A Bipedal Christmas

The best way to retain readership is to post sporadically and with little fanfare, right?

Anyway, Christmas has thrust itself upon us. Instead of whining about over-commercialism and the pressure to get the perfect gift, I'm just going to share these tunes. CHRISTMAS tunes! Ones that aren't awful! Maybe between now and the 25th I'll share some more, but I'll wait until they pry my trampled body off a Wal-Mart floor before I make any promises.


Viva Voce - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Ridiculous and guitar-heavy, the chunky riffs and squeely feedback play against the jingly bells and Anita Robinson's heavenly vocals. It works (for me, anyway) and this traditional ballad is turned into a two-minute rock nugget. Find it on Tooth & Nail's Happy Christmas Vol. 2, released in 1999.






Suffering & the Hideous Thieves - Silent Night
This version is hypnotic and looong (how many verses are there to this song?). But, like most Hideous Thieves songs, you the listener are taken on a journey and, if you were paying attention, you'll emerge from the fade-out a slightly different person. This appears on Lujo Records' very excellent 2004 All I Want For Christmas compilation.




Starflyer 59 - A Holiday Song (Happy Holidays)
It's interesting when a band releases a Christmas song in the middle of a non-Christmas album (1998's The Fashion Focus, released in early October, no less). This one certainly sticks out, but it's so good it doesn't even matter. Hearkening back to Christmas pop of the 1960s, the tempo is upbeat while the lyrics are about sad goodbyes. It's vintage without being old and familiar without being a complete rip off.



Grandaddy - Alan Parsons In A Winter Wonderland
"In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend he is Alan Parsons..."
This song was released as a non-album promo single back in 2000, but I seem to recall hearing it before then for some reason. The easiest way to attain this song on a compact disc is to acquire the It's a Cool, Cool Christmas compilation, and the best way to appreciate this song to its fullest extent is to listen to an Alan Parsons Greatest Hits cassette.


Rosie Thomas - Christmas Don't Be Late
A new Rosie Thomas album! And it's full of Christmas songs! You can listen to all of the other tracks from A Very Rosie Christmas over at Virb.com, but this one here might be my favorite. Somehow she takes this giddy chipmunk song and turns it into a bittersweet Christmas epic.

MMFRR#12 -- Three Star Seed

Often, in lieu of actual people wanting to be my Myspace friends, I get piles of friend requests from bands and musicians attempting to get me to check 'em out/attend their shows/join their street teams. Naturally a great bulk of these bands are awful and I want nothing to do with them, yet the requests keep coming. As a mild form of revenge I have decided to review these bands. Welcome to another therapeutic entry of what I like to call Myspace Music Friends Request Review.

It's been awhile since we've done one of these things, so let's do one of these things.

A lot of good music comes from Canada.
A lot of baad music comes from Canada.
Which is Toronto's Three Star Seed?

I'm going to do you a favor and save your ears. You are going to be able to tell what kind of music 3SS plays without even listening to any of their songs. How? Just take a quick glance at this promo shot.

(I hope SOMEBODY is wearing pants.)
(Also, who is the lead singer? You have exactly one guess.)

Man, can't you just hear the distortion and the ANNGGST and the catchy riffs? And the scratchy vocals? Check, check, check, and check. Do they call their biceps "guns"? I'll get back to you on that.

Okay, obviously I'm not a fan of alterna-nu-metal-doucherock. There is just so much of it, and Canada appears to be the leading supplier (Nickelback, Finger Eleven, Theory of a Deadman, Three Days Grace, and now... this). I'm sick of the constipated vocals. I'm sick of the one-dimensional music. I'm sick of the meatheads who listen to this crap. I'm sure Grunge is sorry it spawned such tripe.

As for the band itself...

Venture into 3SS's hyper-cluttered myspace site if you dare. It bogs my computer down terribly, so enter at your own risk. They don't have a real website, which is lame, but maybe they were too busy ROCKING OUT to purchase a domain and hire a site designer. Know how I know they are often too busy ROCKING OUT to do anything else productive? Check out those photos. All the alternative rock douchebaggery you can handle.

(Editor's Note: Sal Coz from the band just sent me a terribly nice email full of positive feedback. Now "I" feel like the douchebag. I'm probably just jealous because I'm not hanging out with Deep Purple. Ignore all those personal attacks I just made.)

Next item up for bid: the music.
3SS has four streaming demos up for a courtesy listen. The first one is called "Caroline", and it pisses Neil Diamond off quite badly. "Sweet Caroline, she's all mine." ...Followed by the sound of me shooting myself in the face.
Second is a little ditty called "Who", and honestly it's not bad. Not awful. It sounds like... you know when a screamy band includes one odd clear-voiced song near the end of a CD? It starts off sounding like one of those before wandering off into nu metal territory. It's got a bit of a groove to it and the basswork is alright, so if you must listen to a 3SS song then listen to this one.
RE: "Run With Me" -- Jonathan Davis called. He wants his beatbox back.
And finally, the fourth track, "Little Boy", sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack to a failed Tony Hawk video game.

