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For The Benefit Of Evil mp3 Red Hot Rebellion
Uh yeah, what the hell was yesterday about? It wasn’t until around 10 p.m. that I realized it was only WEDNESDAY! But once I got my ears on this classic-sounding track I began to unwind a bit. See, sometimes it just takes a good guitar solo and some sass to get that WTF out of your system.
Red Hot Rebellion doesn’t have an album out yet. They’re that new. But the music is old-fashioned, garage rock. They call it “the soundtrack to a bar fight” and yeah, I think I’ve been witness to a few of those with this kind of thing playing on the jukebox. You have to frequent the right kind of bars in the right part of town, mind you.
So, that’s all I’ve got today. I’m off to see the Scissor Sisters tonight and then catch some of North Coast Music Festival this weekend! (Don’t ever accuse me of being a music snob, now!) I’ll give ya the lowdown, don’t fret. xoxo
Fisherking hails from Sydney, Australia, a place that has brought many good bands to me over the past two years. I’m not quite sure why my fellow bloggers haven’t tuned into the Aussie music scene very much. An Horse have broke through to US and UK/European audiences, thankfully, as have The Drones and a few other bands. But there are so many more that I feel you all need to hear. And Fisherking really should be welcomed for any fans of indie, blues-roots, music. They add a touch of the whimsy-era Beatles (e.g., Strawberry Fields) as well, I think simply because they can’t help it! This band is a prime representative of their generation of fresh, young, talented groups which gather up striking imagery in their lyrics and match it to stark melodic clarity. Like another favorite of mine, Decibully, their songs tell stories in the first person that apply to us all. But musically, these stories aren’t built on hooks as much as they’re structured on incredibly well-crafted songwriting, overall. Circles (coming November 5) is a lesson in surety. Fisherking know their strengths and they bring them to this record in every single song. This is a delight to listen to, over and over.
I’m struck by how these songs build to a crescendo without exploding. With harmonies wedged into small places, and sound effects rolling in and out (as in “Tidal Wave”) the tension of those opening chords is released in such tiny, pinching ways throughout the song. And the notes climb higher and higher, counter poised by that tom tom (the beat of your heart as you hear “we’re alright, we’re alright, we’re alright…”) And then the tide rolls out again so slowly and the song ends, still on that high note, but comforting nonetheless. Another, less experienced songwriter would have blown that up so big. Fisherking knows the meaning of “less is more.”
Yes, the lyrics are beautiful and emotive and will win over many fans. But these songs are not anchored to them. For a band that’s only putting out it’s second recording, (it’s first LP) Fisherking has created something that many more established groups often spend their whole careers trying to achieve: a collection of different tracks that actually don’t follow a common formula and aren’t afraid to veer off in another direction midway through, just for the fun of it. Writing music that’s tied to a standard chorus, verse, bridge format really hinders what you can do. Fisherking has shown more creativity on Circles than I can grasp with my rudimentary understanding of music, but I know it’s there! “Will I See Your Face Again” takes a long strange trip from a sweet little folk song into a more psychedelic jam, which must have been really fun to record and promises to be incredible to hear live. Sam Stephenson’s vocals lead in many directions. His clipped vowels allow guitars and keyboards plenty of room to maneuver around the words. And when the band changes the pace, or quiets itself, his tenor voice pleads with you to understand his point of view. But just as often, when things are crashing down loud, he’s convincing you of just how right he is about things. And that slightly distorted guitar, as it’s pushed up against the soft edge of his voice is, frankly, perfect.
