The real story behind Ne-Yo's mini-epic track, 'Fade Into the Background'

There are plenty of excellent songs on Ne-Yo's latest release, "Year of the Gentleman," which is enjoying its official release today. But one stands out for me -- and apparently for the 25-year-old smooth lover too.

When I met with Ne-Yo in the studio last month to sample from his new selections, he was predictably enthusiastic about everything. But "Fade Into the Background," a mini-epic about watching your lost love walk down the aisle with some lucky cleanup fella, got him seriously jazzed. Ne-Yo has good taste in his own music: This song moves along like a scene from a classy gangster movie, with the singer in the role of the young don who let his true love go when the family demanded it. "Such a lovely reception," he croons through clenched teeth. "I sit here sippin' rose." That can't taste good. Soon enough he's guzzling from the bottle and tearing the party apart.

Ne-Yo had some interesting things to say about this song, including its surprising inspirations. Read his comments after the jump...

If, like us, you were smitten with cute-as-a-button disco queen Sally Shapiro in the halcyon days of 2007 (when Sweden, not Alaska, was the media's frozen tundra of choice), we have good news. Shapiro's producer, Johan Agebjörn, has a new solo album "Mossebo" out Wednesday. It's a more melancholy and ambient tone poem of an album, compiled from four years of off-and-on composing, and pretty far afield of his Italo-disco floor-fillers with Shapiro. But its chilly synths and ephemerally mournful vocals should be perfect for the coming of fall. We've got a particularly wistful yet head-nodding MP3 from it here, and as devoted Kraftwerk fans, consider us suckers for anything called "Ambient Computer Dance."

-- August Brown

Download:  Ambient Computer Dance.mp3

One of the instant standout tracks on Sugarland’s new “Love on the Inside” album is “Steve Earle,” an uproarious and shameless love letter to and about the celebrated Texas troubadour. Against a bouncy honky-tonk two-step beat, the duo's lead singer, Jennifer Nettles, deadpans:

Well I heard Steve Earle had lots of wives
About as many as cats have lives
Met 'em on his records and we’re good friends
He writes a song for everyone
They fall in love and before it’s done
He writes an even better one when it ends.

Steve Earle, Steve Earle
Please write a song for me
I promise I won’t take a dime
When it comes my time to leave
The others wanted your whole heart
But I just want your sleeve.

When I sat down Tuesday with Nettles and her Sugarland partner, Kristian Bush, at their hotel in Santa Monica, they talked about how the song encapsulates their own experiences as music fans.

"There’s a huge piece of the puzzle of this album that has to do with being a fan," Bush said, at which point Nettles jumped in: "Let's talk about Steve Earle. It’s the story of being a fan, and it’s also a songwriter writing about a songwriter whose life could be a song -- frankly, it is a song."

I couldn’t resist asking whether they’d heard anything back about their, er, tribute from Earle himself...

It was 1:30 in the afternoon Thursday, and a mermaid's tail was bobbing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast at Pt. Mugu. The shimmery, blue sea creature was playing siren to Jack's Mannequin singer-keyboardist, Andrew McMahon, in an upcoming video conceptualized by bestselling "Twilight" saga author Stephenie Meyer.

Meyer is being billed as the co-director of "The Resolution" video, even though "I've never directed anything," the 34-year-old author said on set, where dozens of fully clothed music and movie folk were milling around the Ventura County beach. "Clearly I have no experience. They're just running things by me."

Her impression midway through the shoot, which, in reality, was being shot by director Noble Jones: "It looks good. It looks the way I imagined it, so that's really cool."

What Meyer had imagined for the video was a mermaid who's also a stalker. Everywhere McMahon goes, the mermaid follows, flooding the landscape as the 26-year-old singer moves from ocean to desert to mountaintop, hauling his upright piano in the bed of an ancient Ford pickup. (Any similarities to the vintage red Chevy that heroine Bella drives in the “Twilight” books are purely coincidental, said director Jones; Meyer had written the video with a U-Haul in mind.)

