Listen here via Dickfork and Interscope:

A video for the track, done by the same guy who did the mental Born Free video, is due on Friday.

Update: Here’s that video…

Her new album is expected sometime this summer, and she’s heavily rumored to be joining Madonna at the Super Bowl Halftime show, in some strange dimension where that’s cool.

M.I.A.’s debut Arular had hooks, verses, choruses, bridges, singles, and hits even. Hell, almost every song on the album was fit for summer mixtapes, if not the radio. The follow-up, Kala was barely listenable by comparison, as if her success gave her the confidence she didn’t need, to question herself not often enough. Song structures disintegrated, her big lucky hit was lazily lifted from someone else, and 20 Dollar wasn’t even half as good as 10 Dollar.

We held out some hope that /\/\/\Y/\ might be a return to form- any form, mind you- and the opening intro The Message is exciting, for 59 seconds while a voice (not M.I.A.’s) raps over a dirty beat and blaring sirens:

“Headbone connects to the neckbone / Neckbone connects to the armbone / Armbone connects to the handbone / Handbone connects to the internet / Connected to the Google / Connected to the government…”

The premise is simple, and not especially creative, but it’s everything we have come to expect from M.I.A. on a good day: Sounds that are obnoxious, even maddening by themselves, assembled into endearing, danceable collages, with an anti-hip punk rock, subversive commentary that jabs culture with a sharp stick.

What follows directly is Steppin’ Up, with a beat constructed from samples of trash kits and shrill air drills that would almost work better than it should if not for M.I.A.’s lazy, forced, and painfully drawn-out rhymes. I’d love to be able to say that it’s just a direction that I’m not personally feeling, but it’s the same old M.I.A. we once dug, being a far inferior version of herself, despite the promise of the song title. There’s no spark, no inspiration; she’s just dialing it in if she’s not parodying herself.

XXXO has a bubblegum pop hook lost in a swamp of enervating repetition, and Teqkilla is basically the same, but worse, and without the hook. It’s cacophony; An artist lost up her own asshole, throwing shit against a wall and calling it expression because she was thinking about something vaguely meaningful when she threw it.

For the most part, these 16 tracks fall into one of two categories: Lazy songs, and unlistenable garbage that does not even qualify as song. Lovalot, It Takes A Muscle, Tell Me Why and (possibly) Space fit into that first category. As does lead single Born Free, which we realize is nowhere near as interesting as a song by itself, without the accompanying video. Try it. Hit play, and minimize the window. Then let us know how far you got.

The rest is absolutely worthless. M.I.A. gets credit for little more than putting her name down on the paper. In fact, the only upside to /\/\/\Y/\ is that it’s a step forward towards either a fourth album that couldn’t possibly be worse, or a worn out welcome and ultimately a has-been status, which would take M.I.A. off our radar for good.

As cool as Tom Morello is, Boots Riley just ain’t no Zack De La Rocha, you know? At least they’re actually playing the riffs, rather than just copy and pasting. And there’s a sorta creative little bridge in this version… But somehow, it lacks the punch of M.I.A.’s version, let alone anything by Morello’s most famous project, let alone Straight To Hell.

This track will be on a new Street Sweeper EP entitled Ghetto Blaster, due out August 10th. More details here.

And speaking of M.I.A., her new album /\/\/\Y/\ is now streaming in its entirety over on her shitty MySpace page.

Directed by French director Romain Gavras, the short film portrays scenes from the more unsettling and dystopian oppressive corners of our present-day human civilization, yet with a simple twist: The skin color of the oppressed has been adjusted.

The point may simply be an artistic juxtaposition. Or it may be specifically to shock us in a way that a depiction of brown-skinned people singled out as terrorists and systematically assassinated presumably could not. Hence (sorry for the spoiler) the unhappy ending. Most likely, M.I.A., being an artist, will at least, and perhaps only claim the achievement of making us think. And by posting it here, we invite further discussion.

With that said, our primary interest is music rather than armchair stoner politics, and we’d be remiss in our duties to not post the new song here, which is, of course, also up for discussion:

M.I.A.’s as-yet-untitled third album is set to arrive on June 29th.

