The Postal Service: "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" Video
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The Postal Service: "Such Great Heights"
Despite many industry insiders' prediction that Death Cab For Cutie's incendiary "Why You'd Want to Live Here" would create a Pacific Northwest vs. Southern California indie-rock rivalry reminiscent of hip-hop's East Coast/West Coast conflict, no blood was shed over such lines as "Is this the City of Angels or demons?" In fact, you might say most people in Los Angeles couldn't care less that Seattleite Ben Gibbard was giving their city a good old-fashioned tongue-lashing. Silverlake denizen and Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello certainly wasn't bothered - instead of hiring someone to lay Gibbard down for the dirt nap, he asked DCFC's leader to lay down vocals on a track for his upcoming album. A week later the electronipop masterpiece "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" (included on Dntel's 2001 full-length Life Is Full of Possibilities) was completed and the seeds for The Postal Service were planted. "It seemed kind of effortless," says Tamborello, who had never met Gibbard before the recording of "Evan and Chan." "He came down and sang it once and we were just really happy with it." "We did the song in an hour one afternoon," explains Gibbard, who was in L.A. visiting Tamborello's roommate, The Jealous Sound's Pedro Benito. "It was such an easy, fun way to work. The idea was spawned: Maybe we could do an EP of this kind of stuff. Then [Sub Pop A&R rep] Tony Kiewel brought '(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan' to the label and said, 'They're going to do a record of this kind of stuff - do you guys want to do it?' We just went from there." In December 2001, Gibbard started receiving CD-Rs from Tamborello filled with beatsy electronic music, which he manipulated in his computer before writing melodies and lyrics and recording vocals. He also added some guitar, drums and keyboards - much of which was recorded by Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla at his Hall of Justice studio - and then sent the demo back to L.A. Gibbard had to run his changes past Tamborello, but he more or less had the freedom to alter the songs to his liking. "It was really great to get a little package every month or two - 'Two new songs!'" says Gibbard. "Sometimes I'd say, 'I want to move that part and this part,' and it was really fun to have such autonomy in the writing; I could pretty much do whatever I wanted." Though Tamborello (also known for his work in Strictly Ballroom and Figurine) is no stranger to collaboration - everyone from Beachwood Sparks' Chris Gunst to That Dog's Rachel Haden to Slint/The For Carnation's Brian McMahan appeared on Life Is Full of Possibilities - this was the first time he had attempted a project with a relative stranger. "It was like having to work on the album and make friends at the same time," admits Tamborello. "In the beginning I was probably a little nervous about not wanting to say I didn't like something 'cause I didn't know him. But in the end it didn't end up ever being an issue. It seemed like I was always excited with what he did." Ten months, two trips to L.A. (to record vocals and finish mixing) and one big postage invoice later, Give Up was completed. And just like that, Gibbard & Tamborello find themselves standing alongside such giants as Morrissey & Marr, Lennon & McCartney and Anderson & Butler. All ten tracks are exercises in smooth beauty, with Gibbard's inviting voice perfectly complementing Tamborello's unique and charming programming and guest vocals from Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis adding a gentle layer of sweetness to many of the songs. Though it's tempting to call it an "'80s-sounding" record because of its keyboard-driven pop sensibilities, there's nothing retro about Give Up, save for a few sounds here and there and "nothing better," a duet with Wood inspired by The Human League's "Don't You Want Me." On the other hand, fans of Death Cab will hear faint echoes of Gibbard's main band in The Postal Service, but overall it's a completely different experience. "Some of the songs are very much of a Death Cab mode, but people have been commenting, 'Wow, the lyrics are really different,'" explains Gibbard. "When somebody is just handing you music and you're supposed to sing over the top of it, it feels different than when you're sitting at home with a guitar trying to write a song." "'the district sleeps alone tonight,' 'brand new colony' and 'this place is a prison' are pretty much the only songs that border on autobiographical," he continues. "But everything else is just kind of daydreaming and coming up with ideas for songs that aren't necessarily based in reality, and I think that was a lot more fun for me to do because I'd never really done that before. It didn't feel right for all the songs to be break-up-type songs - they just felt more like the kind of songs that you would want to dance to and you wouldn't want to have a lyric that's super heavy, especially on 'such great heights.' I think 'such great heights' is the first time I've ever written a positive love song, where it's a song about being in love and how it's rad, rather than having your heart broken." Though Gibbard is still committed to Death Cab and Tamborello is already hard at work on another Dntel album, the duo has penciled in a late-spring tour and plans to record again in the future. "I told Jimmy, 'Whenever you start sending me stuff is when we'll start working on the next Postal Service record,'" says Gibbard. "I don't see any reason why it couldn't continue to be a project as long as Jimmy wants to do it." "It seems so easy to do them and it doesn't take any time," says Tamborello. "And at this point I think we could do it where he just records everything up there and we could do even more through the mail." - Marc Hawthorne, November 2002
This week on the Buzz Report, the great East Coast/West Coast Intern Beef of 2007 begins. Where will it end?
