The 'Gum Drop
We look forward to delivering something truly great to you, loyal
reader, every week. The format is simple: one exclusive,
never-before-released MP3 (yes, not available anywhere else), often commissioned by us specifically for your inbox. (So far, we've debuted tracks by Deerhunter, David Byrne, Marissa Nadler, Nellie McKay, and Raveonettes). Each newsletter also heralds a sweet sweepstakes open only to subscribers. We give away cool stuff like DJ equipment, Arcade Fire tickets, high-end artist merch, rock books, even limited-edition Wilco figurines. We're calling our e-mail product The 'Gum Drop because we're too clever for our own good. Hope you enjoy!
xoxo,
Scott & the Stereogum crew
PS: click here to subscribe.
Check out the latest issue here.
May 7, 2008
Last month longstanding Athens-born E6 crew Elf Power released their ninth album In A Cave on Rykodisc. They recorded "Mutiny" during the Cave sessions. It didn't end up on the final tracklist, but you can hear it in this week's...
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April 30, 2008
UPDATE: Unfortunately a mix-up at the label forces us to remove this track from distribution. Stay tuned for another MP3 premiere next week. Paul Weller needs no introduction. Maybe his ninth solo album does. The ex-Jam and Style Councilor's releasing...
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April 23, 2008
Next month the Dresden Dolls release No, Virginia..., a collection of unheard material from the Yes, Virginia... sessions along with b-sides, compilation contributions, and previously unreleased winter '08 session tracks. (Dresden Doll Brian Viglione told us they look at it...
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April 16, 2008
The Glaswegian crew Frightened Rabbit released their sophomore album The Midnight Organ Fight earlier this week. Elegantly grimy heart breaker "Soon Go" isn't part of the collection, but it is this week's Drop. We spoke with vocalist/guitarist Scott Hutchison about...
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April 9, 2008
Next month, Matmos release Supreme Balloon, a collection of "cosmic pop" tracks, including a 24-minute epic, made entirely from synthesizers. Drew Daniel, one half of the Maryland-based duo, explained that on this follow up to 2006's The Rose Has Teeth...
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April 2, 2008
Cassettes Won't Listen is New Yorker Jason Drake, a one-man electro pop outfit and, interestingly, the Director Of Marketing at Definitive Jux. A couple of weeks ago he self-released his first physical album Small-Time Machine. "Catch Up" isn't on it,...
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March 26, 2008
On Monday 3/31, we launch Enjoyed, our song-by-song tribute to Björk's Post. (Click here for complete tracklist.) When we asked her about about the 1995 album she told us: "I was very aware of it at the time that I...
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March 19, 2008
A couple weeks ago we gave premature love to Man Man's forthcoming Rabbit Habits. Last week, we caught the Philly band's excellent Rabbit-y SXSW sets. Making it full circle, or something, the guys are premiering the super Rabbit standout "Hurly/Burly"...
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March 12, 2008
Retribution Gospel Choir is the dark, heavy Minnesota trio of Low guitarist/vocalist Alan Sparhawk and new Low bassist Steve Garrington (who recently replaced Matt Livingston in both bands) with drummer/vocalist Eric Pollard. Imagine Low, minus Mimi Parker, doing dynamic, moody,...
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March 5, 2008
We're really digging Witch's Paralyzed. The Vermont/Western Mass crew's self-titled 2006 debut had moments, but this new one has many. The nine-song collection finds the band mind-expanding into heavier, sludgier, occasionally up-tempo punk-ish realms. The rhythm section of bassist Dave...
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February 27, 2008
In April, Colin Meloy's releasing his first full-length solo album, the 17-track Colin Meloy Sings Live! (the Morrissey and Shirley Collins collections were EPs). We realize that's a long time to wait for Decemberists fanatics, so this week's Drop offers...
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February 20, 2008
Like a mash between a noise troupe and a classic rock crew, Howlin Rain's self-titled 2006 debut offered a mix of rooted rock and fried psychedelics. Now, expanded to a quintet minus Sunburned Hand Of The Man drummer John Moloney,...
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February 13, 2008
Oakland's George Chadwick, aka Telephone Jim Jesus, grew up in New London, New Hampshire. The folks at anticon call the place "snowy," and you could say the same for his lovely, Baudelaire-riffing sophomore solo album Anywhere Out Of The Everything....
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February 6, 2008
Rafter Roberts, aka San Diego-based multi-tasking Asthmatic Kitty carrot top Rafter, has been composing a "song a day" after the release of his second full-length, Sex Death Cassette. "Fruit," a particularly catchy nugget of weirdness, appears for the first time...
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January 30, 2008
This week's Drop has a stringed, burlesqued, Gypsy-cum-Coloradan air courtesy of Little Miss Sunshine soundtrackers and Siouxsie coverers DeVotchka. Their rollicking, breezy "Transliterator" comes from the quartet's forthcoming ANTI- debut, A Mad and Faithful Telling. Helping us, uh, transliterate, vocalist...
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January 23, 2008
Dropping by this week is Eels with "I Want To Project You," a previously unreleased tune from Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities And Unreleased. Useless? No way. On top of it being a catchy little gem, main man E gave...
