MusicBoxer.com

"Hey you there in the window. How are you?" - this guy

Did you figure out the theme to this week’s video bout yet? It’s a hard one (that’s what she said). While you are thinking about it you can listen a a whole bunch of new albums that are streaming online, for free, right now.

Here’s a rundown of what we’ve found for you.

The new M83 album is streaming at UrbanOutfitters.com (seriously).

NPR is streaming new albums from:
Bjork
My Brightest Diamond
Real Estate
Giant Squid
Body Language

Crooked Fingers new album is streaming over at Spin.

Spinner.com is streaming new albums from:
Ryan Adam
Paul simon
Ben Lee
Marketa Irglova
Andrew Bird
Peter Gabriel
Ben Folds
Johnny Cash
B-52s
Erasure
… and many, many more

That’s what we got. I’m sure there are more so if you know of any please post them in the comments.

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"I'm just happy to be here" - The guy on the right

Ben folds is putting together a career anthology. Have we talked about that? I kinda feel like we’ve talked about that. At any rate, it’s happening and the new anthology will contain a handful of new Ben Folds Five tracks. Sweet. I think we can all agree that Ben Folds quality has been in a pretty steady decline since Ben Folds Five ended so any new Ben Folds stuff is cause for optimism.

So. do you want to hear two of those new Ben Folds Five songs? sure you do. We all do. The good news is that the songs, while written awhile ago and recorded only recently, are pretty good.

Click here to listen to the new track “Tell Me What I Did” via Stereogum.

and click here to listen to “House” via NBC.

I guess there is one more “new” Ben Folds Five song that we haven’t heard yet but I’m pretty sure it will sound just like this.

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"I'm on tour" - This guy

Hey! We posted a new review! We did! This one is even a new concert review! Sweet, I know!

A couple weekends ago we (most of Music Boxer) went to see Ben Folds in Tucson. We all enjoyed the show but at the same time, we all kinda left thinking to ourselves that something just wasn’t right. But after the show Karen figured it out and wrote a concert review of Ben folds at the Rialto Theater in Tucson, AZ>

Click here to read the review.

Hopefully we’ll have more reviews for you next week but that is a long ways away so… we’ll see.

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What we have here really isn’t anything new – as we’ve come to expect well made and funny covers from Ben Folds – but I think it’s important to make the following statement: Kesha (or whatever the hell its name is) is garbage. Well, maybe not the “person” but certainly the crap (I refuse to call it music) that comes from her/it. By covering Kesha (or whatever the hell its name is) Ben Folds is only validating the existence of crap and paying tribute to it – even though I’m sure we all agree that it’s crap. I feel, for the betterment of society as a whole, that we should just ignore Kesha (or whatever the hell its name is) so it fades away quicker then the music industry already has it slated to.

That said, Ben Folds is always fun to watch and listen to so here is his version of a Kesha (or whatever the hell its name is) “song.”

OK. That’s done. Now that we’ve all watched it and laughed, let’s move on with the ignoring Kesha (or whatever the hell its name is) and patiently wait for the next piece of garbage to be force fed to us by a marketing team.

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"He's still got the brains, I've still got the looks, let's make lots of money" - These guys... and The Pet Shop Boys

Hey! Did you notice we posted a new review? I know it doesn’t look like it but we did.

In a Music Boxer first, we have posted a review of a review. You see, last week Karen wrote a negative review of the new Ben Folds album. Aaron took issue with the review as he actually enjoys the new Ben Folds album. So in response to Karen’s review, Aaron has responded with his own review of Karen’s review and review of the album.

If that doesn’t make sense then just go ahead and read Aaron’s review here and all will be explained. And for reference, you can (re)read Karen’s review here.

For the record, I’m somewhere in between these two. But this isn’t about me. It’s about you. So tell us what you think of these reviews and these albums.

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Hey! Did you notice that we (finally!) posted a new MBTV video? We did! Yeah! No, we totally did! I know!

In this video Aaron and J. Allen (me) do their best to help out all the gold diggers out there by offering up a list of songs that will help seduce nerds and/or dorks. Why? Because it’s a rough economy out there right now and the dorks and/or nerds have the money. We are looking out for you guys… that’s what Music Boxer is all about.

Check it out here.

We actually recorded this forever ago and just now got around to uploading it because… well, because of everything. Everything was more important than finishing and uploading this video. We have already filmed three others and I’m hoping it won’t take me six months to get them finished. But we’ll see.

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"He's got the brains, I've got the looks, let's make lots of money" - These guys... and The Pet Shop Boys

Hey!

Now that I have your attention, did you know that we posted a new review? We did! Since there isn’t shit coming out in the next month or so we are actually going back and taking a look at some albums that came out a while ago but we never got around to reviewing. So this week we have a review of the new Ben Folds album. Folds did the music and had his pal author Nick Hornby do up the lyrics. Sounds like it should be awesome right? Guess again.

Karen wrote up her thoughts on the album, Lonely Avenue, and you can read those thoughts here.

We’ll have some more reviews of older albums next week. In the meantime go watch all those Rancid videos because Rancid is great.

Oh… and this week we’ll also finally have another MBTV video! Yay!

Stay tuned. Shit is gonna get real.

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Hey there four-eyes!

Since it’s early (here on the West Coast) still how about we start the morning off with some cartoons? I think we all need more cartoons in our lives. Or maybe I need a little less cartoons in my life. It’s hard to tell. My DVR is full of cartoons and very little else.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s album came out a bit ago and they have released a new video for one of those songs and it’s a cartoon. Yay! Apparently the video was directed by some dude that work’s on The Simpsons. OK. How do you direct a cartoon?

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s video for “From Above:”

They should have paid the extra two cents a page for color copies.

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Ben Folds teamed up with author Nick Hornby for a new album. Folds wrote the tunes and Hornby wrote the lyrics. Weird. But at the same time kinda cool. Bits and pieces from the album have slowly leaked out but today we have an actual video.

This song, “Things You Think,” has a spoken word bit from Hornby and also features Pomplamoose and in fact this video is from Pomplamoose’s vlog (is that even a word?). So here you go, enjoy.

Eh… I’ll reserve judgement until I hear the rest of the album… but I don’t think I’m gonna rush right out and get this one. But the album, Lonely Avenue, comes out Sept. 28.

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This week’s bout idea didn’t come from Twitter. We got a lot of really good ideas from Twitter (which we will use next week) but this week the idea came from within the Music Boxer team. For the last month (and for the next month or so) the Music Boxer staff has been in transit. In the last two weeks alone staffers have been in racked up thousands of miles on planes and cars and hikes and bikes and everything else. Summer, I guess. And since we are all traveling so much, someone suggested we do a couple songs about flying (since we were in the Chicago airport at the time). Sounded like a great idea. So this week we have two songs about (very loosely) flying. I wanted to use a couple other ones but when I looked I discovered that we’d already run the ones I wanted to use.

Anywho, this week we have Goldfrapp versus Ben Folds. Whoo-hoo!

Last week’s winner, Social Distortion, has been sent to the winner’s circle.

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"I can play the violin better than you" - This guy

We’ve posted a couple of the A.V. Club’s videos of bands covering other bands because it’s a cool series that’s happening and today we have another one for you. A couple weeks ago Owen Pallett stopped by the A.V. Club’s studio and recorded a sweet-ass version of Guided by Voices’ “Game Of Pricks.”

Check it out:

Awesome.

Click here to check out the full series. I highly recommend the Ben Folds covering Elliott Smith and The Antlers covering Pink Floyd.

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