I hope the band doesn't read this and start yelling at me (Editor's Note: Thank you for not yelling at me... I'm actually quite fragile) 'cause then I'd have to argue, and really I want to be done with this music forever. Three Star Seed is better (believe it or not) than most of the other nu metal bands around (including all the ones I mentioned above), but if this is as good as it gets then I pray for ear leprosy.

I give Three Star Seeds three star seeds out of ten.

(Editor's Note regarding Editor Notes: I'm my own editor, there are no others, so I'm really just talking to myself here. Thank you for tolerating my schizophrenia.)

1955

The most frustrating part about listening to music decades older than myself is knowing I'm missing out on the song's original context. Even though the guitars and voices I hear through my computer speakers are the same ones that crackled through AM radio fifty years ago, my interpretation and reaction is, by default, going to be different than that of those who hear the same thing when the song was originally released. Our environments are different and our perceptions of music are different. Quite simply, I can't unhear the years of rock and roll fuzz and unexperience the years of modern technological advancement that now filter the way I hear music, and Joe Nineteen-Fifty-Five couldn't even begin to imagine what a Led Zeppelin was, or that his children would eventually have access to a universe of music at the touch/click of a button.

But despite this, I try. I try to go back to simpler times. Before sampled beats. Before heavy distortion. Before FM. Before the Beatles. When it was all quite innocent, when even the rebellion was all in good fun.

Hop into your Delorean, we're going back to 1955.


Chuck Berry - Maybellene
This track flies -- dig, man, dig-- and was quite ahead of its time. Music back then just didn't rock like this. There's no country twang, no big band orchestration, no crooning, and though this song has a blues foundation Chuck Berry, instead of wallowing in it, sets everything on fire. That guitar solo must've driven the fogeys crazy. And OF COURSE this song is about cars and girls. "Maybellene" turned out to be Berry's first big hit and more or less ushered in the rock 'n' roll era. The kids, both black and white, loved it. Berry followed up with more hits. Music got aggressive. Rockabilly grew from a fetus to a musical movement, perpetuated by Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, among many others. Somewhere along this chain of events that extends to this very day your favorite band exists on a rung that links way back to that duck-walkin' man and his ditty about drag-racing hotties.

Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues
Cash is so many things to so many people -- country singer, gospel singer, hero to the common man-- but the line about shooting a man just to watch him die? That's straight up GANGSTA. Lyrically this song goes all over the place. He dwells on what's outside the prison walls, recalls his mama's unheeded words of wisdom, dwells on an after-prison life, wonders extensively about what the people inside a passing train are doing, and, of course, laments his evil deed. Musically "Folsom Prison Blues" is easy on the ears. The rhythm shuffles along and the bass is cool and plucky. Cash's guitar kicks back, steps up when it needs to, then hangs back again. There's no urgency to the sound, no focus to the lyrics, and really if you're doing time in prison you've got time (nothing but time) to amble and ramble.

Eddy Arnold - Cattle Call
Every time I listen to this song I try to recall what John Ford film I heard it in. None of them, of course, but this could very well have appeared on the soundtrack to "My Darling Clementine". In the Dvorak-ish introduction to the song I can see the low sun spill across the western plains, casting shadows across the face of the upright cattle man, equal parts good-ol'-boy and frontier cowboy. And screw the Swiss Miss, old school country singers are by far the best yodelers, and Eddy Arnold's golden voice could quell even the most aggressive Indian raids. Despite the abundant countryness of this song, Arnold's use of "pop" orchestration led many in the country music community to cry "sell out". Music snobs existed even back then. And though I am usually a fan of stripped down music, the strings and brass and xylophone add a nostalgic and cinematic element to the tune that makes it inseparable from the classic and wholly appealing old west imagery.

Wanda Jackson - Tears At the Grand Ole Opry
Before Wanda Jackson became a rockabilly hellcat she was a straight up twangy country singer. While with Decca Records in the min-50s she released a series of country ballads that were certainly charming but definitely not edgy. Later, after hanging out with Elvis for a while, her music evolved into something very aggressive and she became one of music's first female rock stars. But back in 1955 she was playing the role of country music chanteuse, crooning traditional-esque waltzes about heartbreak and such. Though Jackson was only 17 when this song was released she already sounds quite accomplished and seems to understand (and thus able to effectively channel) the heart and soul of the genre.

Porter Wagoner - Satisfied Mind
"Satisfied Mind" sounds like a cautionary tale as told by your grandpa... that is, if your grandpa spoke in sweet gentle harmonies and carried a pompadour atop his head. Money can't buy happiness, the song goes, though I don't know if Wagoner continued to perform this song after becoming rich and successful. He probably did as this was one of his most popular songs, reaching #1 on the country charts in 1955. The tempo and melody and Wagoner's own mournful voice makes this song sound a lot sadder than it is, but maybe there's nothing more sad than seeking shallow happiness through earthly wealth rather than, y'know, finding fulfilling happiness through good deeds and being nice and stuff. There's also a Bible lesson in here somewhere. Camels and needle eyes, etc. Anyway, Wagoner passed away exactly one year ago today, hopefully with a satisfied mind.

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto: Elton John

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto
Take a band. Take its album cover highlights. Take its album cover lowlights.
Swish it all around in your mouth. Comment.


