popwreckoning

Thirty Seconds to Mars have released a short film for its next single, “Hurricane.”

Bartholomew Cubbins directed the mysterious, action-packed short film that is filled with secrets and evil villains, and, of course, awesome music. You can watch the video below.

An alternate version of “Hurricane” can be found on the deluxe edition of This Is War. “Hurricane 2.0″ features Kanye West and the deluxe edition can be ordered on iTunes now.

30 Seconds to Mars’ tour with Neon Trees and Mutemath is a phenomenal tour with edgy, rock anthems. The bands on this tour deliver equally energetic performances with enough variety of a music to make for an entertaining night. I recently caught up to the tour in Omaha, Nebraska at Sokol Auditorium.

Though Neon Trees haven’t been a part of the music world as long as the other bands on the tour, they perform like they’re veterans. The group just released their debut album Habits and performed a fun set with big guitars, big drums and even bigger singalong choruses. The group has the performance energy and sound of a mix of The Killers and Head Automatica.
The group did a great job amping up their crowd. Not only was their music enjoyable, but so was their interaction with the audience. “It’s nice to be back here in Omaha,” said lead singer Tyler Glenn. “I used to live here. Elkhorn to be exact. That’s right, I’m legit,” the audience laughed and cheered at his homage to the small neighboring town.

“Let me see your claws, c’mon, I know you’ve all got a wild side,” Tyler then encouraged the audience before performing the group’s single. A sea of arms shot claw hands into the air, while the audience let out a big roar. Tyler then led the audience through the catchy single, “Animal,” while promenading out in front of the band’s set up on the speakers. The animated singer’s dynamic movements were contagious and got the audience moving along. Though “Animal” was the best known tune of the night, their best performance came on their set closer, “Sins of My Youth.” An extended ending and enhanced instrumental support made this song extra entertaining. When Neon Trees was all said and done, you could still here some audience members begging for more, a well-deserved compliment for a new band.
Neon Trees Set List:
Love and Affection
1983
Animal
In the Next Room
Your Surrender
Sins of My Youth
Mutemath’s music is a bit tamer then Neon Trees, but their set was still as explosive. Anytime you see someone begin their set up ritual by ducktaping headphones to their head, you know you’ll be in for an interseting time. The piano rock group made waves a few years ago with a unique video for their song “Typical,” in which they learned their parts backwards to record the whole thing. Now, while Omaha didn’t get any such reenactment, the band still had several tricks up their sleeves. When a drum stool was knocked over, the problem was resolved by sitting on a drum.

Members played with a freshness that teetered inbetween a reckless abandon—when done with some unidentified noisemaker, they simply tossed it off into the crowd—and controlled skill—some of those piano riffs would make classical composers blush. They stood apart from other touring bands these days by showing a grasp on dynamics lost on many as they swelled up from a soft piano dynamic into the fortes of their choruses. They are one of the more technically advanced bands I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, but as I said earlier, they’re not so caught up in the technical aspects that they lose the spontaneity that makes music fun.
Mutemath Set List:
The Nerve
Armstice
Chaos
The Fight
Spotlight
Reset
Typical
Break
A white curtain shrouded the stage before 30 Seconds to Mars began their set. As the intro music began, the outline of the mohawked lead singer, Jared Leto, appeared with arms outstretched to each side. Then in a swell swoop, his arms swung up above his head and then down, and with their downward movement, the curtain dropped revealing the full band performing “The Escape.” The next 90-minute set was filled with the band’s atmospheric rock anthems. As a band, they’ve improved so much since the last time I saw them over five years. They’ve gotten tighter and more controlled in their performance. As a frontman, Leto seems to have really gotten his act together, although I must question his decision to rock a pink mohawk. As a band, they really seemed to be about their fans this time, a sentiment I didn’t necessarily get the first time I saw them.
Leto began just singing the first few tunes, but donned a guitar for a majority of the set. About midway through the set, the band disappeared leaving Leto alone on stage with guitar as he took audience request. At least he tried to take audience requests, but I think the crowd was a little skeptical, so Leto just played a few through a few songs acoustic. Then 30 Seconds to Mars perhaps played its most bad ass of performances: “Bad Romance” acoustic morphed into “The Kill.” Yes, Leto went a little Gaga. The band returned and they replayed “The Kill” as a full band. It was a fun variation for the middle of a set.