Never mind that "The Resolution" has absolutely nothing to do with old trucks or with mermaids. When the band's frontman wrote the song last year, "it was sort of about my experience dealing with the cancer thing," said McMahon, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2005 and later received a bone-marrow transplant from his sister. "It was me coming to some place of acceptance with the past and deciding maybe I haven't figured out what I'm trying to accomplish, but I know I'm looking for some kind of resolve."

Meyer wasn't aware of that story when she wrote the video's treatment. Mermaids, she said, are "a subject I've always been fascinated with. When I was letting my imagination run wild for this [video], there were several different story lines I came up with and this one I thought had the most visual impact."

As for the longstanding rumor that Meyer will pen an upcoming book involving such a creature, "I don't know if I will or not," she said.

Given how the last few years have been so fallow for mainstream L.A. hip-hop, plenty of post-Dilla indie stalwarts are making a run at establishing a dominant local sound of fuzzy soul samples and virtuosic cut-and-paste beats. But the producer Flying Lotus might be the best of the bunch, precisely because he's the least traditionally hip-hop of them all. First off, his June debut full-length for Warp Records, "Los Angeles," is mostly instrumental. And those instrumentals are blinding thickets of reverb, alien techno noise and heavily treated vocal snippets.

It's not enough that R&B producer-singer Ne-Yo had to perform at the taping of FNMTV's season finale with a bevy of video vixens flanking him. Nope, they had to be wearing black lingerie underneath hospital scrubs whilst grinding to his disco-leaning hit "Closer." Ne-Yo obviously has a much better health plan than I do. But the screaming throngs of host Pete Wentz's disciples were reduced to near hysterics at the show's third-most-ravenously-anticipated episode (behind Miley Cyrus and the JoBros, obvs.) that also debuted videos from a weirdly vacant-looking Pink, a terribly dapper John Legend and Cassie, whose totally inverted talent-to-enjoyable-hit ratio is one of modern pop's more interesting sidebars.

Anybody who's attended a !!! show, for instance, can attest to the joy of watching uninhibited singers invent dance moves too ridiculous and unsexy to attempt on your own. On Monday night, hotly tipped singer-songwriter-producer Janelle Monáe took the ridiculous-dancing practice a step further by maintaining the same catatonic facial expression throughout her spastic choreography, all while wearing a bouffant-cum-mohawk and a tuxedo, no less. Nevermind that she was just playing a mellow free show at Hollywood's Amoeba Records. With her dramatic refusal to break out of her dancing robot character, it may as well have been the Grammys. Or at least her show Tuesday night at the Viper Room, which drew in P. Diddy, Christina Millian and Ne-Yo, not to mention Prince, who stopped by for a chat about an hour after the show.

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

Sally Shapiro producer goes solo to make your autumn more ambient

If, like us, you were smitten with cute-as-a-button disco queen Sally Shapiro in the halcyon days of 2007 (when Sweden, not Alaska, was the media's frozen tundra of choice), we have good news. Shapiro's producer, Johan Agebjörn, has a new solo album "Mossebo" out Wednesday. It's a more melancholy and ambient tone poem of an album, compiled from four years of off-and-on composing, and pretty far afield of his Italo-disco floor-fillers with Shapiro. But its chilly synths and ephemerally mournful vocals should be perfect for the coming of fall. We've got a particularly wistful yet head-nodding MP3 from it here, and as devoted Kraftwerk fans, consider us suckers for anything called "Ambient Computer Dance."

-- August Brown

Download:  Ambient Computer Dance.mp3

One of the instant standout tracks on Sugarland’s new “Love on the Inside” album is “Steve Earle,” an uproarious and shameless love letter to and about the celebrated Texas troubadour. Against a bouncy honky-tonk two-step beat, the duo's lead singer, Jennifer Nettles, deadpans:

Well I heard Steve Earle had lots of wives
About as many as cats have lives
Met 'em on his records and we’re good friends
He writes a song for everyone
They fall in love and before it’s done
He writes an even better one when it ends.

Steve Earle, Steve Earle
Please write a song for me
I promise I won’t take a dime
When it comes my time to leave
The others wanted your whole heart
But I just want your sleeve.

