from sheer pent-up rage adds immeasurably to the effect of his barbed, pungent wit. But at the same time, the intelligence and reason behind his wrath often projects better through repeated listening on CD than it does by watching the man threatening to erupt on-stage, and 2003’s Rules of Enragement captures Black at the height of his powers both as a high-pressured comic and as a incisive political satirist. While Black’s rants about winter in Minnesota, the evils of soymilk, and how the Irish brought alcohol and Catholicism together are reasonably standard stuff, they’re also smart and exceptionally funny, and Black’s unceasing barrage of bad karma gives even his most mainstream material a fierce edge. It’s when he moves on to deeper matters — America’s failure to keep its water supply clean (“We buy bottles of water from Pepsi and Coke, because if ANYBODY knows water, it’s Pepsi and Coke!”), political and corporate corruption (“If big oil gave anybody in this room 31 million bucks, you’d be THRILLED to be big oil’s bitch”), and various varieties of post-September 11 malaise (“How do we bring democracy to Iraq? What do we do, give ‘em our civics books? ‘Read this, it’s crackerjack material!’”) — that Black proves he can be every bit as funny while dipping his toes into provocative material that sadly few contemporary comics would have the courage to touch. While not the full-on flamethrower of David Cross‘ epochal Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, Rules of Enragement is a similarly powerful bit of no-holds-barred standup comedy that proves the furious provocation of Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and Richard Pryor is thankfully still alive in American humor. Or at least it’s still alive until Black gives himself a stroke.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6LI5U7BT

 

The Postal Service – Give Up

Coming off their work on Dntel’s beautiful This Is the Dream of Evan and Chan, Jimmy Tamborello and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard team up again for their full-length debut as Postal Service, Give Up. Instead of covering that EP’s territory again, with this album the duo crafts a poppier, new wave-inflected sound that recalls Tamborello’s work with Figurine more than Dntel’s lovely subtlety. However, Ben Gibbard’s famously bittersweet vocals and sharp, sensitive lyrics imbue Give Up with more emotional heft than you might expect from a synth pop album, especially one by a side project from musicians as busy as Tamborello and Gibbard are. The album exploits the contrast between the cool, clean synths and Gibbard’s all-too-human voice to poignant and playful effect, particularly on Give Up’s first two tracks. “The District Sleeps Alone” bears Gibbard’s trademark songwriting, augmented by glitchy electronics and sliced-and-diced strings, while “Such Great Heights”‘ pretty pop could easily appear on a Death Cab for Cutie album, minus a synth or two. Despite some nods to more contemporary electronic pop, Give Up’s sound is based in classic new wave and synth pop, at times resembling an indie version of New Order or the Pet Shop Boys. Songs like “Nothing Better,” a duet that plays like an update on Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me?,” and the video-game brightness of “Brand New Colony” sound overtly like the ’80s brought into the present, but the tinny, preset synth and drum sounds on the entire album recall that decade. Sometimes, as on “Recycled Air” and “We Will Become Silhouettes,” the retro sounds become distracting, but for the most part they add to the album’s playful charm. The spooky ballad “This Place Is a Prison” is perhaps the most modern-sounding track and the closest in sound and spirit to Gibbard and Tamborello’s Dntel work. The crunchy, distorted beats and sparkling synths recall both This Is the Dream of Evan and Chan and Björk’s recent work; indeed, this song, along with the “All Is Full of Love” cover Death Cab included on their Stability EP, could be seen as an ongoing tribute to her. Overall, Give Up is a fun diversion for Tamborello, Gibbard, and their fans. It doesn’t scale the heights of either of their main projects, but it’s far more consistent and enjoyable than might be expected.

http://rapidshare.com/files/16552877/UPS.rar.html

 

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Thanks again for your support.

Outkast – ATLiens

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9GKWKXN0

Oasis – Definitely Maybe

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C0T6ZKYD

Iron Maiden – s/t

http://www.mediafire.com/?4tywtvqfuwy

Explosions in the Sky – How Strange Innocence

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YO8TQKYW

Zero 7 – The Garden

http://www.mediafire.com/?6tuxjixjlyy

Bad Religion – New Maps of Hell

http://sharebee.com/334a1862

 

Daft Punk – Homework

(allmusic)

Daft Punk’s full-length debut is a funk-house hailstorm, giving real form to a style of straight-ahead dance music not attempted since the early fusion days of on-the-one funk and dance-party disco. Thick, rumbling bass, vocoders, choppy breaks and beats, and a certain brash naiveté permeate the record from start to finish, giving it the edge of an almost certain classic. While a few fall flat, the best tracks make this one essential.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0zjjjazayt2

 

Steel Pulse – Handsworth Revolution

(allmusic)

Steel Pulse’s debut album set the band decisively apart from its British colleagues. This was not, by any stretch of the imagination, either pop-reggae or lovers rock. Nor was it the kind of dreamy Rasta reggae or art-for-art’s sake dub that was popular at the time. Though the subtly jazzy swing that would later become explicit was already informing Steel Pulse’s groove, the band’s first album seemed not at all interested in generating anything like a party atmosphere. Handsworth Revolution is about politics first and religion second, with a quick nod to the dance (“Sound System”) and another to the herb (“Macka Splaff”) and not a single love lyric to be found anywhere. This gives the music a certain intellectual urgency, and the band’s instrumental virtuosity is impressive given its youth and relatively inexperience. But it also makes for a rather dry listening experience; other than “Ku Klux Klan” and the gorgeous “Prodigal Son,” there’s not much to hold onto here, melodically speaking — and even those two songs sound dry in comparison to the band’s subsequent work. Still, there’s a solidity to these tunes, a sheer tensile strength, that makes them compelling in their own Spartan way.

http://rapidshare.com/files/16676851/SteelRevolution.zip

 

