What's on our generic MP3 player...

Let's have a little look at what's been playing in the Musick office* this week shall we?
* By office I mean small studio flat, but it sounds less prosaic.

Sonic Youth 'What We Know'



Sonic Youth's millionth album, The Eternal, isn't out until Monday but Musick got an EXCLUSIVE promo copy just yesterday! I know, pretty amazing right? We'd like to say the band handed it to us personally whilst waiting for us outside work, but in actual fact we found it on the floor. 'What We Know' is Sonic Youth at their best, nailing a melody to some delightfully aggressive noise.

VV Brown 'Shark In The Water'



We've mentioned this before of course but it's such a brilliantly addictive song that we felt it right to mention it again. It's the kind of song that you want to listen to on a sunny day. Perhaps you're in a park with your mates playing rounders, maybe a boy you like is there and you notice him looking at you and you coyly twirl some hair on your finger and hope upon hope that someday he'll love you...I mean, ahem, it's a summer anthem.

Friendly Fires 'Jump In The Pool'



This single was originally released way back in August 2008 but has been picked up again following the band's amazing performance at the NME awards in February. The self-titled album is very good and also extremely cheap so why not do us all a favour and go out and buy it (or order online if you're scared of face-to-face interaction).

Antony & The Johnsons 'One Dove'



Through some strange twist of fate, Musick ended up seeing Antony & The Johnsons live twice in a week. Luckily, we find them to be rather exceptional and not a load of pretentious wailing as some do. 'One Dove' was a highlight on both nights and is represented here by a version taken from a Dutch TV show...we can only assume it was Easter, either that or Antony can only perform if swamped by chocolate bunnies.

Heads you lose

There have been some pretty special music videos of late and this makes Musick very happy indeed. Back when MTV used to actually play music we would sit and watch endless hours of music videos - LOTS of Enigma and that Beloved video with all the naked people - and marvel at their brilliance or general awfulness. This is still a fun game to play, but youtube makes it that much easier.

This is the Richard Ayoade-directed video for 'Heads Will Roll', the second single from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs brilliant It's Blitz! album. The video features a fairly muted performance from the usually magnetic Karen O, her role as main focus taken over by a Michael Jackson impersonating cat person...



Brilliant ending too. That cat got some moves and no mistake.

TENUOUS LINK AHOY! Here's the video for Patrick Wolf's new single, 'Hard Times'. For those that missed the blatant link, one video features a cat and the other is by a singer whose surname is also that of an animal. A cat and a wolf. Do you see?

Here it is.

Bittersweet Symphonies

This is the really rather ace new video from Musick's friend (and yours) Dan Black. It references all kinds of movie genres and is the best thing we've seen all day long! The song, 'Symphonies', is the new version of this and comes with a rather long and not uninteresting story, and we'd like to outline the key plot lines below:

- 'Hypntz' appears online and the blogs they go crazy
- Album samplers circulate featuring 'Hypntz' and Dan's record company pick it as the next single
- Just before the video is due to be filmed the estate of Notorious B.I.G (who own the rights to the original lyrics) decide to stop the single going ahead.
- The other samples (Rihanna's 'Umbrella' and samples from some old film) are allowed to remain (the Rihanna loop is actually just some old Garage band sample that anyone could use), so the song's lyrics are re-written.
- Ta-dah, 'Symphonies' is born. You can sense some of the bitterness in the new lyric, no? A little bit maybe...



Brilliant video. The song suffers to these ears from slight over-exposure, but to those that have yet to hear it I'm sure it will sound like pure joy.

New Musick Bank Holiday Monday

Is it just us that's beginning to think this feature is a bit boring? Hell, how can it be when last week's recommendation of Dizzee Rascal's 'Bonkers' lead to him having the biggest first week sales of any single in 2009 so far! Coincidence? We don't see how it can be...

BUY THIS

Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear



So, our copy finally arrived (we brought it this morning), and it really is a lovely album. Lots of sighing guitars and glorious, dreamy backing vocals, like Fleet Foxes only with less facial hair and more blazers and deck shoes. It's what we professionals refer to as a 'grower' and not a 'shower', so please be patient.

DOWNLOAD THE FIRST THREE SONGS AND SOME OF THE OTHERS

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix



Zut Alor! Phoenix are back with their fourth album and it's a decidedly patchy affair in all honesty, but its opening salvo of 'Lisztomania', '1901' and 'Fences' is really bloody good. From then on it gets a bit self-indulgent, a bit samey and a bit calculated, but for those three songs it's tres, tres bon (B at GCSE in case you were wondering).

DOWNLOAD THIS

'New In Town' by Little Boots



It's weird to think that this is Little Boots' first official single. What with all the polls, plaudits and proclamations, it will be interesting to see where 'New In Town' charts. Given La Roux's unexpected chart success, you feel the pressure is really on. Luckily, Musick travelled around in a car A LOT this past week and heard this single about six times, and it sounded BIG, like a proper pop song on the radio should.

Upwardly mobile

Simian Mobile Disco's debut, Attack Decay Sustain Release, had it's moments - 'Hustler' is particularly amazing - but it was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that one half of the duo is probably the most sort after producer right now. James Ford, for it is he, has produced albums by Klaxons, Arctic Monkeys, Florence & The Machine and Peaches and was also one third of The Last Shadow Puppets live set-up (as well as producing the album).



We imagine that the other fella got a bit annoyed with all this tomfoolery and demanded he return to the warm bosom of home and thus their second album Temporary Pleasure was born. Luckily, Ford has used his gold-plated Rolodex to call in some big names to sing on the album (Gruff Rhys, Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip, Beth Ditto, Jamie Lidell, Telepathe and the man from Yeasayer).

'The man from Yeasayer' aka Chris Keating, pops up on the first single, 'Audacity of Huge':



Funky fresh. Not sure if it's HUGE enough to catch the ear of the single-downloading masses, but it's a nice slice of what no-one's calling 'intelligent dance music'. The album, in case you're interested, is out on 17 August and the single is out fourteen days before that.

Robyn & The Robot

Right, there's no guarantee this will be the last mention of this song on this blog, but for now we promise to not mention it again this week. If you don't already know, Royksopp's 'The Girl & The Robot' features the not inconsiderable talents of Robyn whose vocal sounds mournful, mental and fit to burst. It all adds up to one of those rare pop moments when sadness can equal pure joy and we know for a fact - we read it on Twitter - that a well-known music journalist is writing a 1,500 word feature on the song that will no doubt feature in a broadsheet arts section sometime soon.

Before that happens, please enjoy this rather fantastic video and marvel not only at Robyn's new hair but also the magnificent bush pruning! WARNING: This video contains strong suggestions of human-robot sexual intercourse.



'The Girl & The Robot' is taken from Royksopp's recent album Junior, which features some other good songs but nothing as good as this, so just download this for 79p and listen to it twelve times in a row.

Bear necessities

Any music critic worth his or her salt is lavishing magnificent bucket loads of praise on Grizzly Bear's new album Veckatimist, which is out on Monday (needless to say our review copy never made it to the office. It's a shame, I've no doubt it was some unfortunate error in processing). The band have decided to release a single, 'Two Weeks', in order to introduce the album and in order to make the whole experience even more exciting they've made a video. Said video has been directed by Musick favourite, Patrick Daughters, and features some waxy looking skin, super slow-mo and an explosive ending.



Pretty creepy right? Nice song too. Once the postman brings the promo (and a letter of apology) we'll elaborate a bit more.