My only disappointment came when Leto announced that this show was “stolen from Kansas City.” I just drove three hours to Omaha for a show that could have been in my town? Alas. You guys owe us KC kids a show.

30 Seconds to Mars Set List (as listed, but not exact order of performance):
Escape
Night of the Hunter
Attack
Vox Populi
From Yesterday
Beautiful Lie
This Is War
Acoustic Set – various songs, including Lady Gaga cover
The Kill
Closer to the Edge
Search and Destroy
Buddah for Mary
Fantasy
///
Kings and Queens

With well-enunciated vocals, a wealth of pop hooks and synth heavy melody lines, it’s easy to fall in love with Neon Trees. With their newly released debut album, Habits, the band merges Hockey with The Killers in songs about sexual-longing. The Killers comparison might not be that great of a surprise considering they group first picked up buzz when the Vegas rockers took Neon Trees out on tour for a few dates.

Radio single, “Animal,” gives a good taste into the band’s character. Musically, they start with a hooky intro with big drums and a great cue for clapping along. When Tyler Glenn enters with the vocals, he spirals down the scale, while singing the lines, “Here we go again,” before singing about the routine anguish of falling for someone and being willing to accept any form of love you can get even if it will end in pain or be emotionally unrequited. And just as he says, with the “Here we go again,” this does become  a theme on the album. For example, in “Love and Affection,” he sings, “I just don’t understand why my love isn’t good enough.” This album is called “Habits,” so a theme of bad love decisions is appropriate. “Animal” also has some of the best lyrical presentation on the album. At one point, Glenn sings, “You’re killing me now,” but when he gets to “now,” he breaks it into “n-owwww.” By doing this it is like he is saying the “owwww” like he really is in pain.

Drummer Elaine Bradley is a real gem for this band. She seems to favor big drums like on opening number “1983,” but she also knows when to reel it in like on the more syncopated and jazzy brushes she uses on “In the Next Room.” One of the best parts of the album is on the last song, “Your Surrender,” when the bass and guitar drop out and its just her drumming against Glenn’s voice. And as if her drumming wasn’t enough of a great addition to the album, she also lends backing vocals.

“Our War” is the only number that seems to lose direction, as the development section is a bit boring compared to other songs on the album. However, the band makes up for this one dull number by following it with the brilliant “Sins of My Youth.” “Sins” changes up the intro pattern the band usually takes, and Glenn’s voice takes on more of a nasally quality like that of Nate Ruess‘ while he sings with piano and incorporates a fun stutter into the lyrics. As the tune builds up with guitar and drums, the band hits one of their catchiest choruses on the whole album. It also has a killer bass-line right before the “Would you love me still?” section of the tune making this song an all-around win.

These songs are just begging for singing along to, so if you’re ready to be hooked on a new group, check out Neon Trees. Neon Trees is also currently touring with 30 Seconds to Mars.

You can view the Tim Burton-inspired music video for “Animal” below:

Track Listing:
1. 1983
2. Animal
3. Girls and Boys in School
4. In the Next Room
5. Love and Affection
6. Our War
7. Sins of My Youth
8. Your Surrender

Sometimes light comes from out of the darkness. As their band name suggests, Editors have changed things up, not content to stay in one place, reinventing themselves yet again. Their 3rd album length offering titled In This Light and On This Evening was released October 12 in the UK and shot straight to #1 in its debut week. One of my friends is a huge Editors fan. But I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been a big fan of Tom Smith‘s husky voice.