1990s – Cookies

There are a few reference points for the 1990s debut album that you need to forget right away. It doesn’t matter that Bernard Butler produced, or that two of the band’s members were in a band with the drummer from Franz Ferdinand. It does matter that the band in question was Yummy Fur because if you were a fan of their off-kilter and jagged brand of post-punky pop, you’ll like Cookies. Of course that covers a couple hundred people at best, so let’s say if you’re a fan of off-kilter, spunky and often laugh-out-loud hilarious post-punk influenced pop that ropes in the best elements of Art Brut, the Libertines, Comet Gain and the B-52’s, then there’s a good chance you’ll fall for the 1990s in a big way. Indeed, there is much to like about Cookies: Jackie McKeown has a perfect yelping voice to pull off the sarcastic, knowing and sassy lyrical pose, the band is tight and raw but able to rein things in on funky tunes like “Arcade Precinct,” and Butler keeps things quite simple and gets a remarkably punchy sound out of the trio. The only possible downfall to the album’s success is the mood of the listener — if you aren’t in the mood for goofy, silly rock & roll with no depth or greater meaning, you might want to hurl the record through the nearest window right around the mid-point of “Enjoying Myself” when the lyrics “I would not like to play chess with a man in a vest/unless he was wearing a Stetson” come fluttering through the speakers. If reading that couplet made you think of Dr. Seuss on cough syrup and made you chuckle, then Cookies might be for you. It’s a rollicking good time, rollicking.

http://sharebee.com/1b7aa204

 

Songs I Made

Sorry for the recent lack of updates. I’ve had company visiting and I haven’t had time to post.  I also couldn’t decide what to post, so I decided to post some originals of mine. I made them in Ableton Live 6, and entirely out of loops. So here’s four (one is messed up at the beginning because I didn’t mean to repeat it that much).

http://www.mediafire.com/?8d9oewnyj10

Note: These songs aren’t licensed in any way, so feel free to use them wherever you please, just give credit where it’s due.

 

Fugazi – 13 Songs

 

Disregarding all the wordiness and adjectives that can be heaped like a pile of horse dung at Disneyland upon great, timeless albums, the importance of this record can perhaps be more suitably measured by the number of people who remember the first time they heard it. 13 Songs (a combination of the Fugazi and Margin Walker EPs) is usually among the first records that spring to mind when defining alternative rock. Furious, intelligent, artful, and entirely musical, it’s a baker’s dozen of cannon shots to the gut — not just a batch of emotionally visceral and defiant songs recorded by angry young men, but something greater. Nearly every song here reaches an anthemic level without falling prey to pomposity. Most of these songs are anthems of the self rather than a rallying cry of accusation or unification, with “Waiting Room” and “Suggestion” serving as two examples. The attention-getting drop into silence that occurs at the 22-second mark of the former is instantly memorable. The relentless ska/reggae-inflected drive of the song is equally effective, as Ian MacKaye tells everyone listening to get off their behinds and do what they want. During the Meters-meets-Ruts thrust of “Suggestion,” MacKaye switches genders for an entirely convincing rant on the objectification of women. Guy Picciotto takes on the persona of an addict on “Glue Man,” whose blurred sense of reality is also conveyed in the warped, psychedelic guitars. Picciotto threatens to set himself on fire during “Margin Walker”; given the spirited play of the remaining members, it sounds like the same could be said for the rest of them. Foreshadowing the band’s knack for introspective and mid-tempo concluding tracks, the disc ends with MacKaye’s “Promises,” examining the pitfalls of trust in relationships of any nature. A landmark record.

http://www.gigasize.com/get.php/77336/F13S.rar

 

Sage Francis – Human the Death Dance

allmusic:

It’s unfortunate that the hype machine behind Sage Francis’ second effort for the Epitaph label totally missed the breakthrough factor and decided to sell it as “his most personal record to date.” Pound for pound, Human the Death Dance may be his most personal effort, but it’s also an incredibly well-built full-length — even when it borrows from a handful of genres — and it’s arguably his best lyrical effort, undoubtedly his best production-wise. While it’s good news that the Sage Francis faithful are getting to peer into the man’s head with this “personal” effort, Death Dance begins with a helpful crib sheet (“Underground for Dummies”) that suggests newcomers are welcome here, too, and maybe even desired. When he delivers “You wanna promo copy buddy/You can download the tracks,” it’s not entirely clear whether he would have designed the world this way. He’s cool with it, though, and declares “This is hip-hop for the people/Stop calling it emo,” as if he’s done with being pigeonholed, sick of being sold only to those “in the know.” And really, why shouldn’t he be? Any audience can appreciate the greatness of the organic blues beat producer Buck 65 lays on “Got Up This Morning.” Sage’s lyrics on the cut are equally smart and creative, with literary references thrown about in a flirty conversation between the protagonist and a sultry siren who just might be the Devil (“She asked ‘What would Bukowski do?’/Don’t go there!/He would make you his Mom”). Brilliant underground hip-hop producers Odd Nosdam (“Underground for Dummies”) and Alias (“Keep Moving”) both turn in great constructions, and composer/trumpeter/odd choice Mark Isham offers two elegant and sinister tracks (“Good Fashion” and “Waterline”) that prove why he’s the one who the film industry calls when they want slick 21st century noir. The truly personal numbers that close the album come after earning the listener’s trust and patience, and the Isham/Francis connection comes from work for Hollywood, more signs that the man is ready to connect. In the end, the claim “his most personal record to date” becomes as important as “the one with the most black on the cover” or “the one with the most producers.” What matters is that Death Dance works hard to immerse any listener in another world where angst, darkness, dark humor, ambition, the itch to create, and the hunger for all things creative demand attention. That this is the world in Sage’s head is secondary.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M69RDBEE