The Hood Internet just dropped The Mixtape Volume 4 – an absolute essential collection of 34 tracks served up Hood Internet style. Volume 4 is “a non-stop mix that clocks in a lil bit over an hour. It’s the soundtrack to your next house party.” Indeed.

Heads Up: Milwaukee fans get ready….

Download: The Hood Internet :: Mixtape Volume 4

Regular visitors of this site will probably recognize Common Loon. They performed Madison Pop Fest two years ago on the Muzzle of Bees stage, and, more recently, earned a bunch of new fans with their Cactus Club show during Radio Summer Camp.

While no release date has been set, expect their debut album, The Long Dream of Birds to arrive early 2010 via Parasol Records. In the meantime, Common Loon will be touring through the Midwest later this month including stops in Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago.

Common Loon Tour Dates:

Nov 12 @ 501 Club – Minneapolis MN
Nov 13 @ Daytrotter Session – Rock Island IL
Nov 14 @ The Mill – Iowa City IA
Nov 19 @ The House Cafe – Dekalb IL
Nov 20 @ Der Rathskeller – Madison WI
Nov 21 @ Cactus Club – Milwaukee WI
Nov 22 @ The Empty Bottle – Chicago IL
Dec 04 @ Canopy Club – Urbana IL

Myspace: Common Loon
MP3: Common Loon – “Dinosaur vs. Early Man”

By Alex Schaaf

Glo-fi. Chillwave. Bloghouse. These are terms that are used for certain kinds of bands that are usually adored by certain kinds of music blogs. These terms usually turn me off right away, as the selections I had sampled from this area had not quite connected with me yet. But for some reason, I decided to give Memory Tapes a listen, one of the many bands that have emerged from this scene, after a glowing review on Pitchfork. I’m quite glad I did.

One of my favorite things about listening to brand new music is the anticipation for “the moment.” This “moment” I’m referring to is the specific time or event in a new album that really grabs you, makes you stop whatever you were doing at the moment, and just sit back and listen. Oftentimes this doesn’t come, and I may end up never listening to the album again. But when it does come, sometimes it can be extremely specific, and this one moment opens up the rest of the album for me and allows me to enjoy the other songs that I may not have enjoyed as much right off the bat. The climax of Thom Yorke’s vocal line on Radiohead’s “Nude,” when his vibrato kicks in; the harsh cymbal and crushing drum beat towards the end of St. Vincent’s “Marrow,” the 7/4 section of Andrew Bird’s “Anonanimal” – these are all examples from recent releases where I become addicted to that one “moment” and just want to play it over and over again.

I recently had this experience with Memory Tapes in the ending minutes of “Bicycle,” the standout track of Dayve Hawk’s debut album “Seek Magic.” Emerging from a haze of 80s drumbeats and ambient textures, a chorus of ‘oh’s and ‘ahh’s finds its way to the surface to rest atop a blanket of triumphant beats and rhythmic piano. Again, I can’t explain why exactly this hits me the way it does, but I’ve listened to that song over and over, just waiting for the emotional release of that final section.

The album on the whole is very solid, if I had to add one more meaningless qualifier to the mix, I would call this “haze dance” music. The 80s-sounding drum beats are ever-present, as well as the hazy ambience of dark piano and delay-heavy synths. Some tracks go into extended instrumental passages, while others focus more on lyrics like “This is the last time/You can’t deny/One more time, baby one more time.”

These tracks seem very “retro” in one sense, as if they could be heard tuning in to a 80s rock radio station late at night, but in another sense there is a modern sense of rhythm and movement that pervades throughout. I may check out a few more “glo-fi” bands after this experience; whether or not this will be dangerous to my sanity is yet to be seen.

Buy: Memory Tapes – Seek Magic
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MP3: Memory Tapes – “Bicycle”

“Thao, Willis, Adam, and some friends from the Lexington came over to drink wine, play Saved by the Bell the board game and watch Thao perform songs from her new album, “Know Better Learn Faster.“” – Yourstru.ly

Previously: Review: Thao with the Get Down Stay Down – Canopy Club, Urbana IL.

Buy: Thao with The Get Down Stay Down
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Myspace: Thao with the Get Down Stay Down
MP3: Thao with the Get Down Stay Down – “Know Better Learn Faster”

Yo La Tengo will play the Barrymore Theatre in Madison on Saturday, January 23rd behind their fantastic new album Popular Songs. I caught them at the Vic Theatre in Chicago last month and enjoyed it tremendously. After all these years they still deliver live. Big time.

