Soundtracks!

For both Where The Wild Things Are and The Fantastic Mr Fox are on Spotify now. Go listen!

Where The Wild Things Are is something of a primary school symphony, credited to Karen O and the Kids; that is, the idiosyncratic Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman, accompanied by a choir or rugrats. Simple, almost Kimya Dawson-like acoustic guitars rule mostly, but we do get flourishes of basic lines of xlophone plinking and strings plonking. Thoroughly enjoyable, and makes me look forward to the film even more (can’t quite get over the fact that the US get it today, everyone else has to wait for December…)

Download “All Is Love”

The Fantastic Mr Fox is scored mostly by French composer Alexander Despalt, and the inclusion of Nancy Adams’ “Love” from the 1970s Disney Robin Hood film serves as a good reference point to the sound Despalt evokes; that of classic children’s films from back in the day, adding to the overall somewhat old fashioned and anachornistic feel Wes Anderson seems to be going for in the film (well, all his films). And we get some obligatory Beach Boys and Stones tracks, always welcome (if expected by now).

Oh, and the new banjo-lead song by Jarvis on the album is brills, if brief.

Download Nancy Adams – “Love”

Catching up: Ben Folds’ new album

Awesome piano-popster Ben Folds has (finally) got another (proper) album coming out, entitled Way To Normal, which will see release in the US on 30th September (and a day earlier in the UK. Ha!).

Ben’s MySpace features two songs from the new album; the brilliant “Hiroshima” (about falling off stage at the beginning of a concert), and the possibly even-more-brilliant “The Bitch Went Nuts”, which chronicles an ill-advised date with a militant left-wing conspiracy nut who, whose somewhat-”nuts” behaviour in seeing everyone as an evil conservative, means that when the narrator “close[s his] eyes / [he]‘ll be fucking Jimmy Carter”.

That line alone puts it up on the level of that other Folds song with “bitch” in the title.

Download “The Bitch Went Nuts” (MySpace rip)

Tour tickets presale and iTunes preorder

The Streets and Muse collaboration leaks

Following in the tradition of Run DMC & Aerosmith, and Public Enemy & Anthrax (but, luckily, sounding nothing like either Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park), The Streets and Muse have teamed up for a rock/rap collaboration, apparently recorded during a “jam session” last year (and leaked this morning) annnnd…well, it kinda sounds like it. Keep with it ’til the first chorus, though, and then it starts sounding less like Muse and Mike Skinner dicking about in the studio, and more like an English Rage Against The Machine. It’s pretty cool.

Download Muse & The Streets – “Who Knows Who”