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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Videos

  • Awesome Free Download: Hot Chip and New Order’s Bernard Sumner with Hot City “Didn’t Know What Love Was”

    Hot Chip, Bernard Sumner and Hot City ”Didn’t Know What Love Was”
    I’m loving Hot Chip right now. In February, this very nerdy, London-based indie electropop quintet which formed around childhood friends Alexis Taylor (the skinny one with the glasses) and Joe Goddard (the chunky one with the beard), released their fifth full-length album One Life Stand.

    It’s one of my favorite records of 2010, full of sweetly sincere love songs about marriage and family, only set to synthesizer sounds and blippity beats stolen from thirty-year-old records by Kraftwerk and Heaven 17. But Hot Chip’s latest single isn’t from the album. It’s a collaboration with New Order singer Bernard Sumner and London house music duo Hot City called “Didn’t Know What Love Was”; and it was commissioned by Converse (as in the shoes) who, like Levi’s Jeans, have been giving me plenty of reason to hang out at their website for reasons other than interest in their product. (Converse recently opened its own recording studio in Brooklyn!)

    You can (and should) download – for free – the “maxi-single” of the song, featuring four different mixes, at Converse’s website. It’s a good old-fashioned Madchester house anthem that sounds like the proper follow-up to the 1990 hit “Getting Away With It” by Electronic, Sumner’s on-again-off-again collaboration with Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. I keep expecting Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant to pipe in with the background vocals. And as if to prove this project was no cheap fling, an official music video for the single was released last week, and – well, it’s pretty wonderful. See it here:

  • Awesong Song Alert! Four Year Strong “Tonight We Feel Alive (On a Saturday)”

    The triumphant (or rather triumphalist) return of the tri-cornered hat may go down as the most dubious – certainly the most strident – fashion (err- political?) trend of 2010. But who knew it would trickle down to the unwashed masses of New England’s indie punk scenes so quickly. Already this year, we’ve seen Titus Andronicus go all Revolutionary (while quoting pre-Presidential Abraham Lincoln) with their video for “A More Perfect Union”. Now, from Worcester, Massachusetts, we have the band Four Year Strong paying earnest tribute to the soldiers of the American Revolution in their video for “Tonight We Feel Alive (On a Saturday)”.

    It’s a near-perfect video for both the song and the band in that the beautifully shot battle scenes match the song’s urgency, while the story highlights and is strengthened by the vocal interplay between the group’s three vocalists. It’s one of those rare feats where the video and the song are each better because of the other. It’s also a nice showcase for the band’s bounty of facial hair (including singer Dan O’Connor’s “expressive eyebrows”).

    You get a sense from the video that the band is pretty politically engaged, but at the same time, it’s pretty impossible to discern where there political sympathies lie; and the truth is the video itself isn’t at all political. It’s just a good, simply told story set to a song that, however confrontational in tempo and delivery, is maddeningly vague. My favorite couplet:

    You asked, What would I stand for?
    The truth is: I STAND FOR THIS!

    I have to say, that hits pretty close to home in a state (Wisconsin) that just un-elected one of the country’s most diligent, principled Senators in favor of a self-funded cypher. Check out the video:

    A couple weeks ago, the band, who outed themselves as unabashed 90s nostalgists with their 2009 covers album Explains It All, posted a new, “pop-up” version of the video. Enjoy:

  • First Look: OneRepublic’s “Good Life”

    OneRepublic ”The Good Life”
    OneRepublic have released a video for the fourth single from their sophomore album Waking Up. The song’s called “Good Life”, and like the band’s previous singles, it’s been slightly remixed from the album version, giving lead singer Ryan Tedder a little more room to ad lib on the chorus, and punching up the great, live-drum rhythm track. As its title would suggest, it’s a strummy celebration of life as a newly minted jet-setter. But as this ingratiatingly wide-eyed song catalogs the band’s more glamorous travels (including a shout-out to their home state of Colorado), the video finds them with all feet on the ground, singing (and whistling) their nice little song in a lovely, simple country setting. Like the band’s previous singles “Secrets” (which turns up in the trailer for the new movie Love & Other Drugs) and “Marchin’ On” (which was used in ads for the Lifetime TV series Army Wives), I expect that “Good Life” will be around for awhile, not so much as a radio staple, but one of those sleeper pop hits that finds its audience through persistent licensing.

    OneRepublic “Good Life”

    OneRepublic – Good Life (Official Music Video)
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