Weekly Music Roundup: The Return of Pavement's Slacker Vocals and Darlene Love

Rescue your Tuesdays with our weekly roundup of music news, videos and songs that just might help you get through the rest of the week. This week, songs to fix the midweek blues, and a first glimpse at the return of a legendary voice.

Having A Bad Day? This Video Will Pick You Up.

The Manchester, England band elbow released a new EP Friday, called Lost Worker Bee. elbow’s Guy Garvey says, “Manchester’s symbol has been the worker bee for hundreds of years and the lead track is about finding love far away from home. Far from being just a stop gap this is one of our proudest releases." Pulsing, emotive, anthemic, it is married to a wonderful video starring the actor Sanjeev Kohli. I don’t care how crappy your day has been so far – watch this video; then maybe smile and watch it again. You’re welcome. 

A Small Problem To Be Thankful For

The Bulls is a duo, comprised of Anna Bulbrook (from The Airborne Toxic Event) and Marc Sallis (of The Duke Spirit); their debut EP is due on August 28, but two of their songs are out there already: one is last year’s “Come Unwound,” their maiden voyage together. The other is “Small Problems,” which will be the EP’s title track. The song sports a enormous, chiming chorus, with Bulbrook’s breathy vocals gliding over the song’s high-gloss production. 

Darlene Love Sings Elvis Costello

As I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, singer Darlene Love is finally releasing what her record company calls, somewhat vaguely, her “first new album in decades.” It comes out on September 18, and the first single to be released is “Forbidden Nights,” written by Elvis Costello. The album features a Murderer’s Row of songwriters, including Bruce Springsteen, Linda Perry, Jimmy Webb and album producer “Little Stevie” Van Zandt. It will also feature a few golden oldies, like “River Deep, Mountain High.” This song has that big, sweeping, classic '60s sound, and Darlene’s voice is in fine shape, if somewhat duskier than it was back in the '60s, when she was Phil Spector’s secret weapon.

A Brief History of Pavement

Pavement spent the '90s making records that most indie rock fans still know and love. But they also made lots of recordings that never saw the light of day. The Secret History, Vol. 1, is a collection of odds and ends – demos, B-sides, alternate versions of songs Pavement fans know. It comes out August 11, but our colleagues at NPR Music are streaming the whole thing this week, and while I haven’t made it through all of the tracks yet, the one I was immediately drawn to was this 7-inch single version of “Summer Babe.” On the band’s first album, Slanted and Enchanted, the leadoff track was called “Summer Babe (Winter Version),” so it didn’t take a musicologist to guess that there had to be other versions somewhere.

More Slacker Vocals (Female Version)

Let’s face it – over the years we have cut some serious slack for male singers, especially in the post-Lou Reed world of indie and alternative rock. Meanwhile we seemed to expect something less “approximate” from distaff singers. Well, Nina D. of the band Coke Weed is having none of it. Her vocals are every bit as laser-focused as Stephen Malkmus’s are on those Pavement albums. Which is to say, not very. But like Malkmus’s, her casual vocals are crucial to the band’s overall sound. In the case of Coke Weed, she adds an element of surprise, and of coloring outside the lines, to music that otherwise owes a lot to '70s R&B, early disco and electronic music. Check out their new single, “Dead Man Walking,” while you wait for their new album, called Mary Weaver, due October 9.

Live on Soundcheck.org this week: