Neil Hannon is, for all intents and purposes, my boy. The sublimely literate frontman (only man, really) for ork-pop darlings the Divine Comedy, Hannon has been applying his acerbic wit to instantly memorable pop songs for almost 20 years. They actually sounded like R.E.M. when they first started. That’s just hilarious to me now.
After collaborating with Pugwash’s Thomas Walsh for last year’s Duckworth Lewis Method (my album of 2009 by a country mile), Hannon has donned the DC hat once again, and “At the Indie Disco,” the first single from the Divine Comedy’s new album Bang Goes the Knighthood, is as Hannonesque as they come. Funny bits name-checking bands from Blur to the Wannadies, combined with spot-on observations about the club culture (spending the night staring at each other’s feet while dancing), make for one of Hannon’s funniest songs yet. But will they play it at the indie disco? Let’s hope they have enough of a sense of humor about it to oblige.
Who wants a hot blonde bouncing around in a tight dress? That’s what we thought.
We’ve been putting “Stadium Love” on playlists and mix discs since Metric’s (awesome) album Fantasies dropped last year, and the band finally made a proper music video featuring, surprise, all of the animals Emily Haines mentions in the song. Wait until you get to the shot of the python attacking the lion. Holy cow.
If we’re being honest, we could watch Haines dance all day long. Note to females everywhere: dance like this, and you will get noticed. Can’t wait to see her do it in person at Lollapalooza.
From the moment that Lord Gerardo proposed the idea of a Friday video feature on this here blog, I blurted out, “You realize that I’m going to feature ‘This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide’ by the Kings once a month, right?” And G was totally down with that, as he loves that song as much as I do. The band’s guitarist Mister Zero even made a fantastic video of the band playing the song, culling 20 years of concert footage and even their appearance on “American Bandstand” into one incredible video. It would be perfect.
There is just one small problem:
Yep, in another brilliant display of Finders vs. Keepers, that clip is not available for embedding, or even allowed to be viewed at all on YouTube. For now, anyway. Hopefully they’ll be able to sort this out, because we’re dying to show you that clip. Fortunately, we have another clip that’s just as good. Fans of early MTV – as in first-year MTV, which was unlike any other year in the network’s history – will recognize this one. Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone.
All right, let’s get something out of the way up front: we chose “Burn It Down,” the debut single from Under the Influence of Giants spinoff band Awolnation, less for the video – which was made by a fan who admits that the clip itself is “crappy” – and more for the fact that this song kills, a straight-up rock ‘n roll freakout along the lines of Little Richard fronting the Hives. Better yet, the song is available for free download (no email registration required) on our music blog ESDMusic. Spin this at whatever party you’re attending tonight, and watch the place explode. Burn it down, indeed.