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January 16, 2008
We've visited West Indian Girl poolside (uh, twice) and at their places of business, but never before to the foot of the Appalachians. That's all changed, because in this week's Drop, the California crew returns with a reworked, banjo-lined version...
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January 9, 2008
Guitarist extraordinaire, Drive XV participant (with Sara Quin), and Golden Globe-nominated Into The Wild soundtracker Kaki King returns with her fourth album Dreaming Of Revenge in March. The follow-up to 2006's ...Until We Felt Red finds King continuing to expand...
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January 2, 2008
Destroyer dude, Swan Laker, and the sexiest New Pornographer this side of Neko Case, Dan Bejar teams up with girlfriend, the visual artist Sydney Vermont as the delicately pastoral Hello, Blue Roses. Their fragile, but somehow robust full-length debut The...
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December 18, 2007
Smartypants ex-Lowercase, Alaska!, New Folk Implosion player and Yeah Yeah Yeahs touring guitarist Imaad Wasif is set to self-release his second solo album, Strange Hexes with his new backing band, Two Part Beast, on 3/18. In anticipation, we got our...
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December 12, 2007
Cold? Today's boozy, body-warming mid-December Drop comes from Portland's Pseudosix. There are six players some of the time (from various PDX crews like Dolorean, Grails, Joggers, the Standard), but when the band started it was just Tim Perry by his...
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December 5, 2007
We have plenty of love for the well-dressed one-time BTW and Andrew W.K. party school grad Joe Williams, so we're delighted to bring you this week's Drop, a joyful, mud-stepping extended instrumental that's making us forget how cold it is...
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November 28, 2007
When you put the words "Brooklyn" and "folk" together a certain image arises, but thankfully Luke Temple shatters the worn picture (frame and all). This week's Drop is the tapping, slightly fuzzed, antique barber-harmonized "Into Fiction," which would pair well...
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November 21, 2007
After Frog Eyes drummer Melanie Campbell stopped by to discuss her job as a nurse and her husband, Frog Eyes's vocalist/guitarist Carey Mercer, provided us with MP3s from the duo's older crew, Prancing Cat, "a band with no future and...
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November 14, 2007
This week's Drop finds New York City expats Ida harmonizing on "Lovers Prayers," the title track to their forthcoming seventh full-length, a series of, yup, prayers for and by lovers. Seems like we've been humming along to Daniel Littleton and...
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November 7, 2007
This week we offer a Danish Drop by rockin' duo the Raveonettes, whose "Aly, Walk With Me" serves as a crackling '60s-noir intro to Lust Lust Lust, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo's Vice-debuting follow-up to 2005's sophomore full-length Pretty...
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October 31, 2007
For the Halloween edition of the Drop, we contacted autumnal Pacific Northwest Stereo-fave, and jack-o-lantern-of-all-trades Jesy Fortino, aka Tiny Vipers, whose Sub Pop debut Hands Across The Void remains one of the most affecting, goose-pimpling albums of the year. Fortino...
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October 24, 2007
As we cover rather closely, each week Showtime's pot-selling-mom series Weeds' theme song gets a different spin, by everyone from Regina Spektor and Jenny Lewis to Devendra and the Decemberists (and, well, Billy Bob Thornton). One take on the Malvina...
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October 17, 2007
Scottish artist David Shrigley has turned his 2005 book Worried Noodles (The Empty Sleeve) into a 39-track music compilation, featuring Franz Ferdinand, Grizzly Bear, Liars, Deerhoof, and other Stereogum faves. Only David Byrne, however, added to the author's witty, weird...
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October 10, 2007
This week we're delivering you a lovely, previously unreleased piano and harmony-laced power ballad by Lawrence, Kansas post-Get Up Kids quartet the New Amsterdams. They just released their sixth album At the Foot of My Rival on their own Elmar...
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October 3, 2007
Everybody hurts -- true, but for each person it's different. For this week's 'Gum Drop, Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer and Sleepshell's Cormac Bride offer a much different take on the R.E.M. classic than the Meat Puppets' Elvis-meets-Rasputin version, which showed...
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September 26, 2007
This week we're Dropping "These Two Trees," a basement-crammed dance jam by Portland's Panther. The band's now a duo -- breaking main man Charlie Salas-Humara added Joe Kelly, ex-31knots, whose live drums take the booty kicking up a notch. (The...
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September 19, 2007
This week Nellie McKay offers our first Spanish-language 'Gum Drop. The New Yorker's third studio album Obligatory Villagers is out next week on her Hungry Mouse label -- live favorite "Me Gusta Mañana" won't be included, so we thought it...
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September 12, 2007
This week's Drop brings the dusky folk beauty of Marissa Nadler's "The Whole Is Wide," a gorgeous, melancholic ballad she wrote and recorded at Black Hole Studios in Providence. Here's Marissa on "The Whole Is Wide": This is a new...
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September 5, 2007
While Wednesday may mean dealing with never-clever hump-day jokes, it also heralds another installment of the 'Gum Drop, complete as always with a never-before-released MP3 to help you through the week. For the second dispatch, it's a darkly danceable remix...
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August 29, 2007
This week's inaugural tune is an ethereal dispatch from buzzy Atlanta psych-rockers Deerhunter. Here's frontman Bradford Cox on the inspiration behind "So Long": "This is like Atlanta history: My dad attempted to have a mortgage business in a very ghetto...
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