Lollapalooza 2009 has come and gone, and it was another great weekend in Chicago full of the usual hot weather and great rock and roll. I was fortunate to once again have Guest passes from C3 Presents (Lollapalooza’s production company) and it made the weekend a pretty unforgettable event all the way around. This year, we discovered the “Fest Express” golf carts that took us from stage to stage along Lake Shore Drive, eliminating the need to trek back and forth through the crowds to rarely make the start time of a performance. One of my best friends and his girlfriend were up from Texas for the second year in a row, and we had an incredible time. I got to see plenty of my favorite bands, with White Lies being a huge highlight since I am terribly addicted to their debut album, To Lose My Life. I had stage access to about a dozen performances, allowing for some great photos and a much more up close and personal experience.

Nothing, however, beats my girlfriend randomly getting her arm signed by Snoop Dogg as we hung out in the Chicago 2016 backstage area after his show. He was surrounded by his security entourage, and was signing a few things for people while walking to a van. Even better, I got a photo of him while he was signing her arm. She’s got real street cred now!

Across all three days, I took in White Lies, Bon Iver, Crystal Castles, Thievery Corporation, Depeche Mode, Kings of Leon, Delta Spirit, Miike Snow, Atmosphere, Arctic Monkeys, Glasvegas, TV On The Radio, Lykke Li, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bat For Lashes, Kaiser Chiefs, The Raveonettes, Neko Case, Passion Pit, Cold War Kids, Snoop Dogg, The Killers, and Jane’s Addiction.

To view my photos from the festival, click the photos above, or click here. Enjoy!

White Lies are really one of my favorites out there right now. Infectiously good, great rhythms, great songs. Their set in the rain at Lollapalooza 2009 on Friday was one of my best moments of the festival.

Record label Ghostly International has just released perhaps the coolest and most unique iPhone music app ever. I just downloaded this to my phone today and have easily spent 3-4 hours today listening to some great selections from their catalog.

I came to know of Ghostly International through one of my favorite design and music blogs, iso50.com, which is the blog and portfolio of Scott Hansen. Scott is a musician on the Ghostly label, recording and releasing music under the name Tycho.  Scott and other blog contributors post a really great variety of music to the site, with quite a few Ghostly releases included here. The music covers a good range of electronic styles, and this is where the Discovery app really spreads it’s wings.

Using the selection screen pictured above, users choose a mood from the mood wheel, and can use a slider to blend the overall desired musical style. A custom streaming playlist from Ghostly’s catalog then appears based on these selections, and let’s just say I wasn’ t disappointed with a single thing I’ve listened to all day.

I’m not sure of any other record labels that have anything nearly as innovative as this (as far as apps are concerned) but this is certainly a model that could work for every label out there - though I think it serves its purpose best in something as wide-ranging as the electronic genre. I’m entirely impressed both with the creativity put into how it works, and the access to the label’s catalog. I doubt I would hear or discover 1/4 of the artists here if I were simply browsing their site.

I highly suggest downloading this app while it’s still free, but should they chose to charge for it I wouldn’t be dissapointed paying aroudn $5 for this. One catch: it appears to only work with a network connection, so you’ll need wi-fi to use it. My 3G connection would not allow the streaming service to begin.

As I always have with new Placebo albums, I was expecting something special. Meds, Sleeping With Ghosts, and Black Market Music were each consistently phenomenal albums, so naturally I expected Battle for the Sun to keep up that track record. Sadly, it does not. There is too much space; too much waiting for something to kick in. They have also grossly overused the soft/quiet formula here. The lyrics - usually a Placebo high point - feel very basic and lack the sense that a listener can really focus on them and do their best to figure out what Molko is singing about. Surprisingly, the loss of their longtime drummer in this current lineup really has nothing to do with the album’s shortcomings; the drumming is great, but overall the songs just aren’t there. I found myself watching each track queue up hoping something was about to blow my socks off, either sonically or melodically, but it never happens. I expected much more from such a great band. Honestly, I don’t think I can give this much more than a few listens.

The only song that really grabbed me was the very last track, In A Funk - apparently a bonus song on the itunes download. It’s wholly ironic that every song before this finds Placebo in exactly that.

My band recently changed our name to Looming Lights after about four years as The Atlantic Divide. We needed something new, something to give us a different outlook on our music as we started work on a new album earlier this year. Looming Lights, one of our earlier song names, was the name we chose. It was an interesting process to create new artwork and a new theme for the band. As The Atlantic Divide I constantly felt some sort of need to base themes, artwork and lyrics around the ocean. With this new name, I wanted to stay away from anything too literal and go for something that didn’t really have to mean much of anything. I went through a variety of concepts before looking back at some photos I’d taken of Chicago at night while landing at the airport. While I did not take the photo used above, it’s a pretty close match for a few I’d taken on that flight.