However, upon hearing the first single from the album, the wonderfully synthtastic “Papillon,” I decided their new sound warranted more of my attention. In This Light and On This Evening was produced by London-based Flood (aka Mark Ellis), who has also recently worked with 30 Seconds to Mars. The band also made a concerted attempt to go back to basics, to keep as raw of a sound as possible while recording this album, so if you’re a proponent of the “warts and all” style of music production, you’re going to like this. Similar to what fellow Englishmen Keane did in 2008 with Perfect Symmetry, Editors decided on their third outing to incorporate synthesizers heavily into their music and rely less on guitars. And just like there was for Perfect Symmetry , there are plenty of critics of this new “version” of Editors, the kind of people who think any band to use synths so prominently in rock music is committing heresy.

In my eyes, synths are a welcome addition to any song, provided the song written with their use in mind has a direction, with strong melody and lyrics. (Deep down, I’ll always be an ’80s new wave / electropop / dance fanatic at heart. This also probably explains why, unlike those who have reviewed the album before me, I’m not put off by Editors’ spin on retro electronica.) In the case of In This Light and On This Evening, the synth action is fab and adds rather than detracts from these songs. The album starts off with the part hymnal / part dirge title track, Smith’s vocals darkly avuncular and somewhat frightening. He could be your worst nightmare. Or your savior. When he sings, “I swear to God / in this light and on this evening / London’s become / the most beautiful thing I’ve seen” and mentions the Fleet Road (near Hampstead Heath, North London), this Anglophile knows everything’s going all right. For those of you like me who love (and miss) London Town a whole lot, the band “hacked” into Google Maps and you can take their virtual street view tour of London with the album as your soundtrack. “You’re a long way from home,” indeed. Sigh.

“You Don’t Know Love” is one hell of a sexy number, with lyrics of “You don’t know love like you used to / you don’t feel love like you did before” and wicked beats from drummer Ed Lay. Yowza. Who ever said synth rock had no emotion? (Just please don’t ask me to even try to explain the music video for the song that premiered December 16 on MySpace.) “The Big Exit,” with Smith’s semi-falsetto and the rest of the band repeating the phrase, “they took what once was ours,” is chilling. I also really like “The Boxer;” it’s a bit slower, but warm and cozy as if your mother was tucking you in at night. Not exactly what you’d expect from its title.

And for the biggest surprise: who would have guessed a tune named “Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool” would have such a crazily infectious, repetitive chorus (“I give a little to you / I give a little to him / I give a little to her / a little bit to myself/ I’m gonna pass on your health / I give a little to her“)? You have to hear it to believe it. I’m stoked Editors are headed this way in two months and I’ll get to see hear all of these up close and personal.

Track Listing:
01. In This Light and On This Evening
02. Bricks and Mortar
03. Papillon
04. You Don’t Know Love
05. The Big Exit
06. The Boxer
07. Like Treasure
08. Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool
09. Walk the Fleet Road

In This Light and On This Evening drops in America on January 19, 2010. You can catch Editors on their North American headlining tour in February.

Tour Dates
Feb 05 – Showbox at the Market / Seattle
Feb 06 – Commodore Ballroom / Vancouver
Feb 08 – Warfield Theatre / San Francisco
Feb 09 – House of Blues / San Diego
Feb 11 – Wiltern / Los Angeles
Feb 13 – Ogden Theatre / Denver
Feb 15 – Vic Theatre / Chicago
Feb 16 – Phoenix Concert Theatre / Toronto
Feb 18 – House of Blues / Boston
Feb 19 – Terminal 5 / New York City
Feb 20 – Trocadero / Philadelphia
Feb 21 – 9:30 Club / Washington, DC

Editors: website | myspace | Editors Announce February North American Tour Dates

This being my first foray into the pit, I was hard to contain my excitement when I got to shoot 107.7 The End’s annual Deck the Hall Ball at the WAMU theater this last Tuesday, featuring Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, Metric, 30 Seconds to Mars and the headliners, Muse.

