Just read a review in Pitchfork of garage rock outfit, Turbo Fruits, a side project of sorts from the folks of the late Be Your Own Pet.

But really, I clicked on the link because of the rather familiar album art. Surely I’m not the first person to point this out the similarities with these two covers right?

Cover to Turbo Fruits‘ new album, Echo Kid:

Cover to Blood Sweat and Tears’ 1968 album Child Is The Father To The Man:

Some time ago — way back in October — I thought the new record by The Clientele, Bonfires on the Heath was durn good, so good so that I wrote a review of it for NPR Music’s Song of the Day. I even compared the band to a Polaroid picture. Then we got distracted with end of decade coverage, end of year coverage and a mountainous heap of other work. And I forgot I had even written this.

Well it’s live now. And the song “Harvest Time” still sounds pretty good to me. Very “fall” sounding.

Take a listen and read the review here: The Clientele: Pop On A Polaroid

Over at NPR Music, I continue my reign of recent Tiny Desk Concert videos that I’ve helped put together. This week, is Lightning Dust, who put out one of my favorite albums of the year, Infinite Light. This video is infectious thanks to the wonderful harmonies of the two female singers, presumably sisters.

Take a look below, and read my little write up here on the website.

Also on NPR Music today, I contribute to the Take Five series’ Top 10 Jazz Records of 2009 list as part of our end of year coverage. Here I write about one of my favorite guitarists, Nels Cline — notably of Wilco fame — who put out a great jazz/rock/folk/minimalist album Coward.

From time to time, I like to check in on recent musical performances on the late night talk shows. Here is are a few new finds from the ol telly.

Who knew Jimmy Fallon did such a spot on impersonation of Neil Young? Who knew the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air would make such a great folk ballad? I didn’t, but I’d say this is one of the best comedy bits I’ve seen Fallon do since he debuted on Late Night earlier this year.

Late last Friday I was asked by a member of NPR’s Multimedia team to come watch a video project they were working on and find some background music to match. All I knew ahead of time was that it was to be about “driving.” As I was envisioning road trip songs I soon realized it was about driver safety and clearly folky ditties weren’t going to fit.

After watching once through, we determined that the music should be something in the realm of electronic music, percussive and repetitive to propel the narration and visuals but not be overly busy either as to detract… and definitely not acoustic instruments if we could help it. I went back to my desk, quickly scanned through my collection to compile a short playlist of songs that fit those qualities.

We wanted something like Moby, but not Moby, not that distinctive that might distract the viewer. On my list of choices was a nice mix of mellow electronic and atmospheric music: Atlas Sound, Mum, Manitoba (now Caribou), Four Tet, The Books, Brian Eno, Benjamin Biolay, Stereolab.

After playing through all of my choices, we finally settled on a version of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” performed by The Books and Jose Gonzalez from the awesome Dark Was The Night compilation from earlier this year. I quickly looped the intro a few times and then cross-faded it into the ending of the song.

You can check out the final results below:

This video is intended to be an introduction into a week-long exploratory series about driver safety. You can see the rest of the series, with more infographics, radio pieces and photo galleries here.

Once again, another Tiny Desk Concert video that I edited and produced went up this week: This time it’s Malaysian-born singer-songwriter Zee Avi.

Watch the video below.

Way back in July, I invited one of my more recent favorite groups Bowerbirds to perform at the NPR Music offices for a Tiny Desk Concert.

Many, many (MANY) months later, after getting buried in an almost insurmountable backlog and actually having the raw HDV tapes go missing for a few weeks, the video has finally gone live, produced and edited by yours truly. This is my second real foray into video editing, but I think the video looks pretty good.

Check it out below and read my short write up at NPR Music here.

Last week we at NPR Music launched a two-week long jaunt looking into the decade in music from 2000-2009. Focused primarily on Carrie Brownstein’s awesome blog Monitor Mix, we delve into all sorts of topics regarding the most important news events, recording industry and business issues, technology changes, the relevancy of labels, big overarching trends and most important recordings of the decade…oh yeah and ‘American Idol.’ Plus so much more, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Here are a few of my own personal contributions:

– Interactive Multimedia Timeline: The Decade In Music

– Song Of The Day: The Decade In Music: OutKast’s ‘So Fresh, So Clean’ (2001)

– All Songs Considered: The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings (Here I write about TV On The Radio, The Flaming Lips and Animal Collective.)

– Monitor Mix: The Decade In Music Timeline: What Did We Miss?

– All Songs Considered: Missing The Cut: More Important ’00s Music (Here I nominate Girl Talk’s uber-mashup, Night Ripper)

– A Blog Supreme: The Decade In Review: Jazz And The Mash-Up (In which I considered Norah Jones, Ornette Coleman and Floratone — among others — as helping define the decade in jazz.)

My first real foray into video editing went live today on NPR Music. A Tiny Desk Concert from this past summer with Sondre Lerche. Sure there are some issues with lighting and title sequencing, but overall I think it works quite well as a first effort.

Check out the video below or here at NPR Music:

“Shit, I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.” — Jay-Z

Seriously, has anyone done more good for the New York Yankees in recent years than Jay-Z? I guess A Rod or Jeter or Mariano perhaps, but Jay has never been shy about it.

I’m glad Jay-Z has finally gotten on board and taken a stand to express his fondness for the always under-appreciated New York City. Someone had to.

This is especially true in his performance last night at the still sparkling new (albeit cracking) Yankee Stadium for Game 2 of the World Series between the Yanks and the Phillies. Decked out in full-on Yankees gear*, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys played “Empire State Of Mind” from his recent Blueprint 3 album.

Not sure why this song is getting so much hate; I actually (ACTUALLY?!) quite like it and Alicia Keys’s chorus hooks. It’s a decent single and comes off as pretty epic within this sports context and with New York as the backdrop.

*It’s funny to see the Yankees players like Mariano, Jeter and Joba grooving to the song, but even funnier to see that cut to the Phillies player nodding along too. Maybe that’s why they lost last night.

**UPDATE 11/8: According to MTV News, it looks like the duo couldn’t “contain their enthusiasm” of New York to just one song. Alicia Keys’ new album, The Element Of Freedom, will have a sequel of sorts to “Empire State Of Mind,” creatively titled “Empire State Of Mind Part 2,” and feature a whole new verse by Jay-Z.

Check out the official video, directed by Hype Williams, below:

UPDATE 12/16: Check out Alicia Keys performing her the song “Empire State Of Mind 2″ on the Colbert Report, complete with Colbert’s brilliant shout out to the lesser-loved suburbs.