Friday Music News

02/17/2017

Janice Headley

She's already ruled in the guitar world, and now St. Vincent is trying her hand at film directing. XX is an all-female directed anthology collecting four short horror films. St. Vincent's clip is titled The Birthday Party, and captures an 8-year-old’s birthday party gone wrong. Watch below for an intense panda stare-down. XX is in theaters and on-demand today. [ Pitchfork ]

We've got another new song from the forthcoming Magnetic Fields album: the five CD set is titled 50 Song Memoir and features one song for every year of songwriter Stephin Merritt's life. Today's clip is "81 How to Play the Synthesizer," and can be streamed via a video created by John Erickson, Alex Basco Koch, and José Zayas that may or may not show you how to play a synthesizer. (There sure are a lot of them in the clip, though.) On the upcoming tour, the band will play two nights in each city to play all 50 songs. (For Seattle, that's Saturday, May 6th and Sunday, May 7th.) [ Stereogum ]

Last summer, Parquet Courts were joined by Texas rapper Bun B for a performance of the track "Captive of the Sun" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Now they've released a studio version of that collaboration, out now on a limited edition white label 12” via Rough Trade Records. Listen below. Also on there is a "Chopped Not Slopped" remix from Texas DJ OG Ron C. The album version, sans rap, is on last year's LP Human Performance, out now via Rough Trade. [ Under the Radar ]

The latest Lambchop album FLOTUS was already a fascinating detour from the band's folky-orchestral sound. But, last year, frontman and founding member Kurt Wagner took it even further, bringing the album to Cologne, Germany’s WEEK-END Fest for a one-time never-to-be-repeated performance he calls FLOTUS Movements. With the help of six local electronic musicians, Wagner dissected and rearranged every track on the LP. You can watch a short documentary below, and stream audio of the performance itself below: [ Stereogum ]

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