Elton John

This is the cover to Elton John's first official live release, titled 17-11-70 (when it was released stateside it was renamed 11-17-70). I'm a fan of sparseness and monochrome coloring where just enough detail exists to outline some sort of context. If you were shown this image without the title you'd be able to discern a figure hunched over, possibly (or possibly not) doing something (or nothing). But tack on the words and you know it's Ol' Reg bangin' away on the keys. And though John and his stage persona were often flamboyantly over-the-top, this cover is pleasantly low-key, yet it doesn't ignore the electricity of his live shows.


Good song. Great album (double disc!). Awful cover. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, released in 1973, is Elton John's best-selling studio album and features such classics as "Candle in the Wind," "Benny and the Jets", "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting," and the title track. It also features the image of Elton John in a purple bowling shirt and faaaabulous red platform shoes stepping into a tattered Oz-as-English-countryside picture. Ian Beck is a reputable children's illustrator, and it's too bad that he's mostly known for this cover. It IS imaginitive, yes, but it's also cheese-a-riffic. I don't even know what to make of the tiny wind-up baby grand. However, I do wish I owned this album so I could see what other inane imagery exists on the rear and inside flaps.


This is Caribou, released eight months after Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in 1974. I've got JC Penney portraits that look exactly like this.

The Letter S

In this series I spotlight five bands and/or artists whose names begin with the same letter. I try to feature active (or recently active... it's hard to keep current with all the break-ups) performers so as to reflect who I'm listening to and enjoying at the moment.

Sally Shapiro
File under "guilty pleasure" because Swedish Italo-disco revival is a pretty dweeby musical genre. Audibly there isn't much to the music of Sally Shapiro, though everything about it is pleasant to the ear. The beats are firm but cool, the voice is detached yet soothing, and you could either dance or sleep to every song. But who is Sally Shapiro? NOBODY KNOWS. It's really just the moniker for the guy-girl duo. The dude who creates all the nice electro noises is named Johan. The chick who sings may or may not actually be named Sally, won't ever perform live, and rarely has her picture taken. Some have even questioned if she actually exists. Sally Shapiro is the yeti of Euro-club music.
There are dozens of remixes for "I'll Be By Your Side" floating around the internet. They're all good, but I really like this one by DJ Aven (free and easy from the official Sally Shapiro website).
I'll Be By Your Side (DJ Aven Remix)
Jackie Junior (Junior Boys Remix)
Hold Me So Tight


Shearwater
I know two things about Shearwater:
1) Shearwater features at least one member (used to be two) from Okkervil River, a band that is awesome.
2) This is a band that is awesome.
And really that's all you need to know. You could even skate by only knowing Shearwater fact #2. Musically they're pretty low-key, yet are capable of some good quality jubilant rockout. Epic, but in no way pretentious. They're actually comparable to The National in these ways and others, so if you like The National you'll like this (and vice versa).
Since I honestly don't know much else about the band I can only recommend songs. Here you go. Eat up.
The World in 1984
Red Sea, Black Sea (via Insound.com)
Rooks (via Insound.com)


St. Vincent
Another dude-with-a-moniker performers, but NOT just another dude-with-a-moniker performer. St. Vincent is Annie Clark, a New York-based singer/songwriter/instrumentalist born in Oklahoma. In fact, both she and I are the same age and from the same state. That's where our similarities end, however, as she is musically very talented and I am musically very talentless. She's recently made her rounds in the indie scene by touring with Sufjan Stevens (like, as a part of his band) and guitar-playing with the Polyphonic Spree. To date she has only one full length album and one EP (well... two EPs if you count the one she self-released in college). I like her because she's like an American-in-the-2000s version of Kate Bush. Her songs are sharp and almost at odds with her angelic voice. Also if you're interested in amusing little penned-by-Annie Clark snippets, she's got, like, two or three blogs floating around.
Now Now
These Days (cover song)
Jesus Saves, I Spend




Starflyer 59
It seems like Starflyer has been around forever, and it's difficult to remember what the world was like before they began releasing albums (and it's difficult to imagine a world existing after Starflyer ceases to be). Of course I'm being dramatic, but for fifteen years this band has been producing some of the best music in the world. Being dramatic again? Skip the rest of these words and listen to the tunes yourself.
The music itself is remarkably consistent. That is, you could probably identify a Starflyer song just by listening to it. The guitars are dense and shoegazey, the drumming is tick-tocky, and Jason Martin sings like he just woke up. Despite this, many of their songs are insanely catchy. Their earlier material is gloomier and maybe even a bit primitive when compared to the band's latter-day work, but it's no less awesome and really quite groundbreaking when you consider it was released to a Christian market.
Jason Martin is the genius behind the guitar fuzz, and it really is astounding how prolific the guy is. Apart from the dozens of releases full of outstanding music, he's also contributed to a handful of side projects, including Bon Voyage, which he duoed with his wife (and holy crap, they've got a new album out, the first new one in years... it's a blast from my high school past!), and that Neon Horse nonsense.
Anyway...
Download "Wake Up Early" from Purevolume, then stream the other five songs.
Good Sons (via Insound.com)
Play the C Chord


