8hands featured living room project: Eddie and Keith are listening to…

alon — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:20:02 -0400

It's good to know that Eddie Argos is keeping himself busy even while he's in a between-albums-break. After giving us one of 2007's best albums, the front man of Art Brut joined Keith Totp and together they popped out a tiny project called "Eddie and Keith are listening to…" (by tiny I mean they have 27 friends in MySpace, at least for now).

It's not the first time that Argos and Totp have joined hands: the two were members of Argos's first band, The Art Goblins, and last year they were both feeling the Christmas Spirit in a project called The Black Arts (as you can see, they are very diverse when it comes to picking a name).

R. Kelly BELIEVED he can fly. Argos can REALLY do it. (taken from kirstiecat' flickr stream)

The new project is just Argos and Totp having fun. Their MySpace profile explains it the best: "Every once in a while Eddie Argos and Keith Totp shall randomly choose a song they've been listening to, record a cover of it in their living room, and upload it here".

So far, all they done is an Eels cover (of "I Like Birds") and a Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus cover (of "Run Joey Run", but they named it "Run Keith Run"). Don't expect a lot of new covers to come, as they made it clear that updates will probably be "very infrequently".

Until the next Art Brut album will show up, these lo-fi acoustic jams are good enough for me, but still, let's nag nag nag nag and send them a lot of MySpace messages saying "Please cover more songs" – it can't hurt, right?

8hands Featured Bob Dylan Cover: The Hold Steady's "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"

alon — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:56:10 -0500

A while ago we interviewed Zac Pennington of the Parenthetical Girls and he referred to Bob Dylan as "popular music's most impressive con man". I'm not sure if I totally agree, after all, Dylan wrote some songs that touched me deeply at one point or the other, but you've got to admit Pennington has a point.

We all know that at least ten million Bob Dylan covers have been recorded till this day – most are mediocre, a few are brilliant and the others are just boring. That's why I wasn't too excited about the "I'm Not There" soundtrack – I mean, the movie should be awesome, but I just can't bear any more Dylan covers. Damn, we all need to move on!

The Hold Steady - Best Band In The World?

The list of artists who recorded the "I'm Not There" soundtrack is amazing. Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, Cat Power, Sufjan Stevens, Karen O, Calexico & many others, but the result is same-ole-same-ole. Nothing that will blow your head open.

The only cover that made the whole project worth something is the Hold Steady's version of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" in which they prove, again, that they are the best band of the moment.

The church organ, the acoustic guitar, the keyboard and the oh-so-known-hold-steady-rock explosion. They made the perfect mix of theirs and Dylan's style and you'll have to listen to it carefully, with your headphones, to realize how great it is. Until you do that, check out this video and discover that Dylan wrote every song you have ever loved and known. Enjoy.