When I sat down Tuesday with Nettles and her Sugarland partner, Kristian Bush, at their hotel in Santa Monica, they talked about how the song encapsulates their own experiences as music fans.

"There’s a huge piece of the puzzle of this album that has to do with being a fan," Bush said, at which point Nettles jumped in: "Let's talk about Steve Earle. It’s the story of being a fan, and it’s also a songwriter writing about a songwriter whose life could be a song -- frankly, it is a song."

I couldn’t resist asking whether they’d heard anything back about their, er, tribute from Earle himself...

It was 1:30 in the afternoon Thursday, and a mermaid's tail was bobbing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast at Pt. Mugu. The shimmery, blue sea creature was playing siren to Jack's Mannequin singer-keyboardist, Andrew McMahon, in an upcoming video conceptualized by bestselling "Twilight" saga author Stephenie Meyer.

Meyer is being billed as the co-director of "The Resolution" video, even though "I've never directed anything," the 34-year-old author said on set, where dozens of fully clothed music and movie folk were milling around the Ventura County beach. "Clearly I have no experience. They're just running things by me."

Her impression midway through the shoot, which, in reality, was being shot by director Noble Jones: "It looks good. It looks the way I imagined it, so that's really cool."

What Meyer had imagined for the video was a mermaid who's also a stalker. Everywhere McMahon goes, the mermaid follows, flooding the landscape as the 26-year-old singer moves from ocean to desert to mountaintop, hauling his upright piano in the bed of an ancient Ford pickup. (Any similarities to the vintage red Chevy that heroine Bella drives in the “Twilight” books are purely coincidental, said director Jones; Meyer had written the video with a U-Haul in mind.)

Never mind that "The Resolution" has absolutely nothing to do with old trucks or with mermaids. When the band's frontman wrote the song last year, "it was sort of about my experience dealing with the cancer thing," said McMahon, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2005 and later received a bone-marrow transplant from his sister. "It was me coming to some place of acceptance with the past and deciding maybe I haven't figured out what I'm trying to accomplish, but I know I'm looking for some kind of resolve."

Meyer wasn't aware of that story when she wrote the video's treatment. Mermaids, she said, are "a subject I've always been fascinated with. When I was letting my imagination run wild for this [video], there were several different story lines I came up with and this one I thought had the most visual impact."

As for the longstanding rumor that Meyer will pen an upcoming book involving such a creature, "I don't know if I will or not," she said.

Given how the last few years have been so fallow for mainstream L.A. hip-hop, plenty of post-Dilla indie stalwarts are making a run at establishing a dominant local sound of fuzzy soul samples and virtuosic cut-and-paste beats. But the producer Flying Lotus might be the best of the bunch, precisely because he's the least traditionally hip-hop of them all. First off, his June debut full-length for Warp Records, "Los Angeles," is mostly instrumental. And those instrumentals are blinding thickets of reverb, alien techno noise and heavily treated vocal snippets.

It's not enough that R&B producer-singer Ne-Yo had to perform at the taping of FNMTV's season finale with a bevy of video vixens flanking him. Nope, they had to be wearing black lingerie underneath hospital scrubs whilst grinding to his disco-leaning hit "Closer." Ne-Yo obviously has a much better health plan than I do. But the screaming throngs of host Pete Wentz's disciples were reduced to near hysterics at the show's third-most-ravenously-anticipated episode (behind Miley Cyrus and the JoBros, obvs.) that also debuted videos from a weirdly vacant-looking Pink, a terribly dapper John Legend and Cassie, whose totally inverted talent-to-enjoyable-hit ratio is one of modern pop's more interesting sidebars.

Anybody who's attended a !!! show, for instance, can attest to the joy of watching uninhibited singers invent dance moves too ridiculous and unsexy to attempt on your own. On Monday night, hotly tipped singer-songwriter-producer Janelle Monáe took the ridiculous-dancing practice a step further by maintaining the same catatonic facial expression throughout her spastic choreography, all while wearing a bouffant-cum-mohawk and a tuxedo, no less. Nevermind that she was just playing a mellow free show at Hollywood's Amoeba Records. With her dramatic refusal to break out of her dancing robot character, it may as well have been the Grammys. Or at least her show Tuesday night at the Viper Room, which drew in P. Diddy, Christina Millian and Ne-Yo, not to mention Prince, who stopped by for a chat about an hour after the show.

