Halloween Is A Time For Costumes And Pajo Playlists

Halloween is here and no matter what your outfit tonight, you really are a winner just for dressing up (as long as it’s not The Joker or Sarah Palin or otherwise take you a paragraph to explain). You should send us photos! We’ve already given you some ideas for trendy pop costumes this year, and Videogum’s given you ideas that will most definitely not be trendy this year. You can even send us photos of great music-based pumpkin creations, like the High Places and Heavy Metal O-Lanterns. If you don’t have a camera, just tell us what you’re wearing, and we’ll vote you up and down depending on how terrible the idea. And for the Slint fan who’s hosting a party tonight, here’s a very special David Pajo-assembled streaming mixtape of very metal and spooky jams:

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Hear Ex-Page France Singer’s New Psych-Pop Concoction: “Gotta Cheer Up”

The first tune to drop off Michael Nau’s (who was once known as Page France and is now making music under the moniker Cotton Jones) January 27, 2009 LP *Paranoid Cocoon* (Suicide Squeeze) is a Doors-esque Sixties groove with a recession-ready title. Check it out right here:
“Gotta Cheer Up”

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New A.C. Newman - “There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve”

Now that the New Pornos have rocked Australia and New Zealand on the final leg of their Challengers tour, Carl Newman is prepping the release of his second solo album Get Guilty. Today, via Matador Records’ Intended Play sampler for Fall ‘08, we get an early listen of Guilty’s bright opening track. At two minutes forty seconds, “There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve” is the shortest song on the record, built around a stately riff that sounds like some imagined indie-pop national anthem. Drummer Jon Wurster (Mountain Goats), Nicole Atkins, and Mates Of State assist on the album, possibly on this very tune!

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Hype Monitor: Passion Pit, FM Belfast and the High Wire

Photograph by Arion Doerr for RollingStone.Com

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet.

The Band: Passion Pit
The Buzz: Squirrely electropop where speedy beats carry high, girlish vocals across bands of synthesizer.
Listen If: You wonder what Built to Spill might sound like if someone stole all of Doug Martsch’s guitars.
Key Track: “Cuddle Fuddle,” which uses a plinking piano loop to singlehandedly invent 25th century ragtime.

The Band: FM Belfast
The Buzz: It’s electric! Stern, keyboard-driven robopop — the sound of a zillion traffic lights blinking above empty streets.
Listen If: You find the Knife a bit too cheerful, or think big beats are better for brooding than grooving.
Key Track: “Lotus,” which flash-freezes Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” in shivery synths.

The Band: The High Wire
The Buzz: Spacious, somber indie rock that shrouds broad guitar strumming and long, languid keyboard lines in warm, gentle mist.
Listen If: [...]

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Love Is All Offer “Rumours” In Their Halloween Costumes

If you’ve ever done a semester abroad, you know Halloween isn’t quite the phenomenon everywhere as in the good ol’ financially fucked US of A. But props to the spastic Swedes of Love Is All for taking our annual excuse for sluttiness to heart, applying ghoulish facepaint and walking in reverse on their home streets to the sounds of “Rumors,” from their quite good forthcoming LP A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night. It’s not The Official Video — there will be a costumed clip for most every album track floating about the net today — but it’s a cute way to let people listen to an album that’s worth hearing, track for track. “Rumours,” the tune we peeped via an In The Studio clip last year (remember the band cracking up while chanting “if you mind your business I’ll mind mine”?), has Josephine doing her rhythmic speak-singing [...]

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Breaking: The Subways

Who: The Subways, a British trio who turned two years on the road touring with the likes of Foo Fighters and Oasis and a potentially career-ending throat ailment into their edgier second album All Or Nothing.
Sounds Like: Led by singer/guitarist Billy Lunn, the Subways are a pop-perfect combo of three of the band’s favorite artists, mixing together Nirvana’s power chords, Smashing Pumpkins’ ferocious tribal drumming and Shirley Manson’s vocal prowess for a fantastic alt-rock throwback stew. The common bond between all three bands? Producer Butch Vig, who also produced the Subways’ new album. “The songs on All Or Nothing are like diary entries, essentially,” Lunn says. “We felt compelled that we had to open ourselves up, and Butch Vig was clearly the guy who was gonna do that for us.”
Vital Stats:

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AC/DC and the Gospel of Rock & Roll

AC/DC and the Gospel of Rock & Roll

• Video:
Go Behind the Scenes at AC/DC’s Rolling Stone Cover
Shoot

•
Photo Gallery: AC/DC Through the Years

•
Photo Gallery: Behind the Scenes at AC/DC’s Rolling Stone
Cover Shoot

• Video:
Watch behind-the-scenes footage of AC/DC at the video shoot for
“Rock N Roll Train”

AC/DC singer Brian Johnson perches on the
edge of a sofa in a New York hotel room with a…

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Five Music Videos That’ll Make You Smile

In these troubling times, it’s important to acknowledge the therapeutic powers of a good YouTube surf. Below, a few of my personal favorite video tonics, which may even become yours.
1. Sparks, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us”
They’ve just released their 21st (!) album (featuring the brilliant “Lighten Up, Morrissey”), but this 34-year-old Top of the Pops clip offers the brothers Mael in all their falsetto-y glam-rock glory. And though they may be miming, nobody does reaction shots like that Weimar-era freakshow on keys.

2. The Dickies, “Banana Splits”
Ignore the disconnect of a guitarist named Stan Lee wearing a T-shirt featuring a DC Comics character and just savor the fruity mise en scene of this hysterical promo, which I’d like to think inspired Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldiers.”

3. Dr. Feelgood, “She Does It Right”
I don’t know who’s more giddlily intense in this clip of the venerable pub-rockers, [...]

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Smashing Pumpkins Play “Disarm” With Josh Groban, New Tunes At Bridge School Benefit

Billy Corgan had an eventful weekend. On Friday, he put on his spookiest evening gown and played “G.L.O.W.” and “Tarantula” for Jimmy Kimmel. The next day, his Pumpkins headlined a Guitar Hero World Tour launch party in West Hollywood, where they debuted new tune “As Rome Burns” and covered Simon & Garfunkel (”Sounds Of Silence”) and Pink Floyd (”Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun”). Then, at Neil Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit on Sunday, the band performed two more new songs (”Owata” and “A Song For A Son”) and Alt.Nation classic “Disarm” with Josh Groban. Got all that? Let’s take look/listen at those last three songs, along with a new blog post from Mr. Corgan informing us James and D’Arcy “aren’t ever coming back. Period.”

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Highway to Hell… Oops, I Mean Wilkes-Barre, PA

In my confirmation email from the record label representative, I was told that travel from Manhattan to Wilkes-Barre, PA, ("Wilkes-Berry?" "Wilkes-Bar?" Actually, it’s "Wilkes-Bear-Uh") and back for an exclusive AC/DC performance Sunday night would be by VIP Bus. For those of you who don’t know what a "VIP Bus" is, predictably, it’s a bus that looks like a limo from the inside. Meaning wavy-edged mirror ceiling with colorful lights, comfy leather bench seats, and lots of places to stash drinks.

It also means pizza, chips, pretzels, assorted candies, ice buckets full of water, soda and beer, AC/DC’s live DVD No Bull, and later This is Spinal Tap, playing on two screens, and a bus driver who keeps making jokes about how fucked up you all are getting and tells you, with a nudge and wink, that you can go ahead and light up a smoke if it’s ok with the other [...]

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