Suffering & the Hideous Thieves
S&tHT is one of the few bands that are capable of being lyrically provocative and instrumentally moving... all within the same song. Indeed, this band has performed some of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard, yet I fully realize these guys aren't for everybody.
If that name and voice sounds familiar that's because you're vaguely recalling Jeff Suffering from the spazz-punk band 90lb Wuss. Initially just a straight up punk band, they matured and explored new ground with each release, and perhaps The Hideous Thieves are the culmination of that. Sounding like a band of disgruntled rock and roll gypsies, The Thieves brilliantly back Suffering's warbly voice as he chronicles the best and worst (usually the worst) of human nature. Lyrics explore the farthest and darkest recesses of man's emotions and motivations, and more often than not the songs are completely depressing. Yet there still remain glimmers of positivity and glory, songs about hope and rebirth. Listening to Suffering & the Hideous Thieves is almost exhausting, but the investment is certainly worth it.
Go to Purevolume and download "I Am Tomorrow" and "The Collector"
Lujo Records has a handful of downloadables. ISound.com has a couple more (at a higher bit rate). Of those I recommend... ALL of them, but especially:
St. Elizabeth
The Other Side of the Moon
[Note: the song "Twice in Water Color" is actually sung by The Hush Hush, with whom S&tHT did a split]
Also listen to:
Return

See You (Not) In September

It looks like I missed the entire month of September. One reason is that I was on another continent for over half the month. A second reason involves high doses of work (as in, being at). There may be a third or fourth reason, but those two are the biggies.

So I really have been absent.

But now I'm back to let you know I can really shake 'em down.

At least until things get manic again during the holiday season.

Stay tuned.

in the world of better blogs

I now contribute to yet another blog.

"SONGS K"

Check it.
Lots of good music to be listened upon.

So I'll continue to maintain this little thing in periodic bursts, and every whenever-I-feel-like-it I'll drop a post over there.

Deal?
Deal.

Google Custom Search

You may have noticed the Google Custom Search thing on the right. You may have wondered if it was different than any other kind of search, Google or otherwise. Here's the scoop:

If you're anything like me you'll be reading an article and come across something that you want to know more about, either to fact check or for mere curiosity's sake. Let's say you're halfway through one of my posts and suddenly you want to look up information for, I don't know, Neil Diamond. Pop 'er in the custom search and it'll open up a new window (so you won't lose your place in the original post) full of legit search results. "Neil Diamond" yields results from Last.fm and Wikipedia (not to mention NeilDiamond.com) and all those good relevant sites.

But say you want information on The Turtles. Holy cow, there must be a zillion different turtles populating the internet! Put them in the search anyway. POW... Wikipedia, ClassicBands.com, "Happy Together" on Youtube, etc. The search has been tweaked to yield music-pertinent results.

Smooth, eh?

Play around with it, use it as a research tool, do whatever.

1999

Are we partying like it's 1999? Well, no, mostly because 1999's party music was pretty awful. Despite this, many of my favorite songs came out in 1999. I believe this is because I started college in 2000 and instead of being sociable with the other people who lived in my dorm building I locked the door and listened to music all day. I'm perpetually a year behind the trends, and in 2000 I filled up on music from 1999.

You'll notice that these artists and bands are all popular within Christian coolkid circles. This really was the best time for Christian indie and hardcore and folk and all that, and nothing delighted me more than discovering there was life beyond Michael W. Smith (though I'm not saying that I was ever the cool kid, 'cause I never was).


Sleeping By the Riverside - "Something To Say"
This song was re-recorded for 2003's A Breath Between Battles, but I'll always favor the original that appeared on the 1999 split with a band called Carry The Dead. "Something to Say" is the standout track from that album, and it is absolutely glorious, more or less changing the way I perceive hardcore music. The lyrics are honest, full of passion, and understandable. The instrumentation is aggressive but surprisingly melodic. I would later learn that this song came at the tail-end of the spirit-filled hardcore movement of the '90s, and influences from Strongarm and Unashamed (among others) can be heard. From the first "Oh how the fire BURNS" to the final "MOVE ON" this song grabs and twists your guts, double-bass pedals your skull a couple times, and may even provoke you to turn some windmills or something.

Unwed Sailor - "Once in a Blue Moon"
On the other end of the musical spectrum we have Unwed Sailor, an instrumental band featuring bassist Johnathon Ford and a never-constant cast of instrumentalists. The band is into the whole multimedia thing, releasing picture books with their albums (The Marionette and the Music Box, 2003) and providing soundtracks for short conceptual films (Stateless, 2002). The Firecracker EP was their first release (re-issued in 2003), and this is its fourth and final track, a very fitting closer. The first three songs bounce and flutter, but this one swoops and melts, ticking like a grandfather clock lost at sea. Melissa Pallandino's violin absolutely kills me. That's David Bazan on drums, by the way.

Brandtson - "Potential Getaway Driver"
I don't know if this song is about girls or God or what, but that's some catchysweet riff. Bap bap badee bap bap bap BAP. Though Brandtson would later lean too far into boo-hoo territory, it was here in the 1990's where they retained a good amount of rock & roll edge. I don't really have much else to say. It's just a dang good song. Fallen Star Collection is out of print, so if you're looking to pick up the album it'll have to be used or digital only.



