Gin pushcarts!?

- Daytrotter has a most excellent live session with Death Cab for Cutie, with several songs off of the much-hyped Narrow Stairs, due via Atlantic on May 13. I like Ben Gibbard’s explanation of Styrofoam Plates:

This song, off of The Photo Album, is a scathing indictment of the things that oftentimes go unsaid in moments that matter the most.

- Paste, always laying on the snark, reluctantly refers you to Coldplay’s new site to download “Violet Hill,” the first single off of the terribly-named Viva La Vida. Check it out, I guess:

Finally, the website reveals the Viva la Vida album cover, which confirms another important Coldplay magical power: the ability to spray-paint French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, in the name of music!

- Matt Nathanson was Paste’s video of the day yesterday. Check it out.

- via kottke: Gin, Television and Social Surplus. Clay Shirky considers how the internet has replaced television - all for the better. Among the highlights include comparing Desperate Houswives to a “cognitive heat sink” that dillutes real thought, and this revelation:

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing– there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London. 

Gin pushcarts!? Please bring them back! 

- Gawker questions the absurdity of an absurdist philosopher’s prank/act of self expression/douchey move.

[The iPhone is coming to Canada. Thanks to Gizmodo for the image.]

Goodbye, matt pond PA. hello, The Dark Leaves.

One of my favorite bands is breaking up. Well, sort of. Matt Pond has announced that his 10 year musical project, matt pond PA, will cease, but will be reborn as The Dark Leaves later this year. Glad these guys will still be making music, but sad to hear of the remote possibility that The Dark Leaves won’t play mpPA songs any longer. 

According to the Isthmus Daily Page:

Pond has suggested the Dark Leaves may not play Matt Pond PA songs anymore. And that would be a lot of songs to leave behind. The band has released eight CDs that have been beloved by some and belittled by others, but ignored by few.

I’ll post a best-of Matt Pond mix later this week.

[shocking news courtesy of Isthmus Daily Page.]

A tired and underprepared Monday

- Were you really surprised that Apple is, um, the only company making money right now? It’s probably because they know how to market to Bostonians.

- This thing looks ridiculously dangerous.  

- Loved Slate’s headline for this post about Travelers stealing their logo back from Citigroup: “You can stand under my umbrella.”

- Apparently I loved everything Slate from this past week. When good rappers collaborate with lame rockers: Did the Roots just trick me into liking a lame emo band?

Upon searching my soul, I realized that I had to admit that I in fact liked almost all the songs that I named earlier. “Let Me Blow Your Mind” is an unjustly forgotten club grinder; “Homecoming,” “Heard ‘Em Say,” and “Sacrifice” all get stuck in my head from time to time; “Numb/Encore” is a staple of the various Workout Mega-Jam mixes that I’ve made over the years. I was a bit taken aback; cultural snobbery is such an integral part of my personality. I’d have to rethink a lot of things if it turned out I liked listening to Fall Out Boy, Maroon 5, and Linkin Park.

 

Thurrrrrrrrrsday

 

Thursday mashup

- My Morning Jacket’s new single is fantastic. Looking forward to the album. Read Stereogum’s Premature Evaluation, and download “Evil Urges” here.

- The Caucus is suspicious of Abercrombie & Fitch’s influence over Barack Obama’s campaign.  

- 15 things Kurt Vonnegut said better than anyone else ever has or will. My favorite:

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”

- For the lazy Quagmire: introducing the Cocktail Shake-o-matic

- Interesting article on the role of the car in rural China. Love the intro about the farmer’s sons getting girlfriends because they have a car.

- If you were like me and weren’t allowed to watch Ninja Turtles as a kid, you probably watched The Lawrence Welk Show, what with the bubbles and the big band and the singing, etc. Sadly, Joe Feeney died earlier this month.

[image of Kurt Vonnegut thanks to the AV Club, or wherever they got it from. Maybe this dead writers images thing really is becoming a thing]

Wednesday stuff

 

- Holy crap! Nalgene bottles are bad for you! Fitness nuts call bullshit. I love me some bisphenol A. Even the act of saying it aloud sounds like it will give you cancer.

- So ‘innit’ has become this sort of universal rhetorical tag on the end of sentences in the UK, a smarter, classier version of our overuse of the word ‘like.’ It is confusing. Try reading some of these aloud at your cube, or try integrating it into your speech in meetings:

 ”We need to decide what to do about that now innit.” (don’t we?)

“Now I can start calling you that, INNIT!” (can’t I?)

“I can see where my REAL friends are, elsewhere innit!!” (aren’t they?)

“I’ll show young Miss Hanna round to all the shops, innit.” (won’t I?)

“I heard he was good in TNA when he was there so he can still wrestle good innit?” (can’t he?)

[BCC via kottke]

- Ben Gibbard is a) awesome, b) confused about Death Cab’s place in music, c) pretentious, d) name dropping dead writers faster than Colin Meloy, d) all of the above. Of course the answer is d.

- This poor masshole lady hit Sandra Bullock. Romantic comedy fans are still reeling. Thankfully, everyone is okay.

- Conor Oberst cuts a solo album and pretends its different than recording as Bright Eyes.

- Uh oh. In news from the beginning of the month, Beirut is going through some stuff. From Zach Condon:

The responsibilities of gathering people around your vision, working with great people like those who work directly for the band and those at the label, wanting to insure that every show is as good as humanly possible so that every single person in the audience sees that we put in a real effort, all of that leads to a lot of issues in terms of doing right by people who have done you right.

Hope to see you back in some form, Zach. Read the full quote on Pitchfork.

- Tuch’s MacBook crashed. Again. When he needed it most. Send your condolences.

[Image of T.S. Eliot confirms that April is, in fact, the cruellest month. Thanks, Syracuse.]