While there are more than a few songs softly sung, with quietly plucked guitar lines, do not write this music off as some sort of mellow indie-rock. Fisherking are quite certain about the value of nuance. At the end of Circles, I cycle back and turn track one on again, “Into Chicago,” a song with a strong rhythm and a blues-jazz style, and am struck by the variance it produces (no, not contrast, but variance.) “One Golden Year” was such a farewell song, an enforced nostalgic look back, with their voices blending in a Simon and Garfunkel kind of way, which only evokes more nostalgia in us. And then with a drumroll, Fisherking moves forward again to the sounds of today, to a hopeful future and to showing us what they do best – which is write and perform incredibly well-written songs full of creative tension and talent. I can think of 20 bands I’d like to hear Fisherking play with when they tour the US. But more than that I can think of 1000 people I want to hear this album. Make it happen with me. xoxo
If you follow my insane twitter feed you saw me go apeshit over Lightning Bolt (and misspell it all day) at Pitchfork Fest last month. They seriously blew my mind with crazy, intense, good base-level noise. There are a few thousand of us women out here that respond to that kind of thing the way you guys do, I’m happy to report. It is just a complete turn on to feel that level of energy from a performer, and from the stacks, and from the crowd. Yeah, I was breathless. No, I didn’t care who noticed.
I have nothing else to say, but be at this show if you’re even the least bit curious.
LIGHTNING BOLT & DAN DEACON ENSEMBLE
THU 10/7 LEXINGTON, KY Busters SUN 10/10 CHICAGO, IL TBA
MON 10/11 TOLEDO, OH Mickey Finn’s
TUE 10/12 TORONTO, ON Great Hall
WED 10/13 MONTREAL, QC Cabaret Mile End
THU 10/14 ALBANY, NY Northern Lights
FRI 10/15 BROOKLYN, NY Ridgewood Music Hall
Polly And The Billets Doux brought out their album, Fiction, Half-Truths & Downright Lies last year (I missed it, alas) but you needent! (get it on itunes, it’s the only US distributor I could find, or Amazon has it as an import, ugh) They’re on tour for you lucky folk in the UK, so go see them. And they’re supporting on of my favorite groups, The Miserable Rich, in October in London. Jealous does not do justice to the mood I’m in just looking at that string of tour dates!
Tour Dates
19.09 Acoustica Festival, Exeter
07.10 The Luminaire, London (supporting The Miserable Rich)
08.10 Stereo, York
09.10 Night & Day Cafe, Manchester (supporting Alan Pownall)
10.10 Westgarth Social Club, Middlesbrough – FREE ENTRY
17.10 Start The Bus, Bristol – FREE ENTRY
12.11 The Living Room @ CB2, Cambridge
24.11 Caffe Piccalo, Farnham
Discovered by of Montreal, Casiokids have grown from a group banging out electro melodies on casio keyboards to include guitars and drums that makes electro-pop to make you move. You readers from the UK and Europe might have heard some of these songs already, but for this debut US release, all eight tracks have been re-mastered and are accompanied by a bonus disc of new material (including six remixes and two covers). These sixteen tracks are irresistibly catchy but also are drenched in emotive talent, and even though you won’t understand the lyrics unless you speak Norwegian, it absolutely won’t matter. At times this album is heartbreaking, and a song later you’re swinging your head to the beat, not caring who’s watching. Both moments are right, both are done so well on this record. Their label, Polyvinyl (the source of so many good things) describes their live show as, “ theatrical … incorporating a blend of shadow puppets, video projections and animal costumes… Casiokids generate the kind of unrestrained party mood that inevitably transforms any audience into a joyous, dancing mass.”
Chicago, come witness/participate in this on Wednesday at Schubas!
Look Out! mp3 Peter Case Whig! … buy it!
The great Peter Case has belted out a new record, Wig!, and Chicago, he’s bringing himself to FitzGeralds’ in the Side Bar Music Room in Berwyn, on Sept. 18. Recorded in only three days, Whig! features dirty, electric blues, really sassy lyrics, the stuff that younger artists work hard to copy. If you don’t already know who Peter Case is, get out there and do your homework. He’s one of the best songwriters of our time, hugely influential, and still going strong! Check his site for full tour details.
