The Sky Drops

Holy flurking snit! Check out these 2 free songs from Wilmington, DE band The Sky Drops that 3Hive just posted about. Since there will never be a follow-up to My Bloody Valetine's Loveless, you might as well enjoy these songs. Read more about The Sky Drops on their website.

In memory of Grant McLennan

Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens died on May 6. Read more about it at NME.com. LittleHits, one of my favorite music blogs, is posting a free download of the classic Go-Between song Cattle and Cane.

Better Than Prozac: Listening to New Order

Slate is featuring a good article about New Order entitled Better Than Prozac: Listening to New Order. Besides heaping well-deserved praise on some of our favorite Mancunians, the article mentions that a new Ian Curtis biopic is in the works, directed by Anton Corbijn (who I know mostly from having taken many of the defining early pictures of U2).

The Church

Last time, I wrote about Echo & the Bunnymen, a band that meant a lot to me back in the day but until recently has seemed increasingly irrelevant with each new album that comes out. The same could be said for The Church. I WORSHIPPED The Church from the time I bought Heyday in high school up until Gold Afternoon Fix. I bought everything in their back catalog at a time when I couldn't really afford it. But after they failed to replicate the relative commercial success of Starfish with Gold Afternoon Fix, The Church seemed to say screw it! and retreat away from the jangle-pop of their best work, becoming more experimental and to my ears, much less interesting. I won't say that their latest album Uninvited, Like the Clouds, is a complete return to form. However, I strongly recommend the song Easy, which recalls their best work. The song Unified Field is also good. I may end up downloading a few more of the songs from eMusic.com, but those 2songs seem to be the standout tracks.