We heard from McCartney earlier this week when he performed "A Day In The Life live for the first time. Now he's offering up a song for (a minimum donation of ) to help raise money for Adopt-A-Minefield. The organization "encourages people to host dinners and collect donations to help landmine survivors and their families and allow communities to return land to productive use." The song's called "Lifelong Passion (Sail Away)," and was recorded as The Fireman, the name for McCartney's collaboration with Youth. The two released a pair of ambient, electro-based records in the '90s (Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest and Rushes). It turns out they're working on a new one and, as Paul's official site notes, this new track "gives you a taste of what is to come." We haven't heard it yet, so we have no idea what's to come, but Iamaphoney blog has/does:

It is more accessible than previous Fireman material. It has a full set of lyrics, although the vocal has more echo and is lower in the mix than most McCartney songs. It has an Indian flavor, but cleverly features a prominent harmonica.

The chorus goes:
Give me love love love love love love love
Be my lifelong passion
Sail Away Sail Away Sail Away

If you want to listen yourself, you can sign up until 6/12 to grab the track by clicking here and making the aforementioned donation.

Jasmina Maschina records as one half of the Berlin (via New Zealand and Australia) electro duo Minit. On her often lovely solo turn The Demolition Series, she's largely by herself, albeit with occasional lyrical/instrumental help from a few friends (additional guitar, melodica, piano, drums, voice), creating a hushed, electro-tinged folk that manages to contain multitudes even when sounding fragile, minimal, barely there. Minit-assisted closer, "Asleep (Minit Variation)," is the lushest track of the collection's nine, unfolding with ebbs and flows until the teeming, swirling four-minute instrumental exit. Like the rest of The Demolition Series, even at its loudest, it remains barely above a whisper.

So far Rook's standout track is "Rooks," which mixes ex-Okkervil Riverer Jonathan Meiburg's melancholic, bookish tendencies into a tight, elegant nugget. "Leviathan, Bound," which follows "Rooks" on the album, also follows in the general stylistic path as its predecessor, though it's more fragile, less robust, and lacks as strong an initial hook. Give it time, though, figure out the hunter/hunted vignette/storyline, let the strings and glock do their thing, and you'll discovered the tug.

For this week's Drop Juliana Hatfield passed along "So Alone" from her 10th solo album How To Walk Away. We're longtime fans of Hatfield's music and her blog (she has an autobiography coming out via Wiley And Sons in 2009, by the way), so we asked her a few questions and let her take the floor. We printed some of her thoughts on "So Alone" in the 'Gum Drop proper. You can listen to the track and see the excerpt here. Otherwise, we have her honest, insightful responses in full here:

So I know that some of us disagree on the awesomeness that is Robyn, but if you're into it like Scott and I and the UK charts are, the Andreas Kleerup cowritten/produced track "With Every Heartbeat" hits like a song that more songs should sound like. Which is just one (very good) reason you should grab the surname-titled debut LP of Andreas Kleerup. It came out in Sweden last week, and some of the mega-singles have been floating around a bit, but for me falling in love with a record means not sleeping and listening to it on repeat while scouring google.com for juicy bits of undiscovered ephemera that could justify a Stereogum post. Last night at 4AM it finally happened.

But first, the album. It's essentially Kleerup's mainstream sonic CV to date (not including his recent track for Cyndi Lauper or his work with the Meat Boys or his work as a 12-year-old drum prodigy). As such, the Robyn track made it, but so did plenty of previously unreleased singles, strung together like a club-ready monster mix. If albums were six songs long, the opening six of Kleerup would be as perfect a pop record as you'll find in 2008. One of those six is this collab with Lykke Li called "Until We Bleed":

For many who love Hercules & Love Affair, "Blind" was the intro track, probably because "Blind" was the album's first single and video. But the post-Arthur Russell disco cut holds an even more primary position in H&LA lore: it's the first demo Andy Butler walked into DFA's offices, and thusly is the first reason there's even a Hercules & Love Affair full length to obsess over. So fellow Butler lovers, you can now say your love is "Blind" -- and since I have you more deeply into the song and lame wordplay than you were a few minutes ago, you are well prepped to go even deeper into the "Blind" with this epic, icy, and spare eleven minute remix by Serge Santiago.

It's difficult believing Laura Marling just turned 18 this year, but it's true. Also hard to believe, the assured, sharp British folk-pop singer-songwriter's full-length debut Alas, I Cannot Swim, which came out in the UK in February, is just getting its Stateside debut this summer (its out via iTunes now, Astralwerks in August). In this week's Drop we offered "Blackberry Stone," a haunting, lo-fi UK B-side you won't find on the album proper. We also asked Marling a few questions about the track and her idea of what it takes to make a good love or falling-out-of-love song. You can read and listen here. Alas, I Cannot Swim is out now on iTunes and 8/18 via Astralwerks. (Remember, though, this song isn't on it.) If you're in the NYC area, you can catch Marling 6/16 at Glasslands in Brooklyn and 6/18 at the Mercury Lounge. This is her:

This week's Drop also offered the chance to win An Ovation acoustic guitar from Brendan James.

It's difficult believing Laura Marling just turned 18 this year, but it's true. Also hard to believe, the assured, sharp British folk-pop singer-songwriter's full-length debut Alas, I Cannot Swim, which came out in the UK in February, is just getting its Stateside debut this summer (its out via iTunes now, Astralwerks in August). In this week's Drop we offered "Blackberry Stone," a haunting, lo-fi UK B-side you won't find on the album proper. We also asked Marling a few questions about the track and her idea of what it takes to make a good love or falling-out-of-love song. You can read and listen here. Alas, I Cannot Swim is out now on iTunes and 8/18 via Astralwerks. (Remember, though, this song isn't on it.) If you're in the NYC area, you can catch Marling 6/16 at Glasslands in Brooklyn and 6/18 at the Mercury Lounge. This is her:

This week's Drop also offered the chance to win An Ovation acoustic guitar from Brendan James.

Best Band In The World alert. Thank you Sigur Rós, for making my post-holiday transition back to the internet so super great. This morning word spread that Sigur Rós's new album has a name (með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust), a translation ("with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly"), cheeky (as in ass-y) artwork, a sample track, a free MP3 (IT IS SO GOOD), and a video. A very NSFW video (IT IS ALSO SO GOOD). And there's more: Jonsi's gonna sing in English! On just one track, but still, pinning down the man's emotional conveyances via syllables with actual meaning will be a fairly new experience. There will be one tune in the journalist-coined Hopelandic language, but the rest will all be in the band's native Icelandic tongue, which makes the title of the first single and free download, "Gobbledigook," ironic in its own Rós-colored way. The band's released lots of information surrounding the release via official statement, which we've pasted in full post-jump for the benefit of fellow obsessives, but here are the details in nugget form [this is a so very Not Safe For Work jump, people]:

We're giving a "yes" stamp to Sam Wisternoff's second non-Anticonny Anticon LP, Small Vessel, a nice step up from '06's Wrong Faced Cat Feed Collapse. "Depth Perception Lack" is the sample track, which comes late album but is actually a great intro point for the record, if only for the easy weaving of myriad ideas SJ stacks into the song's three-and-change minutes. "You know something I don't know" is the somehow cheery theme, chanted as the grooves shift, the instrumentation sprawls, voices joining in and dropping. It's a mini-epic of passages, swells, and climaxes, a lot like the record it belongs to. If you like this, you'll love Small Vessel. I think you'll like this.