Lady Gaga + Beyonce x Quentin Tarantino = "Telephone"

Have you SEEN this? Lady Gaga is the worst actress in the world, but when you're surrounded by so much crazy crap it could cover the walls of a Jack Astor's, it just doesn't matter.

Does Tarantino know about this? Update: he does know about this.

You might wanna full-size this:

Bright Eyes EP being reissued with new songs

Those of you just getting on the Conor Oberst bandwagon think he's a monster of folk, but he hasn't always been that way. He used to be a constantly ruffled, angst-ridden, alcoholic romantic whose songs were punctuated by shrieks and wails that single-handedly lead many to designate his brand of music as emo, despite the obvious influence of the folk balladry of Bob Dylan (was Dylan emo?! - chew on that)

Now that he's all grown up, it's hard to picture Oberst all young and green, so I've included a picture of it (above) and brought with me news that his split 2004 EP with Neva Dinova, One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels, is being reissued by Saddle Creek on March 23. The EP includes four newly-recorded tracks, including this gem, "Happy Accident," which hearkens back to Oberst's middle years in a major way.

For longtime fans, this is vintage Bright Eyes. For new ones, enjoy, and please - go listen to Lifted as soon as you can.

Sunny Day Real Estate announce new album, new D.A. mixtape

Anybody with an open mind knows there's no such thing as a moot genre. In that line of thinking, get ready for some of the greatest emo (that's right, EMO) news this side of Cap'n Jazz reissuing Analphabetapolothology on vinyl: second-wave emo pioneers Sunny Day Real Estate announced last night, via a tweet from some seattle radio DJ who let the cat out of the bag, that they are going into the studio in May to record a fifth studio LP, and their first since breaking up almost a decade ago.

News of the new album comes on the back of the reissuing of the band's two classics, 1994's Diary and 1995's self-titled album, commonly referred to simply as LP2 by Sub Pop in late 2009.

Those who think emo is a total waste of time, something to think about. Have you rightly given emo a chance, or have you shrugged it off based on the fact that Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday and Dashboard Confessional are a load of flaccid babyshit? To do so would be to write off metal based on Metallica's St. Anger, punk based on Blink 182, electronica based on David Guetta, or the entire pop world based on the recorded output of Britney Spears. My point, of course, is that every genre has its share of chaff, and that only with effort can one discover the gems hidden under one's scummy surface.

Ready to accept emo as a genre? Start by listening to Sunny Day Real Estate's "Waffle" below, then check out at least one of the following albums:

Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary
Cap'n Jazz - Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards In The Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We've Slipped On and Egg Shells We've Tippy Toed Over
Rites of Spring - End on End
Jawbreaker - Dear You
Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me
Weezer - Pinkerton... yes, Weezer used to be listenable!

Or, download my 40 minute emo mixtape, maybe emo ain't so bad after all, here.

Then, quit yer bellyachin'.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach... 95/100

Every ten years, hip-hop has a revelatory moment. In 1980 (okay, late '70s, but quit nitpicking) the term was first coined, the movement began in South Bronx, and the first hip-hop record was released. The genre of hip-hop represented a way in which largely oppressed African-american communities could express themselves musically without having to afford expensive musical instruments, and in this way, was comparable to the punk movement going on around the same time. Hip-hop was a way in which North American culture (via vinyl LPs) could be manipulated to sound entirely different, so that it represented a community that was largely excluded from middle-class popular music culture.

By 1990, records like Criminal Minded, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Three Feet High and Rising had turned hip-hop into something more than just entertainment. The former two albums used hip-hop as a political tool to challenge social norms and narrow-mindedness while the latter expanded the genre musically, incorporating multiple genres en route to making what could be called the first conceptual hip-hop album.

By 2000, the genre had stagnated slightly: Gangster rap, which was initially created to voice anger at the inequality of North American society, had become a cheap imitation of itself, and in what would less than a decade later be considered a joke, the genre of rap-rock was trying to marry the two genres to no avail. Only the Soulquarians, a hip-hop collective featuring acts such as the Roots, Mos Def and Common, could be considered revelatory, but despite releasing classics like Things Fall Apart, Black on Both Sides and Like Water for Chocolate, the group’s soul-oriented sound went largely unheeded by the mainstream (long-time soul-hop progenitors Outkast excepted). The genre spent most of the 2000s floundering in the tired gangster posturing of 50 Cent and the faux-artistic hip-hop types associated with Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. music. The 2000s forced us to look outside the mainstream to find challenging hip-hop, which came in the form of artists like MF Doom and hip-hop veterans who operated just outside the mainstream.

