Vice Recommends

Smog

Arctic Monkeys. Photo by Pegah Farahmand

Daedelus

This is the second of our Vice Recommends columns. The first one appears in the current

Festivals Guide

where we explain that all the music and videos we talk about on this page can be watched and listened to on viceland.com and on the Yahoo! Music website,

yahoo.co.uk/music

. We’re also updating these sites every week with new selections, so keep your eyes peeled. At the time of writing, the Arctic Monkeys have just played a secret 40-minute gig upstairs in The Old Blue Last—one of their tiniest shows since they sold well over a million albums this year—and it really felt like an event. They were trying out new bassist Nick O’Malley, who’s replacing the knackered Andy Nicholson on their upcoming US tour. He seemed to do pretty well, plus he’s better-looking than Nicholson (is that too shallow?) and he beamed throughout, as you would if you’d just been handed the chance of a lifetime.

Way before the Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand transformed Domino Records into a ruthless multinational, the label used to put out records by people like Smog and The Pastels and they’d all happily live off bread and water. Of course, Domino still release Smog records (Bill Callahan is basically Leonard Cohen; he just needs to write catchier songs) but now they can attract celebrities to help sell them. There’s a new, droll four-song Smog EP out this month called “Rock Bottom Riser” that has a dreamy video for the track “I Feel Like the Mother of the World” which stars Chloe Sevigny as a meek chambermaid. There’s a scene where she enters a completely trashed hotel room that she has to tidy and looks crestfallen. Watching this, you really feel for chambermaids everywhere and will think twice before partying in your hotel room in the future. Unless it’s someone else’s, in which case go nuts. Someone who seems a lot more relaxed in his old age is The Streets who has (almost) finished pretending to be a cockney wideboy geezer. His recent “Never Went to Church” single is a real tear-jerker where he talks about his dad dying. I was crying like a baby when I heard it. The video is great for chillaxing to and is perfect for the song, although it kinda reminds us of Robbie Williams’ “Angels”. Something else which has more than a nod to other previous tracks is Daedelus’ “Sundown”. To our ears, it sounds like an organic take on the mellow braindance that came out on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label ten years ago, with its crooning Vocoded vocal and eerie synth. That’s definitely a good thing, though, and the track is easily the best on his recent Denies the Day’s Demise album on Ninja Tune. The video is a montage of creepy early industrial backdrops and cosmic images—like a curdled 18th century dream. So it’s probably best avoided by those who are already seeing a psychiatrist.

The Aussie Led Zeppelin, Wolfmother, release the best track from their debut album this month. Out on Modular records, the adolescent fantasy “Woman” is a primal scream lashed to a towering mountain of stoopid riffage and would give Freud a field day. Why is it that Wolfmother’s shamelessly retro schtick is applauded while their odious compatriots Jet get lambasted for apeing the Stones? Because Wolfmother are cool guys who don’t take themselves too seriously. Jet aren’t. Even when they’re just messing around in some Melbourne basement like they are in the lo-fi grungy-looking video to their last smash “Dimension”, they kind of ooze this weird Aussie goofy charm that passes for cool down under. You don’t get that with Jet.

Over in the States, everybody seems to be jumping on the Bay Area stuff, but the South continues to produce the hits. Atlanta is killing it right now. Long gone are the days when the A-town was seen as only capable of producing arty hip-hop and OutKast were running things. The rapper receiving the most hype in ATL right now is Yung Joc (who looks like Young Jeezy’s slightly-less-fat younger brother). Nineties enthusiasts might be interested in the fact that P Diddly’s signed up his album, New Joc City, so expect to see a lot more of Joc, until Diddy’s guest-raps finally sink his career. We also can’t forget Young Jeezy, who has been touted by Jay-Z as the future of hip-hop and has everyone in the game looking to work with him. Look out for his motivational book (what’s that gonna be about, the best way to motivate yourself if you’re not slanging as much yay as you’d like?) and his “Snowman” clothing range, which should both be out soon. Also working on an as-yet-untitled fashion line is T.I. His King album was massive in the U.S. and despite the recent death of his personal assistant, Philant Johnson, who was shot and killed in Cincinnati, he continues to go from strength to strength. We’re absolutely loving the video to his new single “Why You Wanna”, filmed on the island of Oahu in Honolulu. The track, which contains excerpts from ancient rave anthem “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” by Crystal Waters, is smoother than a lot of his previous stuff, but don’t let that put you off. We hear his dream is to have a No. 1 album and movie at the same time—a feat only achieved by J-Lo and Barbra Streisand. That’s something to aspire to, right? For these and further recommendations, see viceland.com and

yahoo.co.uk/music

.

VICE STAFF