P.S. You may recognize the film’s star from our Outside Lands 2009 Coverage.

In a recent New York Times article titled “The 31 Places to Go in 2010“, the top spot was given to Sri Lanka, with the paper praising the island nation’s “pristine coastline” and claiming it to be like “one big tropical zoo”. If by “pristine” they actually meant “corpse-covered,” and “tropical zoo” was to be taken as “cauldron of human atrocities,” they’d have been spot-on. But for Sri Lankan native M.I.A., who has seen the massive atrocities of human rights firsthand in her homeland, the promotion of the area as a vacation destination for Americans was beyond enraging.

“HERE IS THE LUSH COASTLINE THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT,” wrote the singer in one of several outraged posts on her Twitter. “FUCK NEW YORK TIMES! DO YOU THINK YOU NEED TO GO HERE ON VACATION?” she said in another Tweet, accompanied by a gruesome photo of stacked, dead children covered in mud. I’d link directly, but trust me, that’s some shit you cannot unsee. Click wisely.

The 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers technically ended in May of 2009, when the Tigers admitted defeat. M.I.A.’s father was a political activist for the Tigers, and she’s been highly vocal in voicing her disapproval of the Sri Lankan government’s conduct.

As for the Times article, Ms. Arulpragasam makes a very strong point: Just two days after running an article with the headline “Video of Sri Lankan Executions Appears Authentic, U.N. Says” on their news blog The Lede, The New York Times Travel section published “The 31 Places to Go in 2010” with Si Lanka at the top. Evidently North Korea and Afghanistan didn’t grease the right palms this year.

As for the music side, M.I.A. is hard at work and aiming high on her new album, which finds the musician digging deeper for honesty than ever before. “The last album, I didn’t actually sit anywhere long enough for it to really be in my life and to really think about it,” she recently told Rolling Stone. “Now I’m putting out my next album, and the world has changed. I came up talking shit about Bush, and it’s great that it’s changed, but I don’t know how much it’s changed, and I’m exploring that.”

“I just want to be real, whatever that is,” she adds. “Even if my songs are shit, and if I have flaws and if I’m confused, if I offend people or if I don’t offend people, I might try to work it out in public, just so you know that it’s OK to think, that thinking’s not a dirty word.”

Cage The Elephant took to the Twin Peaks stage yesterday afternoon with a determination to up the energy ante early in the day, and by most accounts they succeeded. Live-wire frontman Matt Shultz was an epileptic spectacle, throwing his body all over the stage between several bouts of stage diving and randomly grabbing fans by the face. For the band’s finale, Shutlz jumped into the crowd a final time, standing on a fan’s shoulders before dropping down in the middle of the crowd to sing the final chorus amongst his newly devoted followers.

Providing a Hip-Hop flair for Day Three was Atmosphere, who recruited the soon-to-be-legend Brother Ali as hype man for a set that spanned the act’s considerable catalogue. Anyone familiar with Ali knows that the man spits inimitable flow, and once the world hears his new album, Us (out Sept. 22), people will be outright amazed that the legally blind albino MC takes a supporting role to any rapper. It’s far and away the most brilliantly-narrated work to be released this year, and comparisons to Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 aren’t even fair – to Jay-Z (yes, it’s that good). But supporting kinship is just how the Rhymesayers family rolls, and I’ve got a feeling Ali will be helping out his Minnesota brethren no matter how hot his name gets. But I digress.

Sean Daley, aka Slug of Atmosphere, spat his heart out to provide some of the day’s only Hip-Hop in lieu of the Beastie Boys’ cancelled headline slot. Interestingly enough, he was curiously overshadowed by the crowd’s apeshit response to Notorious B.I.G.’s Where Brooklyn At, which filled the speakers as New Yorker duo Matt & Kim took over the Panhandle Stage for a bizarrely awesome set of indie-spazz gems.

As Matt reveled in the enthusiasm & fired off one-liners to the receptive crowd (“So, we decided not to buy health insurance this month so we could get a t-shirt gun”), Kim did the booty dance on a few numbers before offering a little advice to the ornamentally challenged: “I gotta tell you something very important. There are only two times to take your hoochie hoops off. When you’re gonna fight and when you’re gonna play drums, so that you don’t get the sticks in there,” referring to her large hoop earrings.