Being a newbie to the rocktographer scene, I felt ridiculously intimidated by how big this show really was. Arriving late after finding parking, Vampire Weekend was the first band I saw. The charming foursome played through a disappointingly short 20-minute set, but made the most of the five-song slot they were given. It included the big hits from their critically acclaimed debut as well as a couple from Contra, out this January – “White Sky” and “Cousins,” both incredibly addictive. Possibly the only good thing about having that short of a set was that they only got time to play the really recognizable songs and there wasn’t any time to have any sort of up and down mood. However, with the lightness of Vampire Weekend’s music, I needed more to be satisfied.

Next up was Phoenix – the Grammy-nominated spunky indie pop quartet from Versailles, who came out with one of the best albums of the year, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Again, another short set, but it didn’t feel nearly as short as it was because they were amazing. Dare I say they stole the show? Bringing crowd-pleaser after crowd-pleaser with “Lasso,” “Lisztomania,” “Rome” and “Girlfriend,” it seemed as if front man Thomas Mars loved the crowd just as much as they loved Phoenix. Their unique French brand of indie pop was the breakout of the year, and seeing Phoenix play live was the perfect way to end the year. After their final song, the hugely popular “1901,” the waif-like Mars crowd-surfed all the way to the back of the crowd of people standing on the floor and ran back up to the stage to thank all those who filled the WAMU Theater. Let me tell you, as sad as I was to see them leave the stage, it pumped me up even more at the fact that they’re coming back to Seattle to play a full set at a much more intimate venue right down the street at the Showbox SoDo.

By this point, I’d become pretty comfortable in the pit, filing in an out with all the other local photographers, even though I didn’t say a word to any of them. The third time back up the stage was for Metric, who I strongly underestimated. I didn’t catch them at Bumbershoot in September, but Emily Haines has got to be one of the most charismatic front women I’ve ever seen. She came out with dark lighting slightly glowing behind her sweaty, shaggy blonde hair, rocking back and forth playing her keyboard before walking up to the mic in her Sgt. Peppers-inspired jacket and blowing my mind. Metric played a half-hour set of songs from their 2009 disc, Fantasies and managed to fit so much sexy New Wavey heavy rock into that time frame. I strongly recommend seeing them live, as it makes you appreciate how good Metric is after 107.7 The End played “Help, I’m Alive” more than both Kings of Leon singles in 2008.

This was the end of the short sets, and onto the full-on Rock, yes, with a capital R.

I have to say, when I first heard the lineup, there was one band that didn’t fit. And that band was 30 Seconds to Mars. Honestly, you could tell which fans were there to see 30 Seconds to Mars because they were so out of sync with the rest of the lineup. But front man Jared Leto did make it seem that this was just a 30 Seconds to Mars show. And by the reaction of the crowd, their fans were satisfied. They opened their bombastic goth rock set with “A Beautiful Lie” and “The Kill” off their second album and played through the heavy hits from This Is War for the rest of the 45 minutes. Personally, I would have preferred cutting down their set to give more time to Vampire Weekend. As overdone as 30 Seconds to Mars was, with a spotlight for Leto, he surely has the voice and energy to hold a crowd that large, even if not everyone was there to see him. He jumped down off the stage, ran through the pit, dodged myself, the other photographers, and the sweaty teens being pulled from the crowd. But that could have been his fault – because at the beginning he shouted to the swooning girls, “Let’s see how many f-cking people we can get to crowd surf at the same time!” Great, thanks Jared. It made for a chaotic, almost dangerous pit. 30 Seconds to Mars surely does love the fans, almost in a needy way, as evidenced by the fact that they told the audience they’d sign every single copy of This Is War people brought to the meet and greet table after their show. I didn’t bother going to check, because Muse went on next.