Starflyer 59 - "Play the "C" Chord"
This was the first Starflyer song I'd ever heard (back in 1999, and for once I was listening to something current) and it totally blew my mind. Jason Martin sings like he's sleeping, there's a slide guitar going up and down, a dense musical foundation carrying everything downstream... and do my ears spy an acoustic guitar? I couldn't understand how something so heavy sounded so light. This was long before I discovered My Bloody Valentine and Mazzy Star, and this shoegazey goodness was so far left of what I was used to musically that I couldn't help but like it. Lyrically it's a call to rock, for bands to stop writing automatic songs and to "play the "C" chord like it's something new." If you want to take it further you could somehow apply it to how we live our lives, but I'll leave that up to individual discernment.

Damien Jurado - "Tornado"
Jurado is great at crafting a story in only three-to-five minutes' worth of song. Sometimes he'll give us a nice story, but most of the time the lyrics revolve around the foul side of human nature. Sometimes he'll trick us by putting a sad story into an upbeat song. He does this a couple times on Rehearsal for Departures. See "Letters and Drawings." See also this song. "Tornado" is a relatively "full" song for Jurado who usually strips things down to one guitar and one voice. But this song builds and builds, crescendoing with saxophones, Jurado singing as high as he possibly can, some sort of organ (mellotron?) and -- I don't get to say this very often -- some wicked flute work. It all comes back to the lyrics, though, and after the first line we know that the main characters are in trouble. The deep resent and bitterness that develops between couples doesn't usually make for pleasant song fodder, but that kind of stuff is Jurado's bread and butter. As an irrelevant aside, the ever-present David Bazan makes another appearance, but this time he's credited with the "drawing" on the album.

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto: The Moody Blues

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto
Take a band. Take its album cover highlights. Take its album cover lowlights.
Swish it all around in your mouth. Comment.


The Moody Blues

This is a 2001 compilation of the Moody Blues' pre-Justin Hayward days, before they got all epic and grandiose. In the early-to-mid 1960's the band was riding the English Merseybeat wave, though here they look like Dutch Reservoir Dogs. This is a cool picture made cooler by the sleek silhouettes, the empty sky space, and just the right amount of windmill. I also like the throwback label at the top, and even the name of the album works in a Meet the Beatles sort of way.


This is the cover to The Other Side of Life, released in 1986. OF COURSE it was released in 1986. Look at it. Xeroxed head shots of the band floating around a chemistry lab in space. The other side of life doesn't make any sense. And even though these glamor shots are floating around in zero gravity, somehow the beakers and crap remain affixed to the tables, which themselves somehow remain affixed to the floor. Also, nice spacelab wall trim.


Again, back to the pre-Hayward days. In fact this is the band's debut album, The Magnificent Moodies, released in 1965. I don't know if this picture came from the same photo shoot as the image that appears on the cover of An Introduction to the Moody Blues, but it very well could have. It would be a great cover too were it not for the goofy Rocky & Bullwinkle-fonted text spilling all over everywhere. I like that the horizon is hard to discern. I like the guy on the right straddling the water. I don't like the gigantic letter E balancing on that one guy's head.

The Letter R

In this series I spotlight five bands and/or artists whose names begin with the same letter. I try to feature active (or recently active... it's hard to keep current with all the break-ups) performers so as to reflect who I'm listening to and enjoying at the moment.


Röyksopp
Norwegians excel in two things: metal and electro-pop. (They also do the Americana thing better than Americans, but that doesn't fit into the point I'm trying to make.) There's something about the frigid and isolated country that instills itself into its citizen's songwriting. This might seem at odds with the POP in electro-pop (or techno-pop or whatever other -pop we're dealing with), but pop, when you think about it, really is a cold and removed sort of thing. Enter Röyksopp, an electro duo from Tromsø, who plug together the most magnificent and chill beats ever conceived. There is an iciness to their music, but there's an underlying warmth to it as well. Norwegians, see, are passionate about whatever it is they do, and "cold" as their music might be there's still that human passion that weaves itself in and out of each song's DNA. I don't know if any of that makes sense, and I know I'm making wide generalizations about Norwegians (for all I know they could all actually be robots, a nation of Johnny 5s), but these are the impressions I get.
Whatever. Let the music speak for itself. And instead of linking .mp3 files I'm going to post their music videos which, in addition to perfectly matching the music, are mindboinks.
"Remind Me"

"What Else is There?" (featuring Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife, though that's not her floating around in the video [though that IS her sitting at the dinner table])

"Poor Leno"



Red Sparowes
Epic wordless landscape-ish music in the same vein as Explosions in the Sky and all those other epic wordless landscape-ish bands. What sets these guys apart? Two things, at least. One, a couple of the guys are also members of the doom-core band Isis, which certainly influences some aspects of their sound. One-and-a-half, one of the Red Sparowes was also in Neurosis, but he's no longer a Red Sparowe. Two, slide guitar! Two-and-a-half, their song titles, as you'll see below, are absolutely ridiculous.
Two .mp3s via their Neurot Recordings page:
"Like the Howling Glory of the Darkest Winds, This Voice Was Thunderous And the Words Holy, Tangling Their Way Around Our Hearts And Clutching Our Innocent Awe" (10:08)
"Alone and Unaware, the Landscape Was Transformed in Front of Our Eyes" (8:27)
"A Brief Moment of Clarity Broke Through the Deafening Hum, But it Was Too Late" via Stop Okay Go.