After a shit-eating-grin version of Freebird, the duo wound their set down with an instrumental remix of Final Countdown before dancing off the stage to an Outkast song.

Indie monsters Modest Mouse suffered from the unfortunate occasion of being billed at roughly the same time as The Dead Weather, who drew an electric buzz of anticipation among the thousands huddled in the Twin Peaks pit a full thirty minutes before their set. The previous days’ warmth was replaced by a chill descending from the bay, leaving the masses clinging to each other to keep the shivers away – that is, until the Nashville quartet took to their instruments.

Before The Dead Weather played so much as a note, the crowd’s enthusiasm was at near-hysteria levels. Tracks like 60 Feet Tall and Cut Like A Buffalo were soaked in gasoline, with Mosshart’s jagged, aggressively confrontational presence juxtaposing Jack White’s beat-bursts to create the spark that made each song ignite. The tremors and warmth-huddling was traded for leaps and body rock from the crowd, who weren’t fooled by the suggestion that, just because White’s behind the drum kit, we’re supposed to believe he’s not the driving force behind this band. Mosshart, Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita are remarkable in their own right, but White’s stage presence is, well, 60 feet tall, especially when he steps from behind the kit, straps on an electric and tears off an absolutely ripping dirty-Delta blues solo.

The sexual tension between White and Mosshart, whether feigned or authentic, is immensely palpable; sharing a mic, the two wailed in unison while staring into each other’s eyes, leading many to wonder what the hell’s going on between the two. If it’s a device to add flare to the show, it certainly works. With an explosive sexual chemistry, they’d be fools not to play it up.

After a very strange-looking prep dancer (we’ll call him Ginger Smurf), M.I.A. arrived in a hideous shiny jaguar print dress and proceeded to fail hard at getting the same energy going at a massive festival that she’s so good at doing in an intimate club setting. Barking her lyrics over deafening bass while male dancers gyrated ridiculously, the crowd didn’t seem to take to her at all and began thinning out early in her performance. They weren’t relocating to wait for Tenacious D’s festival-closing set, either; a good percentage of the people were simply tired of the cold, tired of M.I.A. and really not looking forward to a billing choice that still has this humble reviewer scratching his head. Who the hell thought Tenacious D would be a good replacement for the Beastie Boys?

The D opened with Kielbasa, giving a shout-out to the Beastie Boys and… you know what? I can’t do this. Tenacious D are a novelty act that’s lasted about a decade past their expiration date, and they shouldn’t have closed the festival under any circumstance; it’s not as if the Beastie Boys’ cancellation was last-minute. This is the equivalent of going to a fireworks show on the 4th of July, only to have the grand finale actually be some morbidly-obese mouth-breather walking up and throwing a wet hot dog at you. That’s it and that’s all, folks. Outside Lands 2009 was a triumph, and we’ll try not to hang on to the final impression. Check out our fantastic pictures instead, and we’ll see you next year.

Antiquiet’s complete coverage of Outside Lands can be found here. All of our pictures from the festival can be found on our Facebook Page.

All Photos: Alicia Roldán & Rick Pickett for Antiquiet

Blank’s debut full length proper studio album dropped this week, entitled I Love You (with a very Tank Girl album cover, if I may say). She bills herself as a rapper, but this album fits more appropriately in the techno / dance category, having more in common with Peaches or Le Tigre than M.I.A., who gets name-dropped on Lemme Get Some.

Opening cut Make It Take It is easily the best track on the album- it’s a bit repetitive, but that comes with the territory, and it’s a highly contagious dance floor dirty bomb.

Unfortunately, Shame On Me may be the only other outstanding track. It’s a truly unique blend of garage dance, R&B and pop, reminding me of another Philly native and personal favorite, Res (especially in that chorus!), with some Ladytron genes spliced in.

However, while Make It Take It and Shame On Me are both worth picking up on iTunes, the rest of the album is a disappointment.

She gets no points for lead single Might Like You Better, which is little more than an uninspired rip-off of Romeo Void’s Never Say Never, an ancient, Philadelphia all-ages dance club staple.

