I love Vampire Weekends’ eponymous debut album and their latest effort Contra has been out for about a month now. It is definitely making the playlist rounds on both my iPhone and on iTunes… check it out!

www.vampireweekend.com

It’s been five years since Demon Days so I’m super stoked that the new Gorillaz album Plastic Beach is coming out on March 10th! The first single ‘Stylo’ came out today. Check out the song featuring Bobby Womack and Mos Def on YouTube or on www.gorillaz.com.

Great show @ The Box on Nantucket tonight! A little short as they could have played at least another 15 minutes before close but a great time nonetheless!

Donavon and Billabong are doing an autograph session today (Thursday July 30th) @ The Box and then an all ages show @ 5pm with proceeds going to the Ozone fund. Then another show at 10pm with tickets $20 if they aren’t already sold out.

He surfed Nobadeer on Wednesday so keep an eye for him in the water Thursday somewhere on Nantucket…

Nashville, TN –  Lost Highway recording artist, and world-renowned surfer, Donavon Frankenreiter continues his long-standing relationship with Billabong for his upcoming Summer tour in support of his album Pass It Around (Lost Highway). The 21-date tour includes three shows in New York City, with stops in Boston, Montreal and Philadelphia.

Billabong will be providing promotional support to Frankenreiter in the form of posters and email blasts to their enormous customer base. In addition, Billabong will soon announce a  limited number of special in-store performances with Frankenreiter at select shops. As an added bonus, in select markets starting in August Billabong will be screening a new 30-minute surf film titled Still Filthy (with Donavon cameo) in between acts at Frankenreiter’s shows. This will be contingent on the capability at each venue.

Released in 2008, Pass It Around boasts 10 new songs written or co-written by Frankenreiter,  with such collaborators as Mike Daly (Whiskeytown), Grant Lee Phillips, Steve McQuien (Unamerican) and Thad Cockrell. Pass It Around also features special guests Ben Harper (on title track), G. Love (on “Sing A Song”) and Grant Lee Phillips, (on “Mansions In The Sand”).

Donavon Frankenreiter 2009 New England Tour Dates:

July 25                Norwalk, CT            Kayak For A Cause
July 26                Portsmouth, NH         Redhook Fest
July 27                Portland, ME              Port City Music Hall
July 28                 Boston, MA             Paradise Rock Club
July 29                Nantucket, MA             The Chicken Box
July 30                Nantucket, MA             The Chicken Box
July 31                Wellfleet, MA             The Beachcomber

http://www.donavonf.com

Regardless of whether you love them or you hate them, Coldplay gives back to its fans with the free release of their new live album LeftRightLeftRightLeft. If you are lucky enough to see them live on their Viva La Vida tour you will get a free copy of the physical CD. For the rest of us there is the free download online which will remain up until the last show of their 2009 tour! The download is 54.5 MB and the MP3’s are medium quality at 192 kbps and the folder includes album cover art. Here’s the track listing.

01. Glass Of Water
02. 42
03. Clocks
04. Strawberry Swing
05. The Hardest Part / Postcards From Far Away
06. Viva La Vida
07. Death Will Never Conquer
08. Fix You
09. Death And All His Friends

I haven’t had the opportunity to give this a good listen as I’ve just downloaded it myself but I’m looking forward to a having a good soundtrack for some Memorial Day weekend garage cleaning and then grilling and chilling. 

For a free copy of LeftRightLeftRightLeft make the jump…

www.coldplay.com/lrlrl/lr.html

I heard this tune on Sirius/XM radio doing a delivery on a motherfucking boat last week. I was washing down the yacht after a hard day of motoring and getting ready to crack a cold Yuengling when it came on the radio. I didn’t even hear the name of the band, just heard they were from Cambridge, MA and then really liked the music. So I’m surfing the web and was on Vimeo’s home page tonight and bang there it was! Passion Pit-The Reeling. Cool video as well… what a coincidence, after a little Google search it appears that their album Manners with this song on it was released today! Makes me want to go out and PARTY!

www.myspace.com/passionpitjams

Is Jesse Ciarmataro the North Shore of Boston’s answer to Jack Johnson? Cool music and the visuals are a bonus… Check out his myspace page below for some more auditory stimulation and live dates around Boston.

www.myspace.com/qwillmusic

MUSIC REVIEW: Pretty. Odd.

What once was an intense, most definitely driven, and not to mention, extraordinarily talented band, now seems to have rendered its weak spot. In attempt to equal their previous album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, they produce an album with two potential radio singles, to please the record execs and the bubblegum pop fans…Other than that everything is slow and boring. The lyrics which, in the last album, were intense and meaningful, something we could all relate to, now have fallen towards preachy, senseless nonsense that makes me wonder if these band members have ever truly struggled, ONCE, in their lives. Success has gone to their heads. The musical intensity has been cut in half. They did not try. This album should have never hit the shelves.

www.panicatthedisco.com

MUSIC REVIEW: Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Maintaining neutrality while writing a music review is most difficult, especially when discussing one’s favorite band. However, having waited for a completely new Counting Crows album since 2002, since Films About Ghosts was simply a recap of their greatest hits and a few other tracks; I must say I was ready to be most critical of this new album. I wondered if they still had it. I had seen their live performances in the summer of 2006, and it seemed that the band was not completely united. Even worse, their frontman, Adam Duritz, appeared weary, out of shape, and sometimes completely uninspired. Rumors have also circulated about his health (mental and physical) and weight issues as well. However, when push came to shove, the Counting Crows once again humbled me. The album contained a bunch of catchy, rowdy, and meaningful tunes, over which Duritz sings lyrics that ponder life and one’s relationships amidst success and failure. He depicts the struggles of the individual amongst friends as well as the demands posed by peers and life’s situations. This album has been long awaited by many a Counting Crows fan. Even though I was skeptical at first, I have to admit, they have done it again! Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings proves that, with age, comes experiences, memories, and emotions, and a maturity to depict such topics. Also, the band can still ROCK!!!

www.countingcrows.com

So the ever volatile, fiendishly delightful original line up of Jane’s Addiction (my favorite band of all time) is back together for a tour and… Of course the band could also implode at any second and it could all go up in smoke. Bassist Eric Avery left Jane’s a long time ago for a reason and I’m crossing my fingers that he hangs around for a while. The pulsing, driving rhythms that he and drummer Steven Perkins created were an ebbing, flowing and crashing ocean around which Dave Navarro and Perry Farrell layered their wailing guitar and banshee like histrionics.

I hear they have been playing around in the studio with NIN’s Trent Reznor and may or may not be working on a couple of new songs. They did however record studio versions of Chip Away and Whores which were originally released as live tracks on their 1987 eponymous debut. In exchange for a lousy email address you can get those two songs plus two each from Nine Inch Nails and Street Sweeper all for free! Just go to the NIN|JA 2009 website, give them an email and you can download a high quality MP3 version or even a lossless FLAC version of the EP for free… did I say free? You’ll get a torrent file and then you just have to fire up your Bit Torrent client for some free tunes!

So they are doing the NIN|JA 2009 tour with Nine Inch Nails and Street Sweeper at The Comcast Center in Mansfield on June 3rd. See you there.

www.janesaddiction.com
www.ninja2009.com