The Rapture
Not to be confused with the Finnish metal band or Jesus' triumphant return, The Rapture are a electro-punky-dance-rock band from New York. Their songs are beat heavy, but there's definitely a rock 'n' roll edge in there. On their first full-length album, Echoes, they follow up songs fit for clubbin' with songs fit for punching you in the face. Their last full-lengther, Pieces of the People We Love, was released in 2006, so they're probably about due for something new.
Check out their MYSPACE and enjoy a handful of their sweet sweet music, including the funkin' little ditty found on the GTA IV soundtrack.
Also, and I don't remember where I got this (though YOU can find it on their The Chair That Squeaks 7-inch released in 1998), here's a cover of the agitated Psychedelic Furs song "Dumb Waiters."
"Dumb Waiters"


Radiohead
Obviously.
Instead of waxing poetic, and instead of dropping tracks you've already heard, I'll link up some fun remixes.
"Videotape (Amplive Remix Feat Del The Funky Homosapien)"
"Street Spirit (Funkagenda Remix)"
"Nude (Let's up the Beat of them Blues, TAET Remix)"
"Unravel {Pocket Mix}"


Rogue Wave
You know a band is popular when it appears on the soundtracks of every hip new movie and TV show. I don't actually know much else about Rogue Wave except that they used to be on Sub Pop. Now they're not. By definition a rogue wave is something that could potentially do a lot of damage, especially if you're having an adventure on a boat named Poseidon, but this Rogue Wave is fairly non-threatening. A nice easy listen-to. A bit of The Shins, a bit of Belle and Sebastian. A lot of good.
"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" via Stereogum's Drive XV: A Tribute to Automatic for the People.
"Lake Michigan" via Insound.com.
"Publish My Love" via me, because I want you to hear it.

2003

It's hard to believe that 2003 occurred five years ago. I was ending my third/beginning my fourth year of college, thankful to be nearly done with school yet hesitant to face what lay beyond. Twenty-aught-three was a good year for music and it provided a great soundtrack for this soon-to-be transitional phase of my life. The music was so great that it killed me to only choose five tracks. Killed me. I'm dead now.

Suffering & the Hideous Thieves - "St. Elizabeth"
In the 1990's Jeff Suffering was best known for heading the spazzpunk outfit 90lb Wuss. As the 90's progressed so too did Suffering's freedom to experiment, and Wuss's sound evolved from (and I use these terms loosely and probably inappropriately) skate-punk to grind-punk to some sort of hard-to-define pseudo-space-core punk-ish. All through these incarnations the band's sound remained gritty and aggressive. So it came as a surprise when Suffering organized his Hideous Thieves and released Real Panic Formed in 2002. Clean vocals! Slow tempos! Strings! And the moodiest music ever recorded. It was brilliant. It still is brilliant. The following year, the year we're actually focusing on, S&tHT did a split with an ether-ish pixie-voiced band called The Hush Hush. The Hush Hush songs are good, but the Hideous Thieves songs are absolutely glorious. Listen here as St. Elizabeth starts in a romantic-but-melancholy way, beautiful strings bending around lyrics about writing desperate notes in blood. But from these depressing depths the song moves backwards, reminiscing about happier times, adding layers, eventually exploding like a moment of passion, then tailing off again (as those moments of passion inevitably do) until we're right back to where we started. This is a song that resonates long after its over, and even though I can't personally relate to the lyrics they (hand-in-hand with the music) still somehow strike a familiar chord within.


...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - "Intelligence"
The concept behind the EP The Secret of Elena's Tomb is as interesting as the songs themselves. Read about it HERE and be thoroughly grossed out. The songs on the EP seem to be loosely inspired by the story (as opposed to being directly about it), and as far as I can tell "Intelligence," the final song on the disc, doesn't have much to do with necrophilia. It DOES have much to do with freakin' awesomeness, and listening to this song makes me want to run through a brick wall. It starts of mellowly, even casually, but then the drum machine kicks in, and the rhythm follows, and suddenly you're listening to a metronome made of rock 'n' roll. Three-and-a-half minutes in things suddenly fall apart for no reason, but as if nothing happened at all it quickly reassembles before eventually squealing to a halt. The song is a sub-electronic departure for the band but no less an awesome one. The kids are hopped up now, indeed.


Cat Power - "He War"
According to ye olde Wikipedia Chan Marshall is dissatisfied with the recording of this song. Whatever. It does sound hastily mixed, but it's totally to the song's benefit as it adds a brittle edge to the manic lyrics. There are actually a lot of little things that make this song great. The tinkly intro keys, the "hey hey hey," the double vox, the processed vocals in verse #2, and when the song picks up near the beginning it doesn't let up until the end. Lulls are for suckers. That's Dave Grohl boom-tappin' the drums, by the way.