For the most part, Blank’s attempts at being the rapper she seems to want to be consistently fall short of impressive. Her rapid-fire delivery is energetic, but the rhymes are weak and painfully white, and there’s no soul in the flow; it’s pure copycatting. It almost works when she scales the ambition back and goes old school, as on Big Heavy. But that comes with played out hooks and ultimately just makes you want to dig out some Luscious Jackson albums.

First conceived at a packed party in São Paulo, Brazil, the fantasy collabo-record is a brilliant tapestry of diverse flavors and clashing styles that somehow hit a perfect harmonic pitch unlike anything before it. A dazzling assortment of high-profile artists, from M.I.A. to David Byrne, from Chuck D to Tom Waits with a dash of Kanye, The Spirit Of Apollo is a beat-centric party album that transcends genre and style in the most danceable of ways.

The goal now is to turn the N.A.S.A. live show into a high-octane multimedia extravaganza, with the help of some friends in the heart of the art world. Some have already lent their visual talents resulting in some badass animated music videos for several of the album’s tracks. Check out their latest visual spectacle, for Whatchadoin – featuring Santigold, M.I.A., Yeah Yeah Yeah’s guitarist Nick Zinner and Spank Rock.

A full-length documentary was recently completed that includes interviews with many of the artists who contributed to The Spirit Of Apollo, as well as behind-the-scenes footage from the studio sessions. We tracked down Sam Spiegel to find out a little more on the project, as well as what’s next for the most ambitious duo in music today.

Antiquiet: First off, what the hell is it about the scene in Brazil that makes people not want to come back? Is it really that incredible?

Sam Spiegel: Brazil is an incredibly rhythmic place. I think it’s the epicenter of rhythm in the world. Everything there is on beat. The way people talk, they walk on beat, the sounds in the street. I really is one of the more musical places in the world. Also, people there are just really really fun loving and warm and open minded..

Antiquiet: Correct me if I’m wrong: the track with Karen O, Fatlip & Ol’ Dirty Bastard was the first song for the record- did that define the album for you, as a touchstone for where to go next?

Sam Spiegel: Strange Enough really gave us a direction for the record. It was such a crazy collision of genres, so unexpected but somehow perfect, that it made us realize that we should make a record about bringing people together from different worlds through music. Just as myself and Zegon came together trhough music, we wanted to make a record that explored that theme on every song.

Antiquiet: Dirt recorded his parts right before he died. He never actually made it to the studio though did he? What happened?

Sam Spiegel: In true Dirt style, he flaked on the studio, then he flaked the next day, but he sent us vocals that he recorded at home. I asked him to make some changes, and he surprised me by actually doing them. I feel lucky to have been blessed with some of his best vocals and some of his last.

Antiquiet: There’s such a wide range of music – do you ever stop and say ‘Jesus, how the hell did we just get from Strange Enough to Gifted?’

Sam Spiegel: Ha… not really… Our taste is so eclectic, it just made sense for us to make a record that spanned the musical spectrum.

Antiquiet: How did you manage to avoid any distinct timestamps? There’s not much that places any song on the album in a specific sonic trend. Lyrically, I imagine that was more difficult.

Sam Spiegel: We were very cognizant of that. We wanted to make a record that felt timeless. We did this by avoiding being trendy with whatever was happening at that moment in time, but rather staying true to ourselves. We also tried to avoid any lyrical timestamps. I remember David Byrne wrote a lyric with Cheney and Bush referenced in it, and I asked him to change it as to avoid just that.

Antiquiet: Did you give the vocalists a general concept of what each track would be about, or did you have a hand in the lyrical designs?

Sam Spiegel: It was always different, sometimes we wrote a chorus, sometimes we just gave them a topic or concept, and sometimes we just let them do their thing.

Antiquiet: Can you describe recording with Tom Waits in a log cabin in the Bay area?

Sam Spiegel: It was so fun. He’s a great dude! I really liked talking to him and his wife and kid…

Antiquiet: Was there any rhyme or reason to your process of selecting artists & animators to work together?

Sam Spiegel: Sometimes, artists just fit with certain songs. For instance, I was trying to find an artist for the song Money (The Root Of All Evil), and I opened up Shepard fairey’s magazine Swindle, and the centerfold was a big dollar bill exploring the evil side of capitolism. It just made sense.

