[Watch] Arctic Monkeys - "Arabella" (Official Video)

It's been a good few weeks for Arctic Monkeys following wins at the Brits and NME awards along with Alex giving that speech. Keeping the good times flowing, the Sheffield band have released the official video for the track "Arabella", taken from last year's AM. I love it when you hear an album from one of your favourite bands and they release it as a single and not only that, they deliver a video which is every bit as cool as the once shy band have become. Swaggering through a performance in a club, the black and white clip is the perfect accompaniment to this rock and roll number. The video is NSFW 'cause of some ladies being topless throughout but hey, it's Monday. Your boss probably isn't even awake yet so treat yourself. 

[Listen] Manchester Orchestra - "Every Stone"

Manchester Orchestra are set to release their follow up to 2011's Simple Math, with Cope, on April 1st. They gave us an explosive first taste of what they'd been cooking up in the studio with "Top Notch" last month. Today we get to enjoy our second bite from the album with a track titled, "Every Stone". It's a little more laid back that the previous cut, but that's not to say it's any less powerful. It builds up into a beautiful crescendo of instrumentation that'll brighten up whatever blues are bogging you down on this cold February afternoon. I'm pretty excited to hear the rest of this album, that's for sure!

The Atlanta band have also released a video for "Top Notch" which you can see below along with another string of UK dates set for later in the year. You can see all their live dates over here.

[Listen] Royal Blood - "Little Monster"

I've said it before on here, but I'll say it again. I bloody love noisy two piece outfits and it looks like I've found my new favourite band. Humbling from Brighton, Royal Blood somehow manage to blur the lines between a rough and raw while sounding smooth and polished all at the same time. It's bloody magic ear candy if you ask me. They sound like an amalgamation of any a band and it's safe to say I'm excited to hear more from them in the coming months. I'm going to stop rambling now though 'cause you guys need to stop reading, and start listenin'!

Their latest offering is titled "Little Monster" and it's available to download now. You can peep their previous track "Out of the Black" here. Both are worthy of being on repeat for hours on end.

[Watch] Lily Allen - "Air Balloon" (Official Video)

I sat on writing this up until the official video came out for Lily Allen's latest single, "Air Balloon", because I was hoping it was going to provide some context, but can anyone out there please explain to me what the actual hell is going on here? Don't get me wrong, the song is insanely catchy, but in terms of depth, this couldn't be more of a polar opposite from her first single, "Hard Out Here". I love absolutely everything about this song until you actually pay attention to what she's singing about. One fo the things I've always appreciated about Allen's music was how quickly one is able to get on board with her. She's typically very straightfoward with what she has to say. However, when I receive the urge to put this song on, I feel uneasy throughout my moment of joyfilled pop bliss. It's like I'm being indoctrinated into some weird cult without my consent. The video (above) is an equally confusing joyride. She goes from aimlessly spinning and singing in a field with butterflies, to pawing on top of a cheetah, to floating around in space? Don't get me wrong, I would love to do all of these things, so maybe I'm just being jealous. I guess it's more that I feel left out because I thought I was on board with her willingness to make such a bold statement with her first single. With no announcement of an album release yet, though, I keep looking from "Hard Out Here", to "Air Ballon, and then to her other recent track on the Girls soundtrack, "L8 CMMR", wondering if she'll make it through this clear experimentational phase unscathed. She's definitely a different woman than she was when her sophmore album, It's Not Me, It's You was released in early 2009, so I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, for now, if you need me, I'll be over here "further researching" this song by playing it 10 times in a row. 

[Watch] The 1975 - "Settle Down" (Official Video)

The 1975 are back up to their old tricks and have released a black and white clip for their new single, "Settle Down". The video is set in a rural town and it all looks rather bleak as it follows the story of two young boys going about their daily business. It all seems rather average before ending in a strange turn of events. It left me a little confused upon first watch but apparently the video is said to be based on a recurring dream Matt Healy had as a child and this is it coming to life. See what you make of it below. Seems like the beginnings of a pretty good supernatural movie to me.

The 1975's debut is out now and the band are already at work on a follow-up which is sure to impress.

[Watch] St. Vincent - "Digital Witness" (Official Video)

St. Vincent's new self-titled album is set for release on February 25th via Loma Vista. The second track, the brass filled choppy number, "Digital Witness" has been given the official video treatment now and sees it matching up to the edgy and punchy dynamic of the song. Bold colours of green and yellow are strewn throughout by director Chino Moya and the sharp cuts and movements of the dancers/extras fit the audio well. Can we just have the album already?! I'm getting impatient. 