Beloved - "Defect From Decay"
For a few short years Beloved (the North Carolinian Beloved) was the greatest thing to happen to music. The music was all at once beautiful and aggressive, much like early Hopesfall. What differentiated Beloved from Hopesfall (as well as most other "melodic-core" bands) were Josh Moore's clean vocals. Not only was he on-key (which already gave him the advantage over other singers in the genre), but he was also a very good singer. Naturally there had to be screaming too, and anybody can scream into a microphone. But Beloved's screamer, drummer Joe Musten, had a voice that could wipe out armies. Somehow he found the strength to beat the crap out of his set while bellowing mightily at the same time. And as if the vocal tandem wasn't enough the band also had a fantastic sense of melody. The pretty parts were indeed very pretty, but even while they were throwing down and being all XcoreX the THREE guitars continued to paint rich sweeping musical pictures. I chose this song from Failure On because listening to it is like getting punched in the face over and over. We could all use a punch in the face.


Viva Voce - "Brightest Part of Everyone"
Viva Voce's 1998 debut full-length release, Hooray For Now, was good, full of straight-ahead pretty-voiced rock, but it only hinted at things to come. For a long time, actually, it seemed there would be no follow up. Their record company folded soon after the album's release and though they released an independent EP in 2000 they weren't heard from again (by me anyway) until a 2002 split with Soul Junk. At this point their sound had wildly diverged from that initial release and 2003's Lovers Lead the Way, full of creative and crafty sounds, shows it. A husband and wife duo, Anita Robinson usually takes the vocal lead, but here she does the angelic background thing while Kevin Robinson croons away. The music is murky but rhythmic (clap along!) until the chorus where everything, save for an acoustic guitar and the vocals, drops out. Then the bouncy fuzz comes right back and takes us to the next chorus which happens to be at the very end of the song. It's all at once positive and moody. It's also completely enjoyable.

You're Up

Again, lack of posting not due to disinterest. It's due to excessive busyness. And I'll mention this every time until updates become daily.

Anyway, I made a mix cd for somebody going to Europe. Each song had something to do with her destinations either by subject, song title, band name, band origin, or language. By the way, do you know how hard it is to find songs about Liechtenstein? (Fortunately [or UN-, depending on whether or not you listened to the song] the "Liechtensteiner Polka" saved the day.)

Things I learned while compiling the playlist:
- Nearly every song by Beirut could qualify for this particular mix.
- Greek pop sucks.
- Czech pop does not.
- Francophonic songs are much more abundant than Belgian-phonic ones.

Here are the highlights:
St. Vincent - Paris is Burning
Tim Buckley - Moulin Rouge
Peter Bjorn and John - Amsterdam
Bloc Party - Kreuzberg
Waldemar Matuska & Eva Pilarova - Tam Za Vodou V Rakosi
Ultravox - Vienna
Beirut - Postcards From Italy
Roxy Music - A Song For Europe

Apology + NY

I apologize for the severe lack of recent postings. Life has been hectic.
Heck. Tick.
And I do what I can.

If you, sick of these lengthy non-content gaps, would like to contribute to the Bipedal blog (either regularly, semi-regularly, bi-annually, etc.) then let me know. Pay is zero. Readership is minimal. Credit is full.

Anyway, this one's just to tide. Recently I visited New York City. To celebrate this event here are a handful of New Yorky songs.

Death Cab for Cutie - Marching Bands of Manhattan
Mason Jennings - New York City
Beastie Boys - Open Letter to NYC
Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan
Interpol - NYC

1984

It's funny how you can just tell whether or not a song came from the mid-80s just by listening to it. Sometimes "the 80's sound" makes that particular tune more endearing. Sometimes it just makes it sound dated. And then there are those other songs that don't seem to age at all, that if they were released today would garner just as much attention as they did twenty-four years ago. Listen and decided for yourself which tunes sound classically quaint, good as new, or anything otherwise.

The Smiths - "How Soon is Now"
I recently read where a critic declared that this was THE song of the 80s, and I can't really argue. It's epic, searing, mournful, groovy, the soundtrack to virtually any given situation. There are a hundred little "favorite parts" in this song. Here are a few:
- the introductory "wugga-wugga"
- son, heir/sun, air... get it?
- the spookadelic guitar that wangs in every so often like an oscillating fan made of razors
- the vitriol spewed when Morrissey says "in particular"
- the fact that the song is long enough to appreciate while you're still listening to it
- whistling at 4:30
- everything dropping out at 5:00
- the last chorus, even though it's sung no differently than the others
It's interesting how this is the tune most people associate with the Smiths even though the rest of their songs sound nothing like this. Regardless, listen to it a thousand more times while continuing to not get sick of it.

The Cars - "Drive"
I know this song reeks of 80s, like, in a bad way. Blatant synth abuse, drums that plug into an outlet, wispy background vocals, etc. You've probably also heard this one a thousand times at your JC Penneys and on your local Lite-FM. I don't even want to look at the music video. But for all its zillions of faults, I STILL REALLY LIKE THIS SONG AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. I can't honestly tell you why. It's not a so-bad-it's-good thing because it really is good. It's not a guilty pleasure thing because it's by the Cars, and the Cars are awesome. Maybe it's because the lyrics are so dang down. Maybe it's because Benjamin Orr (or, as I like to call him, NotRicOcasek) does such a convincing job singing those downed lyrics. Anyway, I felt like I was the only one in the theater who appreciated the fact that the dumb car in "Transformers" used this song to try to hook up Shia LaBeouf with the girl.

