New Reviews: The BPA, The Von Bondies and Ben KwellerIt’s Tuesday, which means a fresh batch of albums at your local music store and new Rolling Stone record reviews ready to be read. This week’s new releases include the BPA’s I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat, the brainchild of British DJ Norman Cook (you may known him as Fatboy Slim). Recorded with a variety of singers who stopped by Cook’s house for late-night sessions, the album features “tweaked-up period pieces from Sixties ska to Eighties R&B.” David Byrne, Dizzee Rascal, Iggy Pop and a handful of up-and-coming British singer-songwriters guest on the disc, which is anchored by highlight “Toe Jam.” Fatboy Slim recently discussed the Brighton Port Authority with Rolling Stone, calling it “Sort of like the Traveling Wilburys but good.” The Von Bondies also return after a long hiatus with Love, Hate and Then There’s You, the band’s first LP since 2004’s Pawn Shoppe Heart. In his review Christian Hoard describes Love, Hate as “an album that’s pop-friendly but raucous enough to park in a Motor City garage,” thanks to tracks like “She’s Dead to Me” and the Cheap Trick-ish “21st Birthday.” Ben Kweller also gets down with his Texas roots on his new country-tinged album Changing Horses. In his three-star review of the album, Will Hermes write that “Sawdust Man” is “a roadhouse blues with a chorus (’I'm on top of the Greyhound station/Won’t you pleeeeeease come home’) that sounds like Harry Nilsson and John Lennon on a bender circa Pussy Cats.” For more on Kweller, the Fray and many more of the week’s best releases, check below: • The BPA - I Think We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat • The Von Bondies - Love, Hate and Then There’s You • Ben Kweller - Changing Horses • Dierks Bentley - Feel That Fire • The Fray - The Fray • The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - Lonely Road • Trouble Andrew - Trouble Andrew • The Bad Plus - For All I Care
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Published: 2009-02-03
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News
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Rilo Kiley, Lupe Fiasco, The Academy Is … Help MTV’s Woodies Avoid Pitfalls of VMAs Nearly everyone agrees MTV’s Video Music Awards are a lost cause when it comes to offering up what its viewers actually want (live performances! cool presenters!) as opposed to what they unfortunately get (clips of live songs! footage playing up the glitz and glamor of the event! people partying who are not you!). But the VMAs’ little brother, the mtvU Woodies, are thankfully far more in touch with its college-age audience. Last night the fourth-annual show taped at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, and the lineup was packed with fan-voted nominees and performers who’ve carved out their own niches in hip-hop and rock, like Spank Rock. The Academy Is… and Tokyo Police Club. Lupe Fiasco and Rilo Kiley filled in for original headliner Amy Winehouse, who may well have been the Woodie’s Britney in Vegas had she not bailed last week due to visa troubles. (To check out photos of Fall Out Boy, Rilo Kiley and the rest of the Woodies lineup, plus red-carpet interviews, click here.) Highlights ranged from Lupe Fiasco’s opening performance of “Superstar” with guest vocals from Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump (in the house with his band to present Best Video Woodie) to onetime RS Artist to Watch The Academy Is… performing their breakthrough power ballad “Everything We Had” with a string section of Julliard students adding tear-jerking accompaniment. The performance-heavy lineup allowed most acts to play two full songs, as though mtvU was offering a mea culpa for the VMAs’ hotel-suite snippets. Peter (of Peter, Bjorn and John) was spotted headbanging along with members of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus during “We’ve Got a Big Mess on Our Hands,” The Academy’s guitar-heavy rocker of a second song. Also seen: Spank Rock — who performed “Loose” and “Rick Rubin” with Santogold and half-dozen girls in glow-in-the-dark bikinis — dancing dirty with one of the girls in t
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Published: 2007-11-10
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News
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