Each week, Playlist’s Glenn Peoples looks at special tracks offered by the iTunes Music Store and other select online music merchants. Here are the selections for the week of June 6th.
Tori Amos recorded a special live Exclusive Sessions for iTunes that is now available. It has four songs: “Sleeps With Butterflies,” “The Power of Orange Knickers,” “Seaside,” and “Crazy.”
Backstreet Boys’ “Incomplete” is doing very well, so there should be good interest in a Never Gone album sampler. It’s free of charge at iTunes. Judging from the clips it sounds like the Boys’ songwriting team has been more than a little absorbed in the slower and more popular songs of Hoobastank.
Rejoice country fans, Curb Records has added a posse of titles to the iTunes catalog, among them Tim McGraw’s Live Like You Were Dying, LeAnn Rimes’ This Woman, The Judd’s Number One Hits, and Jo Dee Messina’s Delicious Surprise.
Other key pre-releases are Fat Joe’s “Get It Poppin” (featuring Nelly), Staind’s new single “>“Right Here” and “Gangsters and Thugs” from The Transplants (whose album will be out June 21st).
About a year and a half ago I saw a band from Iceland in a small club in Brooklyn, New York. Tenderfoot played stripped down, beautiful music like Sigor Ros infused with a sweet, melancholic folk. The band looks to have changed its name to Without Gravity for Stateside purposes — as far as I can tell — and its One Little Indian debut, Tenderfoot, is now available at iTunes as a special pre-release exclusive. Highly recommended for fans of Radiohead’s softer songs, Jeff Buckley, and Sigur Ros. (At the band’s website it says Tenderfoot’s album is titled Without Gravity . That’s the ol’ switcheroo.)
The free iTunes download of the week is Augustana’s “>“Stars and Boulevards” from the band’s You’ll Disappear EP. The Chicago band sounds like they’ve listened to Travis’ The Man Who a few hundred times and let it seep into their songwriting consciousness. The EP is out on Epic Records and their full length (which was recorded with famed produced Brendan O’Brien) will be out later this year.
New albums at Rhapsody. Known more for the controversy stirred up by his music more than for his music, 2 Live Crew was once the most notorious rap group in the country. The infamous Banned in the U.S.A. is now at Rhapsody along with Is What We Are , Greatest Hits Vol. 2 and other lesser known albums and collections.
Rhapsody has added Anniemal by Norweigian pop singer Annie. If you’ve read a music blog in the last four months, you know the name. The Gorillaz have a Rhapsody radio station. First click got me their song “El Manana.” Second song was Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” Third song was Primal Scream’s blistering “Accelerator.” The fourth song made me laugh: Blur’s “Song 2.”
For those hooked to Audible.com, Rhapsody has an exclusive interview with Black Eyed Peas. Questions asked of the band: Are you perfectionists in the studio? Favorite collaboration or song on the album? Who do you listen to now? Yes, hard-hitting questions not for the casual fan.
eMusic has added The Best of Mushroom Jazz, Vol. 1-5 , a collection of tracks from DJ Mark Farina’s popular series for Om Records. Also new to eMusic is the new album by Scottish power pop favorites Teenage Fanclub. Man-Made is the band’s first album for Merge and has the underground buzzing about the band once again.
Bleep.com recently added Ghetto Pop Life by DM & Jemini. The DM stands for Danger Mouse, the now-famous DJ/producer who made his name with the controversy surrounding his bootleg remix The Gray Album . Ghetto Pop Life was released before the hoopla.
MSN Music has kicked its “Buy One Get Five Free” promotion up a notch or two. The offer is good only once per person and per MSN account.
More MySpace.com pages to check out: Brooklyn-based The National (streaming two songs from their new album, Alligator), Brooklyn-based rapper “>Aesop Rock (streaming four songs) and Los Angeles power pop quintet The 88 (streaming four songs).