What, then, is there to point to as game-changing in the new decade? Maybe nothing concrete yet, but if Gorillaz’ latest, Plastic Beach, is any beacon, this turn of the decade could mark the moment when hip-hop freed itself by finally loosening its idea of what hip-hop means.

Is Plastic Beach a hip-hop album? Hip-hop purists might argue that it’s not: more than half the songs here are either orchestral or electronic soundscapes over which Damon Albarn sing-speaks pretty little melodies. There’s no turntablism and no gangster posturing, but listen closely and you might just hear the most striking omission here of all: there’s no fear. No fear of over-stepping the restrictions and boundaries of hip-hop, no fear about whether the album will sell enough, and no fear about keeping some false tough-guy image intact. Unfettered by the strings and limitations of the hip-hop genre, Albarn and his company of guests (of which a large portion are rappers) may have just created a hip-hop landmark.

Not unlike its sonic predecessor Three Feet High and Rising, Plastic Beach is characterized by creative abandon, a multi-genred approach and a mysterious overlying concept that unites a lengthy track-list.

Given these characteristics, Plastic Beach could easily lose the listener were it not for it’s fastidious attention to cohesion. The opening strains of violin on prologue “Orchestral Intro” slip effortlessly into the ominous Tuba rumble of “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach,” which acts a bit like the first chapter of a grand novel. This approach to the album's construction works perfectly, mostly due to ever-transmuting nature of the album’s “chapters”: most songs here comprise several different ideas, never resting on one idea for too long, and have beginnings, middles and endings within themselves, as well as working within the album’s greater context. “Empire Ants,” for example, begins inconspicuously enough, with Albarn delivering barely more than a whisper over gently rolling chimes, before a thumping beat replaces the sweeping ambiance and synth stabs push the chimes into the song's background. The Mos Def-featuring “Sweepstakes” is similarly nomadic, beginning with an African-influenced rhythm that becomes suddenly celebratory when the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble enters the fray with latin-infused horn accents.

Plastic Beach’s success can also be attributed generously to the album’s guest-list. All too often, a guest-heavy album sacrifices its own cohesion and vision for watered down, stylized versions of songs the guest might have written in their sleep; on Plastic Beach, Albarn has cast his guests into the perfect roles to suit his purpose and as such, they sound great. Snoop Dogg has never sounded as genuinely vivified on a featuring track as he does on “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach,” on which he intones the titular phrase perfectly: “Beach!” he emphasizes, as if there’s no better place on Earth. Musical collectives The Lebanese National Orchestra For Oriental Arabic Music and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are used sparingly and effectively for emphasis, and the long list of hip-hop contributors all sound on point, especially De La Soul on the single-worthy “Superfast Jellyfish.” Hell, even Lou Reed is used to great effect, his weathered rasp lending “Some Kind of Nature” added poignancy.

But what are the album highlights, you ask? Wish I could tell you, but the thing’s too damn consistent. As a result, there are sure to be grumblings that Plastic Beach is meandering, that it contains no gems like “Feel Good, Inc.” or “Clint Eastwood,” but to assert that is to miss the point of this album: Plastic Beach is a journey, not a destination, and therein lies its importance to hip-hop as a genre.

After all, when was the last time you heard a hip-hop album called a “journey”? In this era of hip-hop, an album is typically a vessel by which a rappers gets their three or four singles out to the public, and the rest is filled with hollow guest performances and interludes. Plastic Beach “maximizes the hip-hop album as art,” to paraphrase the Roots’ 1999 masterpiece Things Fall Apart, and as such, stands as the first to do so in quite a few years. It values artistic achievement over the “dollar bills” and toys with so many different genres that haters will say it doesn’t even qualify as hip-hop. But if that, then what was hip-hop ever? Hip-hop was, from the beginning, based on the manipulation of the recorded music of others and old culture to make culture anew. Is that not exactly what Damon Albarn, with help from some hip-hop mainstays, has done?

Plastic Beach isn’t quite perfect, (its rating, based on quality alone, is 89/100) but its sheer relevance and what it might mean for the future of hip-hop earns it a solid 95 - only time can prove that wrong.

R.I.P. Mark Linkous

As many of you might by now know, Sparklehorse mastermind Mark Linkous has committed suicide. Pitchfork has a collection of artists' reaction to the death here, and you can listen to one of his best songs, in my opinion, below. The song is "Piano Fire" from the 2001 LP It's A Wonderful Life, featuring P.J. Harvey.

R.I.P. Mark Linkous: