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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: video

  • First Look (and Free Download!) Yeasayer’s “I Remember” Video and EP

    The fourth single from ”Odd Blood”
    For Valentine’s Day this year, the indie-popsters Yeasayer delivered a heart-shaped (or rather head-of-an-aging-biker-shaped) box of nostalgic synth-pop candy in the form of the fourth single from their 2010 sophomore album Odd Blood. The song’s called “I Remember” and in addition to delivering a typically strange/gross/cheesy/beautiful video (not quite as distractingly icky as their last), the band has made a three-track EP of the song available for free download. Awwwwww. How sweet, right?

    The EP contains the original album version of the song along with two remixes. The first, by Painted Palms (who posted their own free EP a couple months ago), is a small-but-lovable psychedelic trifle. At just under three-and-a-half minutes, it doesn’t go much of anywhere, but it sounds cool enough. But the second remix, by the Belgian house dj duo Villa is an eight-minute widescreen epic of digital-age longing – a sonic Doctor Zhivago for the Facebook set – built around the song’s original structure and vibe (no thumping club beats here!) but heightening its atmosphere and drama with patterns of glitches and loops to make the whole thing feel like a night spent alone in a city apartment, watching the nightlife below as it happens without you, and wishing upon a falling drunk that the phone would ring.

  • Old Friends, New Music: The Long-Awaited Return of Roxette!

    Roxette’s first new studio album in 10 years!
    Although they’ve put out a handful of new songs (generally in conjunction with new “greatest hits” compilations) in the interim, it’s been 10 years since the Roxette released their last studio album, 2001’s Room Service. The Swedish pop duo are best known for a string of epic pop ballads in the late 80s and early 90s including “Listen to Your Heart”, “Fading Like a Flower” and “It Must Have Been Love” from the Pretty Woman soundtrack, not to mention their star-making power-pop classic “The Look”.

    But even as their commercial fortunes waned in the late 90s, they kept making music both together and solo, with Per Gessle releasing five solo albums (including one as Son of a Plumber) and a 2005 reunion album with his pre-Roxette band Gyllene Tider. Marie Fredrikkson also put out several solo albums, mostly in Swedish, but was forced into semi-retirement when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2002. But in the fall of 2009, with a new live band, Gessle and Fredrikkson reunited for a series of smaller-scale shows throughout eastern Europe, and last year they started recording a new album, scheduled to be released internationally this month, called Charm School. Here’s the lead single from the new album: “She’s Got Nothing On (But the Radio)”.

    As is their practice, this first single is an upbeat dance-rocker driven by Gessle’s (weaker) lead vocals, but it’s got glittery 70s-style guitar riffage, a verse that knowingly nods to a 20-year-old Red Hot Chili Peppers song, and a chorus that, over a shimmer of mirror-ball synthesizers, promises to make itself at home in your brain for days. It’s nowhere near the instant pop classic that “The Look” or “Joyride” were, but it’s still proof that Per and Marie can still make a smart, fun, three-minute pop song – and make it look easy. Here’s hoping they’ve got one of their trademark ballads in store for us soon.

  • The Daily Awesome – January 6, 2010: Kelly Rowland “Rose Colored Glasses”

    Kelly Rowland ”Rose Colored Glasses”
    You gotta root for Kelly Rowland, having grown up almost literally in Beyonce’s shadow, as the perennial #2 of Destiny’s Child. Though she’s already put out two solo albums, and scored a couple of minor hits, she hasn’t put out that definitive record yet, and you have to wonder just how much her career has been helped or hindered by her association with longtime manager (and Beyonce’s dad) Mathew Knowles – an association that finally ended in 2009.

    While Rowland, who turns 30 in February, is still readying her third album – her first for UniversalMotown – for release later this year, she put out a cluster of great singles in 2010, including “Commander”, with frequent collaborator David Guetta, and the sassy, Ne-Yo co-penned “Grown Woman”.

    But my favorite of the bunch so far is “Rose Colored Glasses”, a grand, heart-wounded ballad about a relationship that looks good on the outside, but is rotting from within. Co-written by Ester Dean and Swedish pop mastermind Dr. Luke – the man who gave us Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” and virtually the entire Ke$ha oeuvre – it’s an uncharacteristically emotionally raw song that, both in terms of sound and subject matter, seems like it might have been intended for Rihanna. But, let there be no doubt, Rowland owns this song, delivering it with enviable strength, stunning elegance, and an honesty devoid of self-pity that she projects both outward and inward, telling herself as much as she’s telling the listener: Everything seems amazing when you’re looking through rose colored glasses – Take ’em off.