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

Sugarland adores Steve Earle

One of the instant standout tracks on Sugarland’s new “Love on the Inside” album is “Steve Earle,” an uproarious and shameless love letter to and about the celebrated Texas troubadour. Against a bouncy honky-tonk two-step beat, the duo's lead singer, Jennifer Nettles, deadpans:

Well I heard Steve Earle had lots of wives
About as many as cats have lives
Met 'em on his records and we’re good friends
He writes a song for everyone
They fall in love and before it’s done
He writes an even better one when it ends.

Steve Earle, Steve Earle
Please write a song for me
I promise I won’t take a dime
When it comes my time to leave
The others wanted your whole heart
But I just want your sleeve.

When I sat down Tuesday with Nettles and her Sugarland partner, Kristian Bush, at their hotel in Santa Monica, they talked about how the song encapsulates their own experiences as music fans.

"There’s a huge piece of the puzzle of this album that has to do with being a fan," Bush said, at which point Nettles jumped in: "Let's talk about Steve Earle. It’s the story of being a fan, and it’s also a songwriter writing about a songwriter whose life could be a song -- frankly, it is a song."

I couldn’t resist asking whether they’d heard anything back about their, er, tribute from Earle himself...

It was 1:30 in the afternoon Thursday, and a mermaid's tail was bobbing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast at Pt. Mugu. The shimmery, blue sea creature was playing siren to Jack's Mannequin singer-keyboardist, Andrew McMahon, in an upcoming video conceptualized by bestselling "Twilight" saga author Stephenie Meyer.

Meyer is being billed as the co-director of "The Resolution" video, even though "I've never directed anything," the 34-year-old author said on set, where dozens of fully clothed music and movie folk were milling around the Ventura County beach. "Clearly I have no experience. They're just running things by me."

Her impression midway through the shoot, which, in reality, was being shot by director Noble Jones: "It looks good. It looks the way I imagined it, so that's really cool."

What Meyer had imagined for the video was a mermaid who's also a stalker. Everywhere McMahon goes, the mermaid follows, flooding the landscape as the 26-year-old singer moves from ocean to desert to mountaintop, hauling his upright piano in the bed of an ancient Ford pickup. (Any similarities to the vintage red Chevy that heroine Bella drives in the “Twilight” books are purely coincidental, said director Jones; Meyer had written the video with a U-Haul in mind.)

Never mind that "The Resolution" has absolutely nothing to do with old trucks or with mermaids. When the band's frontman wrote the song last year, "it was sort of about my experience dealing with the cancer thing," said McMahon, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2005 and later received a bone-marrow transplant from his sister. "It was me coming to some place of acceptance with the past and deciding maybe I haven't figured out what I'm trying to accomplish, but I know I'm looking for some kind of resolve."

Meyer wasn't aware of that story when she wrote the video's treatment. Mermaids, she said, are "a subject I've always been fascinated with. When I was letting my imagination run wild for this [video], there were several different story lines I came up with and this one I thought had the most visual impact."

As for the longstanding rumor that Meyer will pen an upcoming book involving such a creature, "I don't know if I will or not," she said.

Given how the last few years have been so fallow for mainstream L.A. hip-hop, plenty of post-Dilla indie stalwarts are making a run at establishing a dominant local sound of fuzzy soul samples and virtuosic cut-and-paste beats. But the producer Flying Lotus might be the best of the bunch, precisely because he's the least traditionally hip-hop of them all. First off, his June debut full-length for Warp Records, "Los Angeles," is mostly instrumental. And those instrumentals are blinding thickets of reverb, alien techno noise and heavily treated vocal snippets.

