Moving On Up...

... to greener and hopefully better pastures. After experiencing further and more frequent difficulties with Blogger for a number of reasons, I've elected to take my business elsewhere. I spent the past weekend setting everything up, and now Pop That Rocks has a new home over at WordPress, recently furnished with my inaugural post: A review of the new Dirty Projectors album! I've already sung my praises of this record here and there for several weeks now, so it should be no surprise what I think about it. Head over to my new digs right now and check out what will hopefully become the first of many posts as I continue to play with and expand the scope of my blog.

http://popthatrocks.wordpress.com/

Hope to see you all there. In the meantime, here's a little Primal Scream to send me off...

Patrick Wolf: "Hard Times" Music Video

Patrick Wolf's new album, The Bachelor, is another successful expansion of the charmingly eccentric Brit's music and songwriting. Upcoming single "Hard Times" is the most immediate standout, doing the Bloc Party thing a hell of a lot better than Bloc Party have been doing it for the past five years, with bonus fiddle no less. This is the video for it. Not sure I like Wolf's hair and outfit just yet, but once the black lights turn on, everything looks almost like the stage show at a Knife concert. Check it out below...

Patrick Wolf "Hard Times" Video from biz3 publicity on Vimeo.

Off With Their Heads...

Not sure who Karen, Nick, and Brian are more indebted to with this one: Michael Jackson or 30 Rock.

Watch over at Stereogum via NME and decide for yourself.

Catching Up

* Hey all. It's been something of a long week and a half for me with the holiday, weddings and the like. With that in mind, I figured I'd just do a quick round-up of a few noteworthy things that I (and by proxy, you) may have missed while I was away from my post...

Sick Remix Alert: Animal Collective's "Summertime Clothes," already destined to be one of the top jams of the Summer if not year, receives a top-notch rework courtesy of Dam-Funk that thankfully leaves most of what made the original so awesome in tact. If you haven't checked it out already, you can do so over at Domino USA for the cost of an e-mail address.


London up-and-comer Friend, who previously did great things with songs by Air France and PB&J, has a new EP coming out called Shima, preceded by its groovy new single "Doki." Check out the groovy, color-saturated video clip for it below:

FRIEND - DOKI from FRIEND on Vimeo.

The remixes keep pouring in for Parisian should-be-stars Phoenix. Holy Ghost! took an admirable crack at "Lisztomania" and you can currently hear the results over at discoattack. Meanwhile, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is finally, physically out this week, and I shouldn't have to tell you it was worth the wait, so I'll let other people do it instead. Speaking of albums worth the wait...


VECKATIMEST!!!


Finally out this week in non 128-rip mode!!!

And finally, we come to the new Röyksopp video for "The Girl & The Robot." I like this song. A lot. The video is a bit literal for my tastes but towards the end, the titular bot breaks out some Daft Punk style dance moves which make smile.



With this all out of the way, I can hopefully get back to business as usual this week.

Knock on wood.

Extraordinary Machine

UK blog darling Florence & the Machine's debut album Lungs comes out on July 6. The official single from it, "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" comes out on June 22. Here's is the video, in which she appears to don the Age of Aquarius, attend a last supper and get a Viking funeral all over three and a half minutes.

This is the gift. It comes with a price.



This is easily the best song I've heard from her to date and I'm officially anticipating what comes next. Anyone else feel the same???

DJ Give Me The Answer

I won't lie. I enjoy my fair share of pop music, particularly when it's done really, really well.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor is one of the better examples of this point in recent memory. Her 2007 album Trip the Light Fantastic was as good as, if not better than, anything put out by latter day Kylie or Madonna in my opinion. After a quiet couple of years, she's finally ready to release its follow-up.

The currently untitled album is allegedly due for release on July 27, with production help from Richard X, Calvin Harris and members of Metronomy, among others. It's preceded by an excellent new single produced by the Freemasons. Though it originally entered circulation last year via Sophie's MySpace, "Heartbreak (Make Me a Dancer)" is officially being billed and distributed as a proper Freemasons song, to be included on their own forthcoming album Shakedown 2. Check out the recently released video below, complete with slick light effects and a battalion of Lykke Li lookalikes dancing in the background.



Wild, huh? Found it over at Ohh Crapp along with an MP3 of the track. I still slightly prefer Sophie's version from last year but either way, the song is a banging beast.

Maps Let Go of the Fear

James Chapman is releasing a new Maps album?! An album co-produced by German techno guru Oliver Huntemann?! And I'm only hearing about this now?! I have an email address posted for a reason, folks (and no that reason isn't so I can conveniently receive DMCA takedown notices as some people have erroneously guessed).

Seriously though, Discobelle reports that Chapman's new electro-gazing opus will be called Turning the Mind. Not sure when it's coming out but the first single off of it, "Let Go of the Fear," is available for download now.

Belle has the Dub Remix of the track but you can hear the original version via the below music video courtesy of bigstereo.

What are you doing Hal?



*On an unrelated note, 100th post y'all!!!