So with the new imagery we are using, I think it has a good connection to lyrics I’ve been writing since we made the change. I like to think of just being above the city thinking about all the stories that are being made in any given second - who’s at a party, who’s in love, who’s breaking the rules, who’s dreaming about something a million miles away from where they are. The connection between imagery and lyrics is something I have always had tremendous appreciation for - no idea how all this will end up but it’s great to be excited about something new in this way.

To view my portfolio, you can use the link above or just click here. The band’s web site is available at www.loominglights.com.

I recently found a pair of Vans Vault Sk8-Hi LX shoes in Complex magazine and quickly discovered that they were nearly impossible to find. Zappos, Shoes.com, and other site’s don’t carry many of the more custom lines by major shoe companies; they’re often sold only in stores - and it seems like most of them rarely have an online store. As I looked around I discovered that Vans is releasing a ridiculous amount of shoes under the Vault line that I’m really craving. The two above are set for late summer/early fall release and are part of the wool / peacoat series. 

If anyone happens to come across this post and knows where these might be available, drop a comment down below.

This is a site I found a while back that includes an incredible range of business cards - and what really caught my eye was the great variety of letterpress style cards. Letterpress has always had a strong appeal to me, from the variety of paper textures available, to the ability for minimal typographic visuals to be very bold. If you’re looking to do a new card for yourself, or just looking for design inspiration in general, have a look at the site here:  Card Observer - Business Card Design Inspiration.

A great Flickr gallery was posted over at qbn.com that includes all sorts of photos of an AT-AT at the beach, walking around the house, and various other situations. Suffice to say, seeing this was a great way to start my day and it’s all downhill from here.

View the full gallery here.

I picked up both of these books a couple weeks ago and while Bands On The Road is more of a coffee table book, Morrissey In Conversation is something much more substantial. As a massive fan of The Smiths since I first ever heard them in the late 80s, this book is turning out to be an interesting reflection of not only their formative years, but of Morrissey’s relentless pursuit of being everything that the pop stars at the time were not. This book contains virtually ever major interview he gave from the beginning of The Smiths through 2007. While I imagine a great deal of the book to be somewhat repetitive - I’ve counted seven references to his choice of celibacy and I’m only 40 pages in - for me it is a remarkable lo0k at a giant inspiration of mine and someone who there is really no equal for. I highly suggest this book for any fans of The Smiths; if you’ve read Morrissey & Marr - The Severed Alliance, this book is a great companion.

Lightspeed Champion are the current band of Devonte Hynes, formerly of Test-Icicles, and the contrast in style couldn’t be more noticeable. Test Icicles were a brash, explosive band of grating guitars and shouted lyrics, and they’d have been the perfect tourmates for Death From Above 1979 - another great band that closed up shop too soon.

From Wikipedia:

Lightspeed Champion is the name of the new musical venture by ex-Test Icicle Devonte Hynes. He is currently signed to Domino Records. Containing musical elements from a variety of genres, Lightspeed Champion has a radically different sound to Hynes’ previous band. The name ‘Lightspeed Champion’ comes from a series of comic strips Hynes did as a teenager in his school mathematics books. Hynes was born in Houston, Texas and raised in Essex, England.

In early 2007, Hynes went to Omaha, Nebraska to record Lightspeed Champion’s debut album with Saddle Creekproducer Mike Mogis, also a member of the band Bright Eyes. A number of Omaha-based musicians appear on the record including Mogis himself, trumpet player and pianist Nate Walcott (also of Bright Eyes), The Faint’s drummer Clark Baechle and guest vocalist Emmy The Great - along with moonlighting members of Cursive and Tilly And The Wall. 

The result of those recording sessions is the album Falling Off the Lavender Bridge which was released on January 21, 2008. The first single from the album is “Galaxy of the Lost”, which was released on July 30, 2007. (Additional wikipedia entry here)

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I’ve been a huge fan of this album since a friend suggested it and I love seeing the diversity of a songwriter I previously knew only for what Test-Icicles had produced. There’s a great blend of instrumentation here - strings, horns, and acoustic guitars.

Read more about Lightspeed Champion at metacritic.com.

Listen: Lightspeed Champion - Tell Me What It’s Worth

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