Antiquiet: When will we see the full documentary? What’s in store?

Sam Spiegel: The Doc should come out at the beginning of 2010. It’s half live footage of shows/in the studio with everyone on the record, digging records in Brazil, hanging with Sizzla at his rasta compound in Kingston/etc. and half animation.

Antiquiet: What brought you to Anti Records?

Sam Spiegel: They are an artist run label that is very ectlectic and does cool records with some juice behind them, but also completely indie…

Antiquiet: Any tracks not make the record? What will become of them?

Sam Spiegel: We’ve got a bunch that didn’t, with De La soul, another with Lovefoxxx and Del and Tippa Irie, another with Cee-Lo… we’ll finish them and get them out soon enough..

Antiquiet: We hear you’re putting some special things together for the El Rey show in Los Angeles (Aug. 12th)… any hints you can drop?

Sam Spiegel: No hints. But be prepared for a cosmic voyage.

OK, technically this wasn’t a ‘best of ‘08′ list, but Rolling Stone published a list of ‘the 100 greatest singers of all time’ as voted on by a “blue-ribbon panel of 179″ musicians. Missing from the list: Mike Patton, Ann Wilson, Layne Staley. Total bullshit, and Phil Anselmo agrees with us. Now, if the list was otherwise filled with vocalists superior to these icons, we could understand. But many vocalists of far inferior capabilities made it on; including Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and Bruce Springsteen. Christina Aguilera made #58- way ahead of Mariah Carey.

Rolling Stone also published their list of the best singles of 2008- 100 of them- and named Beyoncé’s Single Ladies #1. The song’s only been out for two months, and it sucks. I’m not just saying that because it’s a pop song. Let’s face it- in America, two singles dominated 2008 above any others- Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl, and Britney Spears’ Womanizer. If you ask us, Womanizer is far less annoying- and a far superior composition. And the sooner Katy Perry’s inevitable disappearance from the charts comes, the better. But either would have been acceptable at the top of a 2008 singles list. And with Beyoncé at the top instead, Rolling Stone can’t defend on grounds that the list was based on quality rather than dominance or popularity.

Some of the songs that made the list: Google Me by Teyana Taylor (I did, you suck), Candy Shop by Madonna (but Four Minutes didn’t make it?) M.I.A.’s Shells (but not Paper Planes), Cobrastyle by Robyn (huh?), Video Girl by the Jonas Brothers (but not Burnin’ Up or Love Bug), Warwick Avenue by Duffy (but not her only almost non-shitty song, Mercy), a ton of songs noone’s ever heard of, and a few songs that might be almost arguable. What the fuck are they smoking at Rolling Stone?

By the way, Womanizer didn’t make the list at all. I don’t care what you think about Britney, If you’re going to put together a list of the biggest or best 100 singles of 2008 and skip Womanizer, you’re either high, or you’re a hipster with your head up your own ass. Rolling Stone put Britney on two magazine covers this year, so I can’t imagine they’re taking a stand against the mainstream.

Speaking of Hipsters, Pitchfork called Fleet Foxes’ Sun Giant the best album of 2008. Issue #1- it’s not even an album. It’s a five song EP. But OK, I get it. Hipsters will be hipsters and call some faggy folk band’s four track demos the best of the year while simultaneously recognizing Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter III as #11 (because the top #10 needs to be irony-free of course). Their list was so predictable, NME punked it.

On the other side of that fence, Entertainment Weekly agreed with Rolling Stone that TV On The Radio’s Dear Science was the best album of the year. I’d say it’s overrated, but this late yelp of hype isn’t really being echoed by any masses. By the way, Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce was EW’s #2. Yeah.

Portishead’s disappointing Third made several best-of lists, for the sole reason that they’re Portishead. Meanwhile, anyone that gave a nod to Vampire Weekend is just believing the hype, because that’s all there is to that band.

As I said, we’re going to start making our calls for the best albums of the year beginning the day after Christmas. But I guarantee you that TV On The Radio, Vampire Weekend, and fucking Beyoncé will be nowhere near our list. Stay tuned.