After a way-too-long intermission, Matt Bellamy, Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard came up on stage to the loudest cheering I heard all night. The crowd surely belonged to Muse, an indication by the majority of the tee shirts being worn across WAMU Theater. I’m pretty sure Muse is the only band out there that can pull off the huge rock that hasn’t been popular since before I was born, because with such hits like “Hysteria,” “Uprising,” and “Unnatural Selection,” you’d think they’d be over-the-top, but it’s nostalgic and refreshing at the same time. Matt Bellamy strutted around the stage dry-humping his pink, glittery guitar at one point, and sporting a stylish patterned blazer. It’s almost unbelievable that that much sound can come from three guys. One guitar, one bass, one drummer – and Muse manages to sound like eight people are standing up on stage. I was just glad that now after seeing Muse live, I’ll stop thinking of that stupid scene in “Twilight” with “Supermassive Black Hole” playing in the background, and I’ll think about Matt, Chris and Dom rocking it in Seattle. Ending with “Plug in Baby” from Origin of Symmetry and a killer version of “Knights of Cydonia” from Black Holes and Revelations, complete with a spaghetti western intro, harmonica and all, Muse literally went out with a bang. They finished with giant jets of smoke shooting out from the stage, accompanied by tons of screaming fans.

If there’s one band that’s the current poster band for stadium rock, it’s Muse.

Band Info:
Vampire Weekend: website | myspace | @ treasure island | @ acl | @ monolith | @ popped | @ all points west | @ lollapalooza
Metric: website | myspace | @ midland
30 Seconds to Mars: website | myspace | This Is War review
Muse: website | myspace | Muse Reveal Tracklisting for New Album | Muse to Play Several U.S. Dates with U2 and MTV VMAs | Various Artists: New Moon Soundtrack | Muse – “Undisclosed Desires” Promo Video | Muse Announce Short Spring American Tour

As avid 30 Seconds to Mars fans, we had high expectations of their latest album, This Is War. -We were not disappointed.

Several of the tracks live up to the intense almost dramatic music they are known for with a concentration on aggressive vocals and studio production (this album does weigh heavy on the production). This includes their first single, “Kings and Queens,” as well as “Night of the Hunter,” “Closer to the Edge,” and “Vox Populi.” This album also features an interesting collaboration with Kanye West and Brandon Flowers of The Killers (rumored on piano?) on a track called “Hurricane.” Some may feel this collaboration is a bold and almost a sell-out type move on the band’s behalf. Regardless, this track is bound to get some attention, if not radio play, then some “love” on MTV (They still play some music right? Maybe just a little?).

The album is not complete without a softer side: “Alibi,” “100 Suns” and “L490” help transition the album’s intense climatic moments and give the album a storytelling feel.

As a whole, This is War is thematic in nature. Not only is the album title the name of one of their songs, but they also use the title as a line that reoccurs in a track or two. Other warfare like references can be picked up in other tracks and there are some musical themes going on which include deep eerie vocal droning, a children’s choir/chanting in several tracks and ambient/synth progressions weaving in and out of the album.

Though This is War sounds like more went into this studio mix than on A Beautiful Lie, the energy and execution behind the vocals of Jared Leto draw you in and allow you to loose yourself in at least one track.

Sara’s favorite line in the album – “Honest to god I will break your heart, tear you to pieces and rip you apart.” – “Night of the Hunter”

Andrew’s favorite line in the album “To the leader, the pariah, the victim, the messiah.” – “This is War”

This is War is available December 8, 2009, and those of you who have played the BioWare video game Dragon Age: Origins may have heard all or part of 30 Seconds to Mars’ title track “This is War” while playing the game, or in the game’s trailer.

Track Listing:
01. Escape
02. Night of the Hunter
03. Kings and Queens
04. This is War
05. 100 Suns
06. Hurricane
07. Closer to the Edge
08. Vox Populi
09. Search and Destroy
10. Alibi
11. Stranger in a Strange Land
12. L490
Bonus track versions:
01. Kings and Queens (LA Riots Vocal Mix)
02. Night of the Hunter (Flood Remix)

30 Seconds to Mars: website | myspace

Co-Reviewed by Sara Monahan and Andrew Dunlap

“Kings and Queens” is the first single off 30 Seconds to Mars‘ forthcoming This Is War out Dec. 8. The full short film will be released soon.

30 Seconds to Mars: website | myspace