Fright Night Music Mix

Just in time for All Hallow’s Eve, we ghouls put together some spooky tunes to soundtrack your festivities—whether they involve bloodsuckers, brain eaters, and witches, or just a quiet night of candy binging. Get bloody hammered to the sounds of Goblin, the Cramps, Iggy + the Stooges, Zola Jesus, Tom Waits, X-Ray Spex, the Misfits, and more. Check out the tracklist below.

Click to download : Fright Night

Happy Halloween, fiends! xx

—TNJ w/ guest mix-maker Kevin Munley

“Human Fly” by the Cramps

“Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (song by Tom Waits)

The Raincoats Are Coming!

UK post-punk legends the Raincoats announced a North American mini-tour this September to honor the reissue of their 1981 album Odyshape. The tour brings them to Brooklyn (woop!), Washington D.C., Montreal, Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto, before they hop the pond again to play the Jeff Mangum–curated All Tomorrow’s Parties fest in December.

Set for release on September 13, the reissue features liner notes from Kim Gordon, who had this to say about the band:

“It was The Raincoats I related to most. They seemed like ordinary people playing extraordinary music. Music that was natural that made room for cohesion of personalities. They had enough confidence to be vulnerable and to be themselves without having to take on the mantle of male rock/punk rock aggression…or the typical female as sex symbol avec irony or sensationalism.”
(Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth,1993)

Tour dates and more videos after the jump…

Love Catastrophe: Music for a Love Cycle

Whether you’re a lover or loather this Valentine’s Day, there’s always music to soundtrack the dramas of romance—the heights, the death, and the dearth of it. Luckily, we’re all total cliches, and that’s why songs about lust and love and loneliness and heartache are so relatable and often cathartic.

So, in honor of this holiest of phony holi-days, Toast n Jams presents the Love Catastrophe mix, which attempts to track the stages of a typical love cycle. Click the link, download, and enjoy. Happy Valentine’s Day!

(Track listing is after the jump…)

Those Darlins: Drunk + Crass (+ Touring)

Those Darlins will probably kick your head in if you call them “darlin.” The Tennessee honky-tonk punks are releasing their 2nd album, Screws Get Loose, on March 29, and the first video hit the ‘tube last week. Warning: the sexy clip for “Be Your Bro” contains boozing, smoking, and scantily dressed Darlins.

Led by Nikki, Jessi, and Kelly Darlin, the girls sing about country living and country partying, whether they’re snaggletooth mamas who don’t own any shoes or getting drunk and eating a chicken—yeh, a WHOLE damn chicken. They’ve got the twang and snarl of Wanda Jackson, the punk ethic of Joey Ramone, and a knack for old-fashioned storytelling—an awesome reminder that not all modern country girls are glossy and bottle-blond.

I’ve never seen them live, but some guys I respect say that their shows are rowdy, beer-soaked parties. Actually, LOTS of dudes love the Darlins, probably because these ladies can turn them on, drink them under the table, and then kick their asses. Case in point:

So, feck yeah for a tour. They’ll be in NYC March 25 and 26, and in Boston on the 27th. Yarr.

Full tour schedule after the jump.

Linds’s Favorite Songs of 2010

Ranking stuff is hard, so here’s a list of songs I loved this year in no particular order.

“Palaces of Montezuma,” Grinderman

Nick Cave’s Grinderman is a raunchy, brash, psychotic mess of a band…ie, totally bad-ass. This is the lightest cut off Grinderman 2 and it’s a beauty. Cave lists off cultural artifacts he’d give his lover in exchange for her affection—a sweet idea that gets graphic and gruesome, in prime Nick Cave fashion.

“New York Is Killing Me,” Gil Scott-Heron

On his first album in 13 years, poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron sounds older, gravelly, and introspective. The minimal production on this blues track—just hand claps and fuzz—emphasizes his weathered voice, exhausted and trapped in a city of millions.

And check out this remix video by director Chris Cunningham, with all music replaced by the sounds of the New York City subway.

“Fall in Love (Your Funeral),” Erykah Badu

New Amerykah Part 2 is brilliant and beautiful front-to-back, with Badu in full-on soul siren mode, singing about love and affection and relationships. This track samples Eddie Kendrick’s 1977 “Intimate Friends” and finds Ms. Badu feisty and coy: “You don’t want to fall in love with me,” she says, “If you stay, prepare to have yo shit rearranged.” It’s a playful taunt, and even if you don’t want to fall in love with Badu, it’s pretty impossible not to.

“Lower Leg,” Wetdog

London’s Wetdog plays noisy, chaotic post-punk a la the Raincoats, Kleenex, and the Slits. Cacophonous, playful, and weeeird, oh my! They’re not reinventing the girl-punk wheel here, but holy crizzap is it exciting to find a band of ladies making this kind of music in 2010.

