The website has the mp3 for “Electric Eye” that you can download for the price of an email address. This simple task took me quite a while to figure out. Of course I could just give you the mp3 to download but I wouldn’t want to take all the fun out of it for you.

The website is confusing to say the least. It doesn’t seem that there’s a purpose to it at all which is probably where I’m getting confused. I expect on a band’s website to be able to click something and be taken to tour dates, the latest news or videos but not here. Every click will give you some kind of media but it’s not what you’re expecting. I saw the picture above and thought “That would be a good picture for the post. I’ll come back and get it later”. Yeah, 10 minutes later and I was still looking for it. Not that I couldn’t find my way back to where I saw it originally but because where I had clicked before didn’t produce the same picture each time. It’s as if the website is pulling random pictures from Google Images and YouTube.

I can’t tell if a lot of time went into this website or none at all.

For the curious, I did a Google search for Coldplay vs. Satan, clicked I’m Feeling Lucky, and came up with this.

Here’s the docket if you’re really that interested.

Unfortunately Joe Satriani is not Islamic and is still suing.

A friend plays for you a CD of a handsome, winsome songwriter. The name (Jack Buckley? Jeff Shuckley?) does not ring a bell. Grace, it’s called.  Obscure musician. Sure, he had a semi-famous father (“don’t belie the one who left behind his name”), but tell the truth, in 1997 had you really ever heard of “Tim Buckley?”

Tracks 1, 2, 9 and 10 really stay with you.  You listen again.  You like it more.  And again, and more.  Again, more.  You buy a copy: maybe through Amazon, but probably at your local boutique.  Can this guy write a bad song?  That voice: operatic, troubling, troublemaking.  Like a heavy storm gale, albeit beautiful, with the occasional terrible gust like beautiful hurricane winds.  Great songwriting.  Great guitar work.  Great look.  Yet simple.  It’s all so perfectly simple.

In time you realize something big: this is one of the finest LPs you’ve ever heard.  You call the friend and tell him that it’s resolved: this is his best find in 10 years.  He says, “Yes!  And to think that Grace is his last album!”

“Sorry?”

“He’s dead.  He drowned.”

As tragedies go — at least musical tragedies — you’d be hard-pressed to find one that surpasses this one. Special interest groups will throw out all sorts of names, but Buckley left us with a single studio release, ten tracks, and, literally, a few sketches for another LP. That’s it.

We all know the rest of the story.  Coldplay has risen to superstardom singing material Buckley would have been embarrassed to write.  Thom Yorke cites Buckley as a vocal influence.  Ours — and let’s call it by name, here — is a passable first-generation clone.  Jeff Buckley stands with dream brother Kurt Cobain as one of the few musicians without whom it is simply impossible to imagine modern music. Look how many times those ten cuts have been repackaged, rearranged, rediscovered, and still we buy. The suits could release these tracks one hundred more times and we would still buy.

By point of fact, his estate has just released another such LP.

It’s called Grace Around the World, and it all but recreates his studio masterpiece in the form of twelve live recordings. “So Real” appears twice. “Grace” appears twice. Otherwise the original track listing is basically intact. Go give it a spin. Or go listen to Starsailor give it a game attempt.

Barcelona’s new release Absolutes (Universal/Motown Records) is technically a re-release from 2007 through NBD Records. This might be a technicality that I have to overlook in order to get Absolutes onto my top ten list for 2009 though.

This Seattle based quartet evolved from lead singer/pianist Brian Fennell’s solo project in 2003 after the recording of Fennell’s solo release Safety Songs. Fennell quickly brought in college friends to back him up at gigs and as they say, “the rest is history”.

Comparisons to The Fray, Keane and Coldplay will be unavoidable as this band continues to grow and gain recognition with their piano driven ballads and don’t be surprised when you hear them on the next Gossip Girl or any other of the teen drama shows.

I’ll let you be the judge

Coldplay – “Viva La Vida”

Creaky Boards – “The Songs I Didn’t Write

Joe Satriani – “If I Could Fly”

Cat Stevens – “The Foreigner Suite Part II”

Do the rest of you XM Radio veterans feel invaded upon? Sirius DJs blather on and on about nothing, and their names are weird. Their stations are stuck in The Killers+Radiohead+ Coldplay groupthink, and clearly believe that playing MGMT constitutes “branching out.” Technical issues abound and, I’m sorry, Arcade Fire is not strictly a Canadian band any longer.

Anyone who didn’t expect a decline in quality and service hasn’t been reading the news. But if I hear “Spaceman” one more time I might have to pick up my ball and go home.

This is quite a gamble they’re taking and I sure hope that Martin has some kind of veto power considering he is the one that has to perform the songs and whether you like it or not he is the face of Coldplay and will receive most of the criticism.

At the moment the band is planning to release the new album by the end of the year but I wouldn’t bet my life on that considering this new turn of events.