Obsessively blogging about pop music, pop videos, pop stars, and pop culture from inside the MTV headquarters in Times Square. We also have a slight Jonas Brothers problem. And a little fixation with Tokio Hotel.
You know, I was going to make some easy jokes about Snow Patrol being dressed as house painters, or filming their video inside of an unused planetarium...but this video is just good.
"Just Say Yes" has the same epic, slow-build-cathartic-release of other Snow Patrol jams like "Chasing Cars" and "Run," but they've added some Simple Minds/sedated in the 80's keyboards to up the romance.
The cheese factor is off the chains in this one; with dudes singing their whoo-ooh's and the 8th grade science class light show going off in the background. But all the cheese goes well with the song, which is a new track from their best-of compilation Up To Now.
As you may recall, Tuesday's Buzz Bites included this item: Gavin Rossdale, who continues to be inexplicably, unmanageably studly, has just released a solo video that uses the oldest trick in the book to up his man-babe factor. It stars his and Gwen Stefani’s 2-year-old son Kingston. Well, that wasn't quite true.
It turns out, first of all, that Gavin Rossdale's studliness needs no upping. The ex-Bush beefcake is topless for half of the video in question, and he's in better shape than most sculptures. Secondly, Kingston is hardly a star, but he does flash his smushy, sweet little celebaby face at the 2:23 mark.
Now, on to the business at hand: Gavin Rossdale's "Forever May You Run" video is awesome on a variety of levels. For one thing, It includes excessive running, and dude kiiinda runs like Steven Seagal. No offense Gavin. You look great.
Next, Gavin's new video incorporates themes from all of your favorite movies. It opens with an angry Jerry Maguire-ish corporate walk-out, fades into a Forrest Gump running montage, which gives way to a dangerous Lord Of The Rings mountain scenario and culminates in a Hillside Singers-style '70s Coke commercial (which is sort of like a movie).
The song itself is classic Brit-rock. Soft sentimental verses lead into anthemic choruses, which in turn erupt into thumping minor-chord bridges with off-kilter tempos and searing, reverbed guitar solos. Think Snow Patrol + Oasis / U2, only topless, ripped, and sprinting through a busy intersection. Got it? Good. Now watch.
Not to bum you out or anything, but it was the week he began losing his hair in clumps and the pigment of his skin in patches -- in the midst of a nasty break-up -- that Mikel Jollett stopped writing stories and started writing songs. The same week his mother began battling cancer.
Naturally, he snapped. "I literally just lost my mind," he says, "and didn't care about anything. Except music." Jollett quit smoking cold turkey and started The Airborne Toxic Event. But despite its excruciating beginnings and grim title (The Airborne Toxic Event refers to a killer cloud in Don DeLillo's classic novel, White Noise), the Los Angeles band does not wallow in heavy emotions. In fact, their music -- think Snow Patrol meets The Walkmen at the symphony -- sounds triumphant. Heroic.
And so does the next chapter of their story. After winning ecstatic praise from Rolling Stone and the L.A. Times, The Airborne Toxic Event began a residency at SoCal hipster haven Spaceland. In a rare display of unsolicited media support, all of Los Angeles's major radio stations added the unsigned band's single, "Sometime Around Midnight" (incidentally, iTunes' #1 alt song of 2008) to their rotations, coinciding with The Airborne Toxic Event's string of concerts. Unsurprisingly, the band was signed in no time.
You can catch The Airborne Toxic Event live on tonight's episode of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno! But first, forget their wrenching backstory, and watch them on "The 5," where they reveal the real inspiration for all of their incredible success: Booty shorts. No joke.
The Canadian border that separates Vancouver from Washington State is slimmer than you might give it credit for. In fact, it's arguable that grunge started in Vancouver when one of its most famous sons, Neil Young, moved his flannels south to California. No matter what the origin, that grungy out-West attitude has been ping-ponging between Seattle and Vancouver for ages, and producing extraordinary musical results along the way.
Vancouver's latest contribution to the woodsy-rocking world is Vince Vaccaro, a Canadian longhair with ties to hometown hero, Sam Roberts. Forever in Chucks and a bandana, Vaccaro builds new-school classic rock ballads out of heartbreak guitars and his unstoppable voice. The soaring, heartfelt results are as much Snow Patrol as they are Journey. Sounds pretty irresistible, right? Well, it is. Get familiar with this charismatic Canadian on his website, watch the acoustic performance video after the jump and spread the word! Read more...
There's no way you'd ever guess that Audrye Sessions are from California. Their lilting melodies, ever-swelling sound, their delicate pronunciations... even their clothes, haircuts and hometown (Livermore??) scream Brit-rock. And man do they scream it well! Like Muse covering U2 or The Verve with The Arcade Fire's berserk rhythm section.
Speaking of covers, much of the internet-addicted world got their first taste of Audrye Sessions when their weepy take on Elliott Smith's "Waltz #2" made the blog rounds. The band, which consists of Ryan Karazija (Vox, Guitar), Alicia Marie Campbell (Bass), Michael Knox (Guitar) and James Leste (Drums), has made short work of the offline world too, playing San Francisco's Noise Pop Festival, taking major strides at SXSW, touring with Margot & The Nuclear So & So's and quietly becoming one of Oakland's biggest deals. To add to the growing buzz, Audrye Sessions are in the process of translating their addictive vintage sound into their first full-length album. If you're a fan of Snow Patrol, Coldplay, Radiohead or Oasis, definitely give Audrye Sessions a whirl. Here's their video for "Turn Me Off."
The same West London scene that gave birth to Lily Allen, The Clash and pretty much everything British in between (not to mention Ealing, the hometown of Pete Townshend of The Who), has spit out another brilliant band of new-wave shoegazers called White Lies.
Formerly called Fear Of Flying, White Lies is made up of Harry McVeigh (vox, guitar), Charles Cave (bass) and Jack Lawrence-Brown (drums). The moody Brits have already been compared to The Killers, Interpol, Editors and others, but they name Talking Heads as their major influence. Despite all that, their nouveau '80s sound evokes adjectives more than it does band names. Adjectives like "spooky," "haunting" and "sinister." Like the soundtrack to a Donnie Darko sequel with vampires in it. And apparently we're not the only ones who think so, because White Lies just popped up on the massive and amazing Coachella schedule. Know what that means? It means start listening to White Lies NOW before you're officially the last to hear of them. Watch the video for "Death" below!
The cover of Snow Patrol's latest album, A Hundred Million Suns, almost featured a buck-nekky Gary Lightbody! Instead, you got a bunch of origami stars because Snow Patrol's got a little paper-folding habit.
Another thing you might not know about A Hundred Million Suns -- it's got a secret connection to U2's epic Achtung Baby and Lou Bega's "Mambo #5." (May God have mercy on our souls, because that song's worse than a fresh case of poison ivy, which of course means I have to include it in this post... You're welcome!)
It is a testament to the power of video and triumphant melodies that it takes two or three listens to realize that Glasvegas' "Geraldine" is about the band's problems and the social worker who helps them deal. No, really. According to British rock journal NME, "Geraldine" is the true story of a big-hearted fan who ditched her do-gooder job to sell Glasvegas merch and offer the band professional mental help on the road. Crazy, huh?
But hey, wait, have you even heard of Glasvegas yet? Just in case: they're a Scottish (Glaswegian, to be exact) four-piece whose self-titled debut hit #2 on the UK charts within a week of its release. Now Glasvegas is up for Album Of The Year in Sweden and album of the moment in the states.
As far as sound goes, think Interpol meets Snow Patrol, and not just because it rhymes. Soaring, searing emotion meets walls of reverb and tidal choruses. Epic stuff. Wait'll you see the light show in the video!
Gary Lightbody opens the window just a crack and sheds some light on his bedroom, bed, and brain in "Crack The Shutters," off Snow Patrol's latest album, A Hundred Million Suns.
Shades of melancholy blue and strobey light effects keep the whole thing from feeling overly confessional, while Gary's early confessional moments keep the whole thing from feeling like a Coldplay video.
If we had to sum up Snow Patrol's music in one word -- and "awesome" was already taken -- we'd probably have to go with "sad." And not just cranky, PMSy sad. We're talking passionately, unabashedly, break-out-the-Kleenex-and-let-out-15-years-of-pent-up-emotion kinda sad. Which makes them practically perfect for the traditional post-break-up mope -- or any time you feel like wallowing in your own self-pity.
But since we're actually feeling rather chipper this afternoon, we're kinda pumped over Snow Patrol's energetic video, the surprisingly un-maudlin "Take Back the City" -- off their new album, A Hundred Million Suns. So check out the (less) softer side of SP, then get your cathartic cry on by watching their sob-inducing breakout hit, "Chasing Cars."
Not to bum you out or anything, but it was the week he began losing his hair in clumps and the pigment of his skin in patches -- in the midst of a nasty break-up -- that Mikel Jollett stopped writing stories and started writing songs. The same week his mother began battling cancer.