Ari Up, Riotgrrrl Pioneer, 1962–2010

Sad news of the day: Ari Up, lead singer of seminal UK punk band the Slits, passed away yesterday at age 48.

Ari (real name: Arianna Forster) founded the Slits in 1976 with Paloma Romer, aka Palmolive, Viv Albertine, and Tessa Pollitt. She was 14. The band was brash and raunchy and aggressive—a bunch of hellions just as raucous as the all-male punk bands of the late 70s. (In fact, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols is her stepfather.)

Their debut album, Cut, with its WTF punk ethics and reggae grooves, inspired both the future of punk rock and the riotgrrrl movement of the 80s and 90s. The cover image alone is iconic: Ari and two band members appear in nothing but loincloths and mud.

The first single, “Typical Girls,” took aim at culturally imposed gender roles, wherein girls “don’t create, don’t rebel, have intuition, don’t drive well.” On top of the scathing lyrics, though, the song is a helluva lot of fun—playful, giddy, weird. The Slits brought their fuck-you party attitude to their live shows and videos too, as seen below.

The Slits’ record label, Narnack Records, posted the band’s latest video today, respecting Ari’s wishes for a posthumous release.

Jam of the Weekend: Rye Rye, “Sunshine”

Thank gawd for Rye Rye. Just in time for this gloriously sunny weekend (on the eastcoast, at least), the 19-year-old Baltimore native gives us the first single and video from her LONGGG-awaited debut album Go! Pop! Bang!. “Sunshine” is all hand claps, school crushes, and sassy firecracker raps. Rye Rye’s buddy (and NEET label head) M.I.A. makes a cameo.

Go! Pop! Bang! is due out early next year, and we can’t stinkin’ wait. In the meantime, get your Rye Rye fix here and here, and check out the videos after the jump.

YACHT at South Street Seaport

August in New York City is brutal. The crowds, the humidity, the sweat, the dirt that clings to your face thanks to the sticky mixture of sweat, humidity, and grime. Blegh. Thankfully, this town puts on some excellent outdoor concerts that help you forget all the nasty stuff for a few minutes.

Case in point: YACHT at South Street Seaport on Friday, August 6. A breezy midsummer evening on the water makes for a bangin’ dance party, even with a mall and tourist-trap restaurants in the background. (Who knew?) And while it didn’t actually take place on a yacht, the band made up for it with summertime pop jams.

On tour to support their 2009 album See Mystery Lights, the Portland duo performed disco and dance-punk cuts including “the Afterlife,” “Psychic City (Voodoo City),” and “Summer Song,” then whipped out a surprise cover of X’s “Nausea.” Weird, yet pretty awesome.

Although known for their theatrical stage shows, this time Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans scrapped the projections and arty props, instead sticking with just their trademark black-and-white color coordinates. Evans, who joined YACHT after Jona’s one-man 2007 release I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real., adds a new dimension: She’s sexy, powerful, androgynous. TNJ is crushin’ hard. Even cooler? She’s a science writer. Swoon.

The band sells stuff and distributes freebies here. And you can grab their record from DFA’s webstore. More photos after the jump.

La Roux, “Bulletproof”

Summertime and dancefloor anthems go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong. Like . . . bread and butter. Like, yeah, toast and jamz. Released just in time for the season, La Roux‘s Gold EP gives us the 80s-influenced synth-pop hit “Bulletproof,” a dancefloor  jam in the vein of British New Wave heroes Erasure and the Human League.

The key difference here is vocalist Elly Jackson, who’s got her own spin on that mostly male-dominated era in music: She’s a tough chick with a fierce independent streak—think Beth Ditto, La Gaga—and she styles herself more like David Bowie and Tilda Swinton than like other sex-fixated pop singers her age (*cough* Ke$ha *cough*).

The Brit duo (with keyboardist/songwriter Ben Langmaid) has been a hit in the UK since releasing their self-titled debut last year: They were nominated for the Mercury Prize, and Jackson is already a fashion icon for coolies on the other side of the pond. They’re doing some damage stateside too, with “Bulletproof” creeping up the Billboard Dance/Electronic charts and a slot on this spring’s Lillith Fair Festival.

Buy the EP here. Tour dates after the jump.

Toast N Jams Mix #2: Leisure Time Is the Best Time

For people who, like us, can’t flippin’ wait for springtime already, we’ve put together a music mix that will hopefully conjure up the sunny skies, bbqs, street stickball games, and lazy hazy afternoons that we’re pining for here on the eastcoast. Recommended for fans of not working, playing hooky, long weekends, vacations, or any kind of leisure time (I’m guessing that’s everyone). Download here.

Tracklist is after the jump.