It's not enough that R&B producer-singer Ne-Yo had to perform at the taping of FNMTV's season finale with a bevy of video vixens flanking him. Nope, they had to be wearing black lingerie underneath hospital scrubs whilst grinding to his disco-leaning hit "Closer." Ne-Yo obviously has a much better health plan than I do. But the screaming throngs of host Pete Wentz's disciples were reduced to near hysterics at the show's third-most-ravenously-anticipated episode (behind Miley Cyrus and the JoBros, obvs.) that also debuted videos from a weirdly vacant-looking Pink, a terribly dapper John Legend and Cassie, whose totally inverted talent-to-enjoyable-hit ratio is one of modern pop's more interesting sidebars.

Anybody who's attended a !!! show, for instance, can attest to the joy of watching uninhibited singers invent dance moves too ridiculous and unsexy to attempt on your own. On Monday night, hotly tipped singer-songwriter-producer Janelle Monáe took the ridiculous-dancing practice a step further by maintaining the same catatonic facial expression throughout her spastic choreography, all while wearing a bouffant-cum-mohawk and a tuxedo, no less. Nevermind that she was just playing a mellow free show at Hollywood's Amoeba Records. With her dramatic refusal to break out of her dancing robot character, it may as well have been the Grammys. Or at least her show Tuesday night at the Viper Room, which drew in P. Diddy, Christina Millian and Ne-Yo, not to mention Prince, who stopped by for a chat about an hour after the show.

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

"Twilight" author wades into new territory -- music videos

It was 1:30 in the afternoon Thursday, and a mermaid's tail was bobbing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast at Pt. Mugu. The shimmery, blue sea creature was playing siren to Jack's Mannequin singer-keyboardist, Andrew McMahon, in an upcoming video conceptualized by bestselling "Twilight" saga author Stephenie Meyer.

Meyer is being billed as the co-director of "The Resolution" video, even though "I've never directed anything," the 34-year-old author said on set, where dozens of fully clothed music and movie folk were milling around the Ventura County beach. "Clearly I have no experience. They're just running things by me."

Her impression midway through the shoot, which, in reality, was being shot by director Noble Jones: "It looks good. It looks the way I imagined it, so that's really cool."

What Meyer had imagined for the video was a mermaid who's also a stalker. Everywhere McMahon goes, the mermaid follows, flooding the landscape as the 26-year-old singer moves from ocean to desert to mountaintop, hauling his upright piano in the bed of an ancient Ford pickup. (Any similarities to the vintage red Chevy that heroine Bella drives in the “Twilight” books are purely coincidental, said director Jones; Meyer had written the video with a U-Haul in mind.)

Never mind that "The Resolution" has absolutely nothing to do with old trucks or with mermaids. When the band's frontman wrote the song last year, "it was sort of about my experience dealing with the cancer thing," said McMahon, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2005 and later received a bone-marrow transplant from his sister. "It was me coming to some place of acceptance with the past and deciding maybe I haven't figured out what I'm trying to accomplish, but I know I'm looking for some kind of resolve."

Meyer wasn't aware of that story when she wrote the video's treatment. Mermaids, she said, are "a subject I've always been fascinated with. When I was letting my imagination run wild for this [video], there were several different story lines I came up with and this one I thought had the most visual impact."

As for the longstanding rumor that Meyer will pen an upcoming book involving such a creature, "I don't know if I will or not," she said.

Given how the last few years have been so fallow for mainstream L.A. hip-hop, plenty of post-Dilla indie stalwarts are making a run at establishing a dominant local sound of fuzzy soul samples and virtuosic cut-and-paste beats. But the producer Flying Lotus might be the best of the bunch, precisely because he's the least traditionally hip-hop of them all. First off, his June debut full-length for Warp Records, "Los Angeles," is mostly instrumental. And those instrumentals are blinding thickets of reverb, alien techno noise and heavily treated vocal snippets.

