Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns, Florence & The Machine’s Lungs, and the self-titled debuts from Glasvegas and La Roux are among the nominees for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize, awarded annually to the best album from the United Kingdom or Ireland. While there are some glaring omissions as always (um, Micachu?????), digging around for videos by the nominees revealed a couple of new-to-me acts—the hip-hop artist Speech Debelle, the experimental jazz outfit Led Bib—who proved intriguing on first listen. The nominees, and representative videos, after the jump. More »
As promised: The state of my “2009 awesomeness” playlist, in which I collect the songs that catch my ear as the year progresses in order to not make my best-of list a last-minute-of-December clusterfuck sort of thing. (It inevitably winds up being like that, but you know, I have noble intentions.) It’s after the jump, and has some contextual links added in. Feel free to make your own and share it here! More »
Chaka Khan has teamed up with five other female musicians—Róisín Murphy, Sinéad O’Connor, Micachu, thecocknbullkid, and Alessi’s Ark—and recorded a cover of her disco classic “I’m Every Woman” to benefit the British charity ActionAid, which tries to help women who are living in impoverished conditions around the world. More »
Mica Levi’s musical alter ego Micachu has produced one of my favorite albums of the year, Jewellery, and “Golden Phone” exemplifies why: On the surface, it’s a slightly off-kilter pop song, but dive a little deeper and you’ll pick out small details–warped synthesizers, hand claps, rudimentary attempts at beatboxing. The video’s a pretty lo-fi affair as well, with Micachu and her two bandmates in the Shapes playing with the notion of “professionalism” and having an even more fast-and-loose attitude toward the notion of coordinated dance moves. [Pitchfork via MBV] More »