Bonus video: Did you know Annie Clark is rather good at football? The European kind, Soccer to you people in the US. After quitting at 12, which was actually when she got her first guitar, her energy was solely then focussed on music. Good thing for us, huh?

[Interview] Hidden In Plain Sight: (Re)Introducing Kenna

It wasn't until I was preparing for my interview with Kenna that I finally sat down and did the math: I have been a fan of his music for over a decade now. This summer it will be 11 years since the day I first encountered "Freetime", from his 2003 debut, New Sacred Cow. I remember the day well. I was sitting in my parents house watching MTV2 with a notepad on the coffee table. This was my ritual when my friends were out of suggestions for new bands to listen to. Every few months, I would sit for about an hour and take note of any bands that were worth possibly buying CDs for and then go out and buy them, but only after quizzing myself a few days later when I would look back at the notepad and try to remember anything about the artist. "Freetime" easily passed my silly test. Soon after picking up New Sacred Cow, I set myself on a course that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would lead me to writing the words you are reading today. After moving to NYC in 2006, I would spend random lonely Friday evenings on my laptop, checking up on any bands in my 3rd gen iPod that hadn't released new albums in awhile. This is how I ended up on the Kenna message boards, which is where I met Rocko shortly thereafter, and around 3 years later, SKOA was born.

As a fan, it has been borderline infuriating to see such a talented individual as Kenna not get the recognition he deserves. Also during my MTV2 years there was another song that I remember taking note of, "When I Get You Alone" by the artist  eventually to be known as Robin Thicke. Back then, he had long straggly hair and went only by his last name, but he's been at this game just as long as Kenna, if not longer. Although Kenna has gained a lot of recognition in many musical circles, even receiving a Grammy nomination in 2009, it's hard to not go bonkers that both haven't seen the same level of mainstream success to date. Granted, I thank the universe daily that there is nothing comparable to the notorious twerking incident at last years VMAs synonymous to Kenna's reputation. Even still, I don't know how much longer I can handle introducing people to someone who has simply been hidden in plain sight for a decade now. Take for example that video for "Freetime" that I saw long ago. Typically, debut albums mean a lot of exposure for the artist, their faces are supposed to be plastered everywhere humanly possible. In the case of Kenna, the first and only time you see his face in this video is practically at the end of the song.

Fast forward to mid-November 2013, a month before my interview with Kenna, when I see this familiar-looking face while I'm waiting for the L-train.

Imagine my surprise that the man who can't seem to effectively get in front of a large audience to save his life is suddenly staring back at me like this. A month later, I anxiously got on the phone seeking answers. I had to know, how could someone who seemingly didn't want anyone to know who he was all of a sudden have such a dramatic change of heart? Why had he been hiding all of this time? After a nice chuckle at my reference to waiting for the subway with him that day, the artist I thought I had all figured out very calmly explained, "I wasn't hiding as much as I was mitigating. I wasn't keeping myself from everyone as much as I was waiting to be introduced." He noted that I didn't quite understand what he meant at first, but he went on to explain, "If everyone had song that represented them, mine would be 'Where The Streets Have No Name' [by U2], because it has an incredibly long intro. I'm just getting to the first verse of my life." He added, "As many things as I've done in my life, I've been present, I've been aware, I've been available, but I've also been selective. I think it gives me an opportunity when a lot of my peers have really run their course, reached their pinnacles, and have done really well. They now are left really trying to, like, reinvent constantly. I'm able to come with a fresh perspective, make something that I believe is important, and actually present it because of all the music and artists that have come since that have started to, "pave the highway," if you will, for what I'm going to create next."

"If everyone had song that represented them, mine would be 'Where The Streets Have No Name' [by U2], because it has an incredibly long intro. I'm just getting to the first verse of my life."

That's the thing about Kenna that people take for granted. He'd rather patiently wait for people to come around to the music he's been creating for nearly two decades now before he'd consider compromising what he stands for. Even after losing literally every idea or completed song including his Land 2 Air Chronicles EP series slated for release throughout 2012 to a hard drive crash, he took it in stride.