This girl group evokes a kind of nostalgic Phil Spector-like feel and yet I know there’s a whole lot more under the surface. What else would you expect from Frankie Rose (Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls)? I’ve never hid my love for the Jesus and Mary Chain and there’s more than a whiff of that in this track. The tour, as it’s presented so far, ends here in Chicago. And we all know that the last show on a tour is always the best.
Tour Dates
08/27 New York, NY – Cake Shop / Dance Magic Night
09/15 Brooklyn, NY – Glasslands # – RECORD RELEASE SHOW
09/20 San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop ! $
09/21 Oakland, CA – Sugar Mountian ! $
09/22 Santa Barbara, CA – Muddy Waters ! $
09/24 San Diego, CA – Tin Can Ale House !
09/25 Los Angeles, CA – The Smell ! $
09/26 Los Angeles, CA – The Echo – Part Time Punks !
10/18 Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506 *
10/19 Baltimore, MD – Ottobar *
10/20 Philadelphia, PA – Kungfu Necktie *
10/21 – 10/23 – New York, NY – CMJ
10/24 Cambridge, MA – TT The Bear’s Place *
10/26 Rochester, NY – Bug Jar *
10/27 Cleveland, OH – The Spot at Case Western * 10/28 Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle *
! = w/ Hunx and his Punx
$ = w/ Lilac
# = w/ Light Asylum, Minks and Mirror Mirror
* = w/ Woven Bones
Eagle Winged Palace wrote me, describing themselves as “a weird little folk group” and after listening to their new album, Where We’re Coming From, you might find yourself in agreement. There’s a lot of quavering vocals and shaking, sandy, shimmery beats to this. Aside from the obvious Californian, bohemian exterior there’s a real sub-surface of textured etherealness to what Eagle Winged Palace brings to this album. And that is their strength. Strumming guitars and singing a catchy melody isn’t so difficult. It’s layering that onto this other, more interesting thing that caught my ear, and just might catch yours as well.
Matthew and The Atlas comes to us from the UK with a voice you will not forget and a melody that softens that memory enough to make you not want to. He’s recorded an EP, released last April, on Mumford & Sons’ label, Communion, called To The North. I don’t know how it’s passed me by, but I aim to snatch that up very soon. The only US source I’ve found for it is itunes. Matthew & The Atlas // Deadwood by Stayloose
And last, but not least, Anberlin gives away a track off their new album, Dark is the Way, Light is a Place, which I previewed here. Go pre-order it now, it’s great! And they’re coming your way, check their site for tour dates. (Chicago, it’s Oct. 23 at the House of Blues)
Yes, I said it. It sounds like when you play a song on your music player of choice and also happen to have opened a MySpace page that autoplays at the same time. Two entirely different songs played over one another, and they go together like peanut butter and chocolate. I love it. Described as ” marrying shoegaze fuzz to krautrock dynamics” Cloudland Canyon will be releasing “Mothlight Part 2″ with a bonus B Side on Bathetic Records August 24th. Look for Fin Eaves, due out September 7.
Yeah, September 30th you’ll most likely find me at Metro to hear Gayngs. I’m more than a little fascinated by this supergroup whose album Relayted got its chops busted by the ever-snarky reviewers but enjoyed much praise from bloggers everywhere. I’ll admit, tounge-in-cheek or not, I’ll buy this act. I don’t care if it’s “real” or not, it’s good.
Eyesore mp3Women, Public Strain… pre-order here and with both LP and CD pre-orders there will be delivered with a bonus 7” featuring two exclusive non-album tracks – “Grey Skies” and “Service Animal”, not available anywhere else.
Art Rock: a genre title that gets thrown around to describe bands like Women, when in reality people are simply trying to come to grips with the fact that this is music that is to be listened to as an album, and you can’t dance to most of it. You can’t pick a track out and call it a pop single. Well, of course you could, but the project itself makes sense as a whole. Please don’t put one of these songs in a mixtape. I mean, go ahead if that’s the only way I can get you to buy the album, but you’ll be doing yourself a real disservice. Sit down with a pair of quality headphones and soak up this album, as an album. It’s a real treat.
