Not only are the Heatwave folks responsible for a fantastic monthly in London as well as the equally fantastic new Soul Jazz compilation England Story: From Dancehall to Grime, 25 Years of the MC in the UK 1983-2008, they've now started in on production. Their Piano riddim features bouncy, "Heart and Soul"-style piano chords, giving the track an organic analog warmth. Versions by Riko Dan and Rubi Dan are good, but they aren't quite as infectious as Warrior Queen's inaugural voicing, "Things Change". With a hook that sticks firmly, this tune presents a conscious and catchy tale of adapting from JA to the UK. And as an added bonus, the 12" B-side remix by Boston-based DJ C is a treat for those who like their dancehall more digital than dubby.

Stream:> Warrior Queen and Heatwave: "Things Change"
[from England Story: From Dancehall to Grime, 25 Years of the MC in the UK 1983-2008; out now on Soul Jazz]

After releasing a few low-key street videos and another where it was hard to tell what was going on, the Futureheads emerge with a clip for a new song that's a touch more professional looking, in the manner of the video for "The Beginning of the Twist". Starting with tuning noise, à la Flaming Lips' "Turn It On" or the Kinks' "Around the Dial", the chunky power chords and general tunefulness stand up decently well next to those earlier tracks, as the band performs the song encircled in radio waves.

[from This Is Not the World; due 05/26/08 in the UK and 05/27/08 in the U.S. on Nul]

Alejandro Escovedo has a lot of good friends-- not just the people who tasted him on the 2xCD tribute album Por Vida, or the many people he's collaborated with over the years. Now he counts the Boss and every one of the E Street Band. Escovedo joined them onstage in Houston to deliver a lively performance of "Always a Friend", from his very good eighth album, Real Animal, out in June. Technically, the performance is a mess: the two singers' harmonies are nonexistent and Bruce flubs his lines in the second verse. But that's the point: What Escovedo and Springsteen lack in precision they make up for in spiritedness. "Always a Friend" translates perfectly to the E Street shuffle, as if propelled by its spitfire guitar riff and tossed-off promises: "If I ever do you wrong, smoke my smoke, drink my wine, bury my snakeskin boots somewhere I'll never find," Escovedo sings to the enormous audience-- the kind he should be singing to on a regular basis.

Memories of college and college-rock jangle hung over Oxford Collapse's 2006 Sub Pop debut Remember the Night Parties, the Brooklyn trio's third album overall. Once college is out of your system, though, it's not something one can easily relive, and so new Oxford Collapse single "Spike of Bensonhurst" takes some optimistic strides into the future-- by way of the past. With pealing bells, anthemic drumming, and Zombies-esque psych-pop keyboards building on Remember the Night Parties' moments of grandeur, singer Michael Pace surveys his new accommodations and deems them awesome. "Don't you agree what a wonderful place we're in?" he and bassist Adam Rizer sing on the chorus.

Adulthood isn't all it's cracked up to be, however. This "place we're in" turns out to be Mom and Dad's house. "We kept your room just the way it was five years ago/ All your books, all your clothes/ Your Vans lined up in rows," Pace and Rizer sing, in the first of several keenly observed details. Even as Oxford Collapse broaden their sound beyond 1980s indie touchstones, the production retains the loose, early-R.E.M. indistinctness that gave their past songs of transition and uncertainty an appealingly casual-sounding warmth. They say you can never go home again, but that's not quite true-- it's just that your parents might take some convincing.

[from the "Spike of Bensonhurst" 7"; due 05/13/08 on Flameshovel]

The big news on Pitchfork.tv today was the Secret Session with Vampire Weekend, in which we get to observe the indie-pop beast in its natural habitat-- New York's Upper West Side, on the campus of Columbia University. We also added videos, including the one for Deerhoof's odd pop number "The Perfect Me" and the clip for the seriously warped "Nothing Like This" from the late, great, J Dilla.

Deerhoof: "The Perfect Me"

J. Dilla: "Nothing Like This"

"Do you remember when... we used to take our time?" asks jazzy British crooner Corinne Bailey Rae on this oozing slow jam from Lay It Down, evoking long pre-Facebook evenings of love letters and wallowing brass sections when, according to Rev. Al Green, "Everythang was easy/ Everythang was OK" Funny-- a whole host of economic indicators remembered Green's mid-1970s heyday as anything but "easy," but that's maybe the point: With his world-weary groan-- a voice that breaks into euphoria at the brink of exhaustion-- Green's got the kind of instrument you can clock a recession to. Hear that voice on your radio, and you knows times is hard. So, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, if you're reading this, here's your red flag: Judging from their liberal use of open spacing-- there's like eight snare taps in the whole piece-- the Reverend and his protégé want to take this nation through an economic slow-down, "just to fall in love again."

In the cannon of Al Green duets, it's not easy to be a songstress who can share the spotlight with his magnificent presence without over-playing one's cards, but Rae does just that. Onstage with a legend of relaxation, the 29-year-old proves herself patiently, casually noodling around the beat with that earthy enchantress melisma that she borrows from Erykah Badu, with all of Badu's naturalism, but none of her rigid, Billie Holiday weirdness. The lyrics drift by like mileposts on a long night's drive-- sometimes Al Green mumbles them, incoherently. When he drifts back towards yesterday's snoozy soul platitudes Rae keeps him-- and us-- from nodding off, with her avant-garde sense of rhythm and style. She's the Neo, he's the Soul.

Saturdays=Youth, the latest from Anthony Gonzalez's M83, deservedly received a Best New Music nod today (the video for "Graveyard Girl" is a good intro to what the album is about). Pitchfork's Brian Howe noted that, "On its first two studio albums, M83 did one thing very, very well: create compact doses of tension and adrenaline. Saturdays=Youth meaningfully diversifies M83's catalog while retaining Gonzalez's indelible fingerprint." The "indelible fingerprint" Brian mentions is all over the M83 remix of Midnight Juggernauts' "Shadows"; one of the things I like about Gonzalez is how he sort of folds everything into his own world, M83-ing everything he touches. Here he transforms a low-key, vaguely funky dance-rock tune from the Australian band into a slow-motion, blissed-out journey to the Cloud City.

Stream:> Midnight Juggernauts: "Shadows (M83 Remix)"

[from the Shadows EP; out now Astralwerks; original track from Dystopia; out now in Australia on Siberia/EMI; due in the U.S. 05/27/08 on Astralwerks]

Most rock bands get their first gigs in beer-soaked basements, run-down apartments, crumbling urban houses, or sweaty, empty venues. But for the Vampire Weekend boys, it all started here-- in an arts society dorm building at New York's Columbia University. Just a few years ago, the young New York four-piece was playing parties in this distinctly ivy-scented communal area, the centerpiece of which is a taxidermied moose head allegedly killed by Dwight Eisenhower (with his bare hands, we're sure).

On a late January afternoon, one day before their debut album hit stores, the band came full circle, regrouping in the Upper West Side building to discuss and perform their songs, including "A-Punk", "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", and "Oxford Comma"-- complete with a Julliard-trained string section.