Bruce Spingsteen - "I'm On Fire"
This wasn't released as a single until 1985, but it's found in the middle of Born in the U.S.A. which came out in '84, and that's good enough for me.
When you think about the songs of Springsteen (including the ones found on BitUSA) you think of the swarthy Jersey boy crankin' out tunes about glory days or dancing in the dark or something hand-clappingly rockin'. Maybe you don't. Maybe you already know he's a folky at heart and often hangs his hat on darker themes. This song qualifies as one with "a darker theme." In fact it bothers me when I pry apart the lyrics to find out what "I'm On Fire" is really about. Instead I nod along to Max Weinberg's boom-taps and listen to that marvelously subtle guitar-pickin'. Everything about this song is subtle, actually. The lyrics, the guitar work, the (for once in its existance) UNobtrusive synthesizers. Before you know it Bruce is howling for reasons I don't want to contemplate and the song is over.

Cocteau Twins - "Beatrix"
The Cocteau Twins are the only UK band I can think of whose accent permeates their singing voices enough to make it more difficult to understand what they're saying (as opposed to trying to decipher what they're saying when they merely speak). When I say "they" I guess I'm just really talking about vocalist Elizabeth Fraser. I can understand everything that comes out of KT Tunstall's mouth, but why can't I discern a stinkin' thing Fraser sings? Her vowels are too warped or something. But you know what? I like it better this way. Her words sound more magical and fanciful (instead of, y'know, just being rugged English). Couple her unique approach to singing with the glassy musicianship of the othe two guys and you end up with something that sounds like a lake of frozen pink lemonade. Drums don't kick in until the song is 2/3 over. That last 1/3 will twist your head right off.

Die Kreuzen - "All White"
Are you ready for some Milwaukee hardcore? This is actually one of their slower songs (at least until the last few seconds) from their '84 self-titled cassette, all the songs of which can now be found on October File, which was released a couple years later. In addition to being a relatively slow song, this one is also three times longer than most of the other tracks on that aforementioned self-titled, clocking in at a whopping three-and-a-half minutes. I chose this one because while those other minute-long speed demons are sweet-tastic, "All White" is at least more accessible. Enjoy this, get a frame of reference, then check out the rest of their early songs. Their later material (including the first half of October File, which is really album #2) chugs rather than skates, but it's still pretty good. Gotta love those Cobra Commander vocals.
Anyway, I thought "All White" was going to be a commentary on race a la Minor Threat's "Guilty of Being White." Instead it's about isolation and dispair and blah blah blah whine whine whine.

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto: Michael Jackson

il Buono, il Brutto, il AlbumArto
Take a band. Take its album cover highlights. Take its album cover lowlights.
Swish it all around in your mouth. Comment.

Obviously I chose to feature a very specific point in Michael Jackson's career. If I wanted to I could also feature album art from his adolescent years (including time spent with The 5) or album art from his latter bleachier years. But these images here reflect the Michael Jackson I know and love.

This is the cover to the "She's Out of My Life" single released in 1980, though the song itself is found on Off the Wall released in August of 1979 (see below). I don't know who gets credit for taking this picture, but it's raw and awesome. Here we see a tuxedoed Jackson channeling his inner Marvin Gaye during some life performance somewhere. According to Wikipedia (the source for all things absolute truth), Jackson couldn't get through the recording of this song without crying. I don't know if he was singing this song while the picture was being snapped, but look at the way he's pouring himself into that performance. He's belting out SOME kind of ultra-emotional ballad. It's also worth pointing out that I like a good concert shot where musicians play to the crowd instead of to the camera.

Here's the, uh, "brutto" of our set, the aforementioned Off the Wall. We have photographer Steve Harvey to thank for this (though cover "designer" Mike Salisbury should share part of the blame). Obviously there's the tux theme, which is fine. I don't mind a well-dressed performer. And I suppose it could be sort of clever to contrast the ritzy duds against a butt-ugly brick wall. But clever or not (not) it just looks dumb. Add to the dumbness the chalk-scrawl font. Add to the dumbness Michael Jackson trying to do the robot with his thumbs in his pockets. Multiply to the dumbness some sort of uncontextualized window or painting. It's possible this image continues around to the inside of the album (I believe the back is just a picture of his feet), but that doesn't matter unless these things were sold in stores inside-out.

Now we jump ahead a couple years to 1982 to gawk at the "The Girl is Mine" single. Thriller may have made Michael Jackson the king of the world, but here he looks as unkingly as possible. It's not a bad picture, and there are certainly many endearing qualities to it, but it's just overshadowed by a lot of awkwardness. See Paul McCartney. See him wearing three layers of clothing, all of which are too tight. See that charming-but-goofy smile only Brits can do. See him rubbing literal elbows with a coy Michael Jackson (who appears to have just gotten back from a Cubs game). See how Jackson was never able to remove his thumbs from his pockets. They're arguing about who gets a girl in the song, but does SHE have any say in the matter?

Better Than "Centerfield"

Via Buzzgrinder, via CMJ, some aging rocksters (including members of REM) have formed a new band called The Baseball Project. (And to be fair, Linda Pitmon isn't really at all old... "experienced" rocksters, rather than "aging" ones.)

Peter Buck is involved. I didn't know he (or any other musical artist this side of Meatloaf) liked baseball. But