New Music Tuesday
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The Walkmen released their highly anticipated new album today, exclusively on Amie Street! You & Me has already been called the best album of the band's career and also one of the best albums of 2008; Stereogum says "we're taken aback by just how great this album is." You & Me is being sold for the special price of $5, the entirety of which will be donated to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. All donations are in honor of Luca Vasallo, a friend of the band and a current patient who is seven months old. Download one of the most remarkable indie rock albums of 2008 and donate to a great cause!
During a recent road trip to the Coachella Music Festival, Shawnee Smith and Missi Pyle, both actresses who met while filming a Warner Bros./ABC comedy pilot entitled Traveling In Packs, began joking about forming their own band. It so happens that fronting a band was one of Pyle's lifelong fantasies, and by the end of the trip she had badgered Smith into actually doing it. The album that resulted from that fateful trip to Coachella, a splash of roots-oriented country rock called It's Okay to Be Happy, was produced by Chris Goss (Queens of the Stone Age, The Duke Spirit, UNKLE, Stone Temple Pilots), who is widely credited as the godfather of desert rock. This is an album that's sexy, dirty, and so much fun it'll even have hard-edged rockers gettin' their twang on!
The Raveonettes, whose name is a portmanteau of The Ronettes and "Rave On" (a 1958 Buddy Holly single), add grit and fuzz to the style of their '50s and '60s influences for a completely unique sound. The band has worked with legendary figures like Ronnie Spector and Richard Gottehrer (who wrote "My Boyfriend's Back" and "I Want Candy") on previous albums, and drummed up significant anticipation for 2007's Lust Lust Lust. The album was called "a sleazy pop masterpiece" by Slant Magazine and "shocking, yet completely enthralling" by NME.
Claude Debussy was one of the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known as a pioneer of musical Impressionism (despite his dislike of the term), Debussy developed innovative musical structures, harmonies, and styles. Piano Favourites features twenty solo performances by Francois-Joel Thiollier, including "Clair de lune," "Arabesque No. 1," and many more notable works from this inventive composer.
German prog-metal band Sieges Even are back with their first-ever live album, marking the 20th anniversary of their debut release. Containing the biggest songs from their recent tour with Journey (!!!), Playground is both a primer on the band's history and a perfect example of their current incarnation. The staff of Metal Invader "wholeheartedly recommend this to any serious music fan - prog or not," so if you like a bit of epic in your life don't miss this one.
Aaron LaCrate & Debonair Samir
If Aaron LaCrate and Debonair Samir are the professors of Baltimore club, then these mixtapes are their official textbooks. And for students on a budget, Amie Street's got you covered! We'll save you a bundle on your back-to-club purchases, with Vols. I & II starting at $0.00 right now. Including such popular lectures as "U & Dat (Gutter remix feat. Juelz Santana)" and "Samir's Theme" (the instrumental behind their banging Young MC remix), Wow That's What I Call Gutter Music! makes learning fun again!