Is it experimental? Maybe. Do parts still sound like “sunny Beach Boys pop was dragged into a dark alley and gleefully mutilated?” as Mary Christa O’Keefe wrote. Yes. And those are the interesting bits of this melange of songs. What’s less interesting is that they seem to end up being quite melodic despite themselves. God knows, we don’t need any more stoner anti-indie rock. The hipster quotient is growing as any of us in urban areas already know. Stoner, anti-hipsters are right around the corner! They seem to be infiltrating every neighborhood these days. I’m even running into their skinny jean-clad selves in Streeterville! Where are they getting that kind of money? Indie has indeed gone mainstream. But experimental music will never make that cut. And Women still have enough of the “we really don’t know what we’re doing” spirit in them to pull this off. Namely, they’re not making hit singles… yet. Whew!
With dispassionate vocals, ears attune naturally to the instrumentation in most of these eleven songs. The sounds of clanging pipes, bells, hypnotizing guitar and bass lines all seemingly belie the fact that the pop music form is central to the songwriting on this album: chorus to verse, to chorus with an extended intro and/or outro. We like that about music. It’s familiar to us and even when faced with new and unexpected sounds, the format comforts us. Women use this to good effect. Songs like “China Steps” which start out on the challenging side of most people’s listening taste, end easily in familiar, melodic territory. Others, “Locust Valley,” “Eyesore,” and “Venice Lockjaw” are just pleasant through and through. Well, if you don’t pay mind to the lyrics (which are difficult to make out anyway but seem to range from dark to depressing to inane.) The stretch from “Narrow From The Hall” to “Penal Colony” and “Bells” is a grim one. Don’t start there, remember this project has a trajectory. By far, my favorite parts of this are the first two tracks and especially the way they segue from one to the next. The swirling of strings in “Can’t You See,” as that bass line is plucked so decisively against the misty vocals is just genius. And as it fades out, it screeches gently like an abandoned playground apparatus until the mellow, clear notes of “Heat Distraction” pick up. This band is often described as being in the vein of a famous band from the late 70′s, This Heat, a band that has influenced perhaps more bands than we can trace. And, aptly titled, it is this song, “Heat Distraction,” that is most like them, with syncopated breaks and a truly disjointed feel. I like to imagine that Women are paying them homage in this. But let the comparisons end there. Let Women evolve into the indie band they will be, and let us remember This Heat for it’s incredible production standards, it’s innovation, and it’s true avant garde, experimental origins. Women have much to offer from this album in a live show, I can’t wait to hear what they do with it.
See Women on tour with Liars this fall. By the way, Liars blew me away at Pitchfork Fest last month, these two bands together is going to be a hell of a show!
Well, Bombadil’s Tarpits and Canyonlands was on my best of 2009 albums list and I honestly still listen to it for the humor of it and the sense of escape in it’s storytelling. Those songs are musically so purely the result of incredible talent AND honesty. Bombadil is a band that hasn’t got to tour much due to some health issues, so a lot of people haven’t heard them. And that’s a fucking shame for what I’ve seen on video only makes me drool. The energy of these recordings would blow me away, live. Well, I could rave about these guys for paragraphs, the instrumentation, the lyrics, the harmonies, the drama of it all and how it literally pulses with life. But I will stop and let you discover or remember for yourself. I will say, this is one of the very few albums of “my music” that my girl enjoys so much that she picks it out of the ipod and plays it herself. That’s saying something!
What I have for you today is a lost track. I’ve stayed in touch with Bombadil, I think I’ve attached myself to just about everyone on their record label, in fact, by now! And I got an email yesterday about “Barcelona,” a track that didn’t make it to the album, Tarpits and Canyonlands. They want to know what we think of it and share their own thoughts on it and why it didn’t make the cut and how it was recorded and written. I don’t know about you, but I always like hearing the behind the scenes stuff of music I love! So enjoy! xo
For The Benefit Of Evil mp3 Red Hot Rebellion
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