According to Kenna, “The fact that I was willing to make a shift and be open to the message that the universe was clearly sending my way” actually led me to make better music in the long run”.  He added,

"I also felt like it was also a signal to me that I needed to work harder, that the universe or god wasn't going to let me put out something that wasn't to par and that maybe at that point that I had resigned a little bit. Even as the [releasing the L2AC series based on Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, "Self- Reliance"] idea was the reason why I was making this EP series, to bring this dream into a reality, I think I resigned to a little bit to the fact that there might be a chance that I wouldn't reach my destination. When that happened I just kind of decided, 'Even I won't have control over this destiny, there's something greater that me happening here, and there's something more important than me in this process. It's all the things I've been doing, whether it be philanthropic, clean water, technology, and music. All the areas that I work in, they all are comprised of so many individuals and so many powerful beings that allow me to be great at what I do. I think in that moment I had to realize that I can't do this alone, that I can't climb this mountain by myself again, and that I have to really pull together my allies. That's when, 'Nothing Is Greater Or Less Than Us,' really started to take hold in my world. I just kind of wanted to reiterate that in my actual life as an example."

I had assumed that he re-recorded the songs that he already had planned to release, but in addition to the previously mentioned hard drive crash, he writes his music asymmetrically. As he put it,

"Sometimes I'll be writing a song purely from a melody standpoint and not have any instrumentation and I'll have to build around it. Where I'm not as familiar with is how the organization of how the music was to that melody and then I have to re-devise it because it's not actually complete, like programmed in any way. That's what makes my music so special. It really is one of a kind and it's not something that you can really replicate without having the actual files and so that was the most difficult [about the hard drive crashing]…Those [old/unfinished] songs were great but I had to put away some of those ideas because I didn't remember them, you know?"

Since Kenna was presented with a clean slate for the EP series, he took the opportunity to amplify some of the components of his music. One of the key elements that he decided he wanted to change was his voice. "My voice coach became a critical and pivotal person in my life because I decided then to work really heavily on my voice and build my voice and make it so it was a lot stronger than it was on the first two records."  He admitted to having a "weak" voice. "When I say weak, I don't mean that I can't sing," he said, "I'm just not like Jennifer Hudson, you know what I mean? I don't have a natural voice that just comes to you." He recounted how in his youth that he was practically tone deaf. "I had to work to have a [good singing] voice…" he explained, "I almost couldn't hear things. I just forced it. I just taught myself how to hear keys and notes and I spent a lot of time training my voice." The incident with the hard drives shifted a lot of the way he approached things. "I thought, 'There's no reason why I can't have an epic voice," he said, "there's no reason why I can't have an epic album. There's no reason why I can't have an epic moment. There's no reason why I can't do it for something greater than myself."

This mindset would converge into what we now know as the first two volumes of the Land 2 Air Chronicle series. In their pre-hard drive failure inception, the series was broken into 3 “Volumes”/EPs based on Ralph Waldo Emerson's, "Self-Reliance" essay. Now in their new form, he’s taking advantage of the clean slate in order to more effectively introduce himself to newcomers as he preps for what is sure to be a big year for Kenna.

His latest in the L2AC series, Volume 2: Imitation is Suicide spans 3 Chapters in the form of EPS, which showcase his refined voice and his longstanding ability to write songs about, as he put it,  

“us…. journeys, the human condition, love, confusion, the search for self, [and] social conditions. I write songs about ‘us’ and how we are in all of those situations and how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive others, how perceive family, and whether or not it really is the journey vs. the destination. Sometimes for me it’s the destination and I forget the journey. Sometimes it’s all the journey and I could care less where I’m going. I write songs hoping that it represents, and this sounds really grandiose, the totality of mankind because I’m everybody and everybody’s me...at least I hope.”  

To get better acquainted to Kenna, you can befriend him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Feel free to have a listen to Land 2 Air Chronicles Vol. 2: Imitation Is Suicide (Chapters 1-3) below. If you enjoy it, consider picking them up on iTunes.

[Listen] Manchester Orchestra - "Top Notch"

In a year that is going to see some big albums being released, there's a handful that have me acting like a giddy little kid on his birthday. So, with that in mind, it makes me extremely happy to be posting this next bit of news. Manchester Orchestra have just announced a brand new album set for April 1st, and no this is not a joke. Titled, Cope, it seems that the band have gone back to a huge sounding and raw power that they became known for on Mean Everything To Nothing. Their last release, Simple Math, delivered a well rounded, more subtle approach, yet it seems they're going for something a little bigger with the new release. In a recent interview, Andy Hull stated the new record was recorded with them trying to capture their live energy and sound. Lead track "Top Notch" seems to have done just that with punchy and hugely heavier sounding introduction with Andy's signature vocal delivery cutting through the mix like knuckle duster to the face. Upon first hearing this the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. But hey, that's me. Judge for yourselves below and get excited if you like.

You can also grab the download for the cheap price of your email address. Treat yourself.