James Figurine is one third of the techno-pop group Figurine. His new album features contributions from Jenny Lewis, Geoff McFetridge, Morgan Nagler, Erlend ?ye, John Tejada, and Sonya Westcott. He also plays in The Postal Service and Dntel.
Download Music picks of the week: Episode 4
Dntel, Lil Mama, and Charlie Louvin feature in the Download.com Music crew's picks.
In 1955, a tough skinny guitar-slinger who called himself J.R. Cash walked into the soon-to-be-famous Sun Studios in Memphis. It was a moment that would have an indelible effect on American culture. With his driving freight-train chords, steel-eyed intensity and a voice as deep and black as night, Cash sang blistering songs of heartache and survival that were gutsy, full of real life and unlike anything heard before.
That day kicked off the electrifying early career of Johnny Cash. As he pioneered a fiercely original sound that blazed a trail for rock, country, punk, folk and rap stars to come, Cash began a rough-and-tumble journey of personal transformation. In the most volatile period of his life, he evolved from a self-destructive pop star into the iconic "Man in Black" - facing down his demons, fighting for the love that would raise him up, and learning how to walk the razor-thin line between destruction and redemption.
The story of the young Johnny Cash and his incendiary love affair with June Carter Cash comes to life in "Walk the Line," directed by James Mangold from a script by Mangold and Gill Dennis, based on Cash's books "Man in Black" and "Cash the Autobiography". Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon is June Carter. Phoenix and Witherspoon sing every note of their roles themselves in live performances that capture the spirit of the music that drove Johnny and June's relationship.
At the film's core is the passionate and revved-up music that knocked the complacency out of popular culture in the 1950's, which Mangold felt could only be captured in its most emotional and authentic from by having the principal cast perform many of the film's songs live. "The early fifties were the height of the smooth post-war sound, Doris Day and 'easy listening,'" says Mangold. "Musak was invented the year John released his first singles; even country music of the early fifties was highly produced, the edges smoothed for greater 'appeal'. One of the things I wanted the music in the film to convey was the startling roughness, the good humor, the cockiness, the urgency, heat and fire that shook people when these boys first played to crowds."
This movie was nominated for numerous Academy Awards. Click here to see videos of other Oscar nominees on Download.com.
Academy Award winner Robert Towne ("Chinatown") writes and directs "Ask the Dust," set under the brutally sunny skies of Depression-era Los Angeles. Based on novelist John Fante's masterpiece, Towne's interpretation focuses on a city exotic and vulgar, glamorous and raunchy - a place of heat and dust. Full of imports - palm trees from Egypt and people from everywhere in search of health and wealth, fame and fortune - L.A. is the city of first and last resort, where all dreams are supposed to come true. So it is for Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell), a son of Italian immigrants who dreams of becoming a famous novelist and marrying a beautiful blonde, and Camilla Lopez (Salma Hayek) a Mexican who longs to marry a WASP and shed her last name. In a time when Anglo-Chicano relations hang by tattered threads, Bandini and Camilla collide with one another, fighting the city and themselves to make their dreams come true.