Price: $21 Advance / $23 Day of Show
On Sale: Friday, November 13th at 10am

Buy: Yo La Tengo | Popular Songs
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MP3: Yo La Tengo – “Periodically Double Or Triple”
MP3: Yo La Tengo – “Here To Fall”

By Jon Stone | @jwstone

It’s unseasonably warm here in Champaign-Urbana. The weather gets like this here in November: schizophrenic, with wild mercury jerks back and forth from freezing to oh-my-gosh-I-can’t-believe-it’s-not September balminess. Such warmth can make a chap reflective on the year in sound, and I’m not alone. Standing in line to see Neko Case Friday night at the Canopy Club, I heard folks both in front of and behind me talking about their year in rock. Most were reminiscing about the last time they saw Neko. One guy said that he went to see her on his 18^th birthday at his very fist 18+ show. (Awwwe.)  Another girl talked about Neko’s Sunday afternoon set at this year’s Lollapalooza fest in Chicago: “I was sooo hung over by Sunday that I just laid on the grass and listened to her set… I may have fallen asleep” I wasn’t there, but I heard it was hot and that Neko was, um, agitated. I can’t blame her–Lolla can be brutal.

This was Neko Case’s first visit to our little twin cities and we’re glad she made the trip. In my estimation it was one of the—if not the— most anticipated fall shows this year. More of my friends and colleagues gushed about how much they were looking forward to this show than any other in memory and it was so crowded at Canopy near-capacity venue that I managed to not run into any of them, but still saw several other people I knew.

Ontario’s Sarah Harmer opened the show and, as you can read in one of our local online rags, she’s a gem. Great songwriting with vivid lyrics and haunting melodies—a great choice for a warm-up act. I was warmed and will be warmed again once I get my hands on her several releases.

Neko came out with her band and enchanted the socks pants (as I think would be her word-choice) off of the whole room. She was not agitated in the least in the cool cave of the Canopy and from the first notes of her opening song, “Things that Scare Me” (from Blacklisted, 2002), Neko Case and her band drenched us in her trademark reverby vox and played one of the cleanest (by which I mean, pristine, perfect, unfettered, porcelain-like) sets I’ve ever heard. These folks are pros and it shows (more on this in a moment). But surely, it was a thing of beauty.

The set drew heavily from her two most recent releases, 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and this year’s Middle Cyclone, and featured a full-blown video projection with animations and visuals suited to each song. We got to actually see killer whales and elephants on “People Got a Lotta Nerve” and the roving tornado in “This Tornado Loves You”—not that I ever really wanted to take my eyes off Neko. I mean, common, right?

As I listened to the set, a few things occurred to me. The first was that unlike the New Pornographers, Neko’s solo work isn’t really pop. The songs don’t really have big pop hooks; the band doesn’t just crunch along in three-chord cycles. Rather, Paul Rigby and Jon Rauhouse’s guitar, banjo, and pedal-steel work build layers of nuance underneath the soaring vocals and vocal harmonies (thanks here to the lovely Kelly Hogan). Everything blends together into a seamless, pristine whole—it’s really quite a feat considering the material and the, well, liveness of the performance. In fact, a friend and I were talking afterward about how we kind of got the impression that that Neko’s band—Paul and Jon particularly—were holding back a bit. That the musicians on stage, journeymen-all by the looks of them, could have really let loose if given the opportunity. Our initial impression was disappointment… we wished that they would have rather than staying safely on the edge of their full-capacity talent. But later, I reflected that the exercise of constraint on stage might be more of an artistic feat. That these guys could totally rock but stop just short of it is an indication that they know their audience and therefore know that the audience is there to see and hear Neko Case and not necessarily them. Good form, guys.

The highlights of the night for me were the quieter jams—I love the music box melody on “Middle Cyclone” and love even more that they perform with it live. The encore started with “Vengeance Is Sleeping”— a favorite of mine on the new record. On it, Paul Rigby gave us a little peak at that talent I was talking about earlier. Just an acoustic guitar and Neko Case singing “I’m not the man you think I am.” Loved it.

My hat goes off to the Canopy Club and our local organizer Seth Fein who, I believe, is responsible for much of the musical goodness that descends on our town. I saw him running around working at Neko, and I see this guy at every good show that comes through town. He’s usually working hard behind the scenes and only once (at the Sufjan show in September) did I see him sitting still enjoying the show. I ran into him in the lobby before the Iron & Wine show earlier this fall and uttered a few words of thanks. If you’re out there man, let me thank you again for a great year.

Buy: Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
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Myspace: Neko Case