It's not enough that R&B producer-singer Ne-Yo had to perform at the taping of FNMTV's season finale with a bevy of video vixens flanking him. Nope, they had to be wearing black lingerie underneath hospital scrubs whilst grinding to his disco-leaning hit "Closer." Ne-Yo obviously has a much better health plan than I do. But the screaming throngs of host Pete Wentz's disciples were reduced to near hysterics at the show's third-most-ravenously-anticipated episode (behind Miley Cyrus and the JoBros, obvs.) that also debuted videos from a weirdly vacant-looking Pink, a terribly dapper John Legend and Cassie, whose totally inverted talent-to-enjoyable-hit ratio is one of modern pop's more interesting sidebars.

Anybody who's attended a !!! show, for instance, can attest to the joy of watching uninhibited singers invent dance moves too ridiculous and unsexy to attempt on your own. On Monday night, hotly tipped singer-songwriter-producer Janelle Monáe took the ridiculous-dancing practice a step further by maintaining the same catatonic facial expression throughout her spastic choreography, all while wearing a bouffant-cum-mohawk and a tuxedo, no less. Nevermind that she was just playing a mellow free show at Hollywood's Amoeba Records. With her dramatic refusal to break out of her dancing robot character, it may as well have been the Grammys. Or at least her show Tuesday night at the Viper Room, which drew in P. Diddy, Christina Millian and Ne-Yo, not to mention Prince, who stopped by for a chat about an hour after the show.

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

Flying Lotus: L.A.'s Burial?

Given how the last few years have been so fallow for mainstream L.A. hip-hop, plenty of post-Dilla indie stalwarts are making a run at establishing a dominant local sound of fuzzy soul samples and virtuosic cut-and-paste beats. But the producer Flying Lotus might be the best of the bunch, precisely because he's the least traditionally hip-hop of them all. First off, his June debut full-length for Warp Records, "Los Angeles," is mostly instrumental. And those instrumentals are blinding thickets of reverb, alien techno noise and heavily treated vocal snippets.

It's not enough that R&B producer-singer Ne-Yo had to perform at the taping of FNMTV's season finale with a bevy of video vixens flanking him. Nope, they had to be wearing black lingerie underneath hospital scrubs whilst grinding to his disco-leaning hit "Closer." Ne-Yo obviously has a much better health plan than I do. But the screaming throngs of host Pete Wentz's disciples were reduced to near hysterics at the show's third-most-ravenously-anticipated episode (behind Miley Cyrus and the JoBros, obvs.) that also debuted videos from a weirdly vacant-looking Pink, a terribly dapper John Legend and Cassie, whose totally inverted talent-to-enjoyable-hit ratio is one of modern pop's more interesting sidebars.

Anybody who's attended a !!! show, for instance, can attest to the joy of watching uninhibited singers invent dance moves too ridiculous and unsexy to attempt on your own. On Monday night, hotly tipped singer-songwriter-producer Janelle Monáe took the ridiculous-dancing practice a step further by maintaining the same catatonic facial expression throughout her spastic choreography, all while wearing a bouffant-cum-mohawk and a tuxedo, no less. Nevermind that she was just playing a mellow free show at Hollywood's Amoeba Records. With her dramatic refusal to break out of her dancing robot character, it may as well have been the Grammys. Or at least her show Tuesday night at the Viper Room, which drew in P. Diddy, Christina Millian and Ne-Yo, not to mention Prince, who stopped by for a chat about an hour after the show.

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

FNMTV's season finale: premieres from John Legend, Cassie and Pink; Ne-Yo slays the ladies live

It's not enough that R&B producer-singer Ne-Yo had to perform at the taping of FNMTV's season finale with a bevy of video vixens flanking him. Nope, they had to be wearing black lingerie underneath hospital scrubs whilst grinding to his disco-leaning hit "Closer." Ne-Yo obviously has a much better health plan than I do. But the screaming throngs of host Pete Wentz's disciples were reduced to near hysterics at the show's third-most-ravenously-anticipated episode (behind Miley Cyrus and the JoBros, obvs.) that also debuted videos from a weirdly vacant-looking Pink, a terribly dapper John Legend and Cassie, whose totally inverted talent-to-enjoyable-hit ratio is one of modern pop's more interesting sidebars.