Conductor started as a collection of songs written in the winter of 2003 at house on the North Carolina coast. Cold winds blowing in from the Atlantic would often rustle palms and wind chimes on the porches of of empty beach houses. The steady noise made it a little easier for a string of break-ins to continue. Baffling local authorities. Although most of the houses were boarded up that winter, a few remained occupied. One of these, lit almost exclusively by candle light in the evening, housed a 4 track recorder, an acoustic guitar, a small city of wine bottles (both full and empty), and Andy Herod. At the end of a 2 year relationship and faced with having to find a new place to live in 6 weeks, the songs began to come out. Loss of love and identity and all that. Eventually each night he ended up on the couch watching the only movie that made sense or mattered, Dark City. Upon each viewing finding new meaning, symbolism and hope that seemed to apply directly to his own life. Some felt that this period may have gone on a bit long... At the end of the winter several cassette tapes where passed along to band mate Nicole Gehweiler as well as friend and producer Alan Weatherhead. A record was soon underway. Recorded at the Sound of Music studios in Richmond VA, Conductor ended up a swampy mix of pop and fuzzed-out rock songs. But when it came time to sequence the record, the band was stumped. Finally one smoky evening in the studio around 4 am, a story line began to reveal itself in the music they were hearing. Almost instantly, the track order fell into place and plans to animate the story began. Six weird months later came Conductor, a monument to the suicide of love erected by robots against a wintry sci-fi back drop of dark towers, moonlit skies and a cast of lost characters. Or perhaps it is just a break-up record. It is not yet known. What is known is that it's here, and it's massive.
Conductor started as a collection of songs written in the winter of 2003 at house on the North Carolina coast. Cold winds blowing in from the Atlantic would often rustle palms and wind chimes on the porches of of empty beach houses. The steady noise made it a little easier for a string of break-ins to continue. Baffling local authorities. Although most of the houses were boarded up that winter, a few remained occupied. One of these, lit almost exclusively by candle light in the evening, housed a 4 track recorder, an acoustic guitar, a small city of wine bottles (both full and empty), and Andy Herod. At the end of a 2 year relationship and faced with having to find a new place to live in 6 weeks, the songs began to come out. Loss of love and identity and all that. Eventually each night he ended up on the couch watching the only movie that made sense or mattered, Dark City. Upon each viewing finding new meaning, symbolism and hope that seemed to apply directly to his own life. Some felt that this period may have gone on a bit long... At the end of the winter several cassette tapes where passed along to band mate Nicole Gehweiler as well as friend and producer Alan Weatherhead. A record was soon underway. Recorded at the Sound of Music studios in Richmond VA, Conductor ended up a swampy mix of pop and fuzzed-out rock songs. But when it came time to sequence the record, the band was stumped. Finally one smoky evening in the studio around 4 am, a story line began to reveal itself in the music they were hearing. Almost instantly, the track order fell into place and plans to animate the story began. Six weird months later came Conductor, a monument to the suicide of love erected by robots against a wintry sci-fi back drop of dark towers, moonlit skies and a cast of lost characters. Or perhaps it is just a break-up record. It is not yet known. What is known is that it's here, and it's massive.
Ashley Albright is the luckiest girl in New York City, where she has a promising career and a life full of glamour and romance. Jake is the unluckiest guy in town, tormented by constant mishaps and missed opportunities. Everything changes for Ashley and Jake when they meet at a swank masquerade party, share a kiss, and miraculously swap their luck. Now Ashley's ultra-fabulous life is going completely sour while Jack is finally living large. But Ashley is dtermined to track him down and steal her luck back.
Supporting the striking writers
GETV pops down to Los Angeles to see how geeks can help support the striking television and movie writers.
Writers' Strike on Geek Entertainment TV
