Discovery

I love Vampire Weekend, but I sorta hate autotune. So what am I to do? Ra Ra Riot vocalist Wes Miles and Vampire Weekend keyboardist/producer extraordinaire Rostam Batmanglij have teamed up to put out an album under the name Discovery. This collaboration is kinda like the hot young secretary (always blonde) the married man goes off with. So different from his homely pleasant wife (always brunette), and yet isn't this what makes the affair appealing to begin with? Sure, you can still hear some African inspired Vampire Weekend beats in tracks like Can You Discover? And of course there is the distinctive and always welcomed guest vocals of Ezra Koening on Carby (which incidentally, is one of my least favourite tracks despite being the one that drew me in). But overall, Discovery is totally not what you would expect when considering the bands these boys came from. I can just picture them all giggly sneaking around behind their band mates backs making music...shock horror...without guitars!! But seriously, this stuff is synth heavy, with cute little boy vocals (when their not auto-killed), major 80's throwbacks with words like "discotheque" and generally just a whole heap of kitch. The weirdest bit? The eighth track is a grimy futuristic cover of Jackson Five I Want You Back. Eerie.

Discovery-Orange Shirt (zshare)

Just for fun here are some clips from the respective homely pleasant wives these guys came from:

video killed the radio star

In all the hype surrounding the death of Michael Jackson, one thing that has resonated with me is the impact he had not just on music, but on music videos. It has been said that he was responsible for changing the humble music video from being a simple promotional tool into an art form. It's true. Think Thriller, think Bad...this is where the film making/story telling era of the videos started. I mean, Martin Scorsese directed Bad....did you know that? Would Michael Jackson be as big a "thing" if we didn't know about his killer dance moves. Maybe not. These days-these youtube days, if you wanna be noticed as an artist it seems that it's 60% about having a good sound and 40% about having an awesome video that gets people talking.

Enter Red Riders centre stage. You've Got A Lot of Nerve is the first single of their second album Drown in Colour, and whilst catchy and enjoyable it is a little repetitive. However, the accompanying video is pretty neat. The clip is filmed in stop motion, meaning that it took several weeks of early morning filming on a Surry Hills rooftop to create something quite beautiful.

The next single to drop off the album is Ordinary, and in contrast to its title I'm loving this one much more than the first. The film clip is the age old concept of lead singer Alex Grig strolling down the streets of Sydney...but nothing seems to be ordinary, gettit? The best bit of the video? Campos coffee cup of course!

Red Riders-Ordinary (zshare)