Anybody who's attended a !!! show, for instance, can attest to the joy of watching uninhibited singers invent dance moves too ridiculous and unsexy to attempt on your own. On Monday night, hotly tipped singer-songwriter-producer Janelle Monáe took the ridiculous-dancing practice a step further by maintaining the same catatonic facial expression throughout her spastic choreography, all while wearing a bouffant-cum-mohawk and a tuxedo, no less. Nevermind that she was just playing a mellow free show at Hollywood's Amoeba Records. With her dramatic refusal to break out of her dancing robot character, it may as well have been the Grammys. Or at least her show Tuesday night at the Viper Room, which drew in P. Diddy, Christina Millian and Ne-Yo, not to mention Prince, who stopped by for a chat about an hour after the show.

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

Janelle Monáe is fitter, happier, more productive...

Anybody who's attended a !!! show, for instance, can attest to the joy of watching uninhibited singers invent dance moves too ridiculous and unsexy to attempt on your own. On Monday night, hotly tipped singer-songwriter-producer Janelle Monáe took the ridiculous-dancing practice a step further by maintaining the same catatonic facial expression throughout her spastic choreography, all while wearing a bouffant-cum-mohawk and a tuxedo, no less. Nevermind that she was just playing a mellow free show at Hollywood's Amoeba Records. With her dramatic refusal to break out of her dancing robot character, it may as well have been the Grammys. Or at least her show Tuesday night at the Viper Room, which drew in P. Diddy, Christina Millian and Ne-Yo, not to mention Prince, who stopped by for a chat about an hour after the show.

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

Jennifer Hudson previews her long-due debut

What can a singer do for an encore, when her debut hits it right out of the park? That's the happy problem facing Jennifer Hudson, who first found fame on "American Idol" but cemented her stardom by blowing Beyoncé away in "Dreamgirls." Hudson, who'd never acted on-screen before winning a Little Gold Man for her turn as Effie -- and, most of all, for her ferocious rendition of  "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," a song she mercilessly wrested from the arms of Jennifer Holliday -- has now cemented her movie-star status by appearing in the ultimate chick flick of all time. But is she a bankable pop queen? The question still burns.

Hudson's debut album has been nearly two years in the making, but her mentor Clive Davis must finally be happy, because it's scheduled for a Sept. 30 release. I've heard a few tracks, and can confirm that the word Hudson most often uses to describe the disc -- "variety" -- applies. The final track listing remains unsolidified; what I heard ranged from blockbuster heart-renders to chic hip-hop-flavored experiments.

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

Pretenders tease new album on Yahoo!

Anyone who thinks the hottest thing about the Pretenders circa 2008 is the video of Chrissie Hynde’s provocative yet silly duet with Dave Navarro at the Viper Room needs to do three things: Wipe off the goofy grin. Think again. Be patient.

Because come October, fans can call up a fiery performance the group turned in last week for the "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music" series highlighting several songs from the forthcoming album “Break Up the Concrete,” also due in October.

 

Hynde and original drummer Martin Chambers are now joined by guitarist James Walbourne, bassist Nick Wilkinson and steel guitarist Eric Heywood for the first new Pretenders album in six years.

 

Yes, a steel guitarist.

 

The new material has a back-to-the-roots forcefulness along with bits of country twang, from the runaway-train punked-up blues of “Boots of Chinese Plastic” to the Stones-Gram Parsons country rock of  “Love’s a Mystery.”

 

Just shy of turning 57, Hynde remains one of the Seven Wonders of the Rock World. The band, which suffered not so gladly through the Q&A portion of the Yahoo! taping -- Hynde was asked what advice she might offer Britney and Lindsay -- is making a different song from the album available as a free download each week through a rotating group of partner websites. More details at the Pretenders’ website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.

Little Joy, the touring edition

That's it. I quit. Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes just presumably named his new L.A.-based side project after the ultimate Echo Park dive bar and sleeve-tattoo Shangri-La, the Little Joy.  They have an album coming out on Rough Trade soon. They're going on tour with Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss and Entrance Band. I'm trying to make a joke about this but it's like looking directly into the sun.

-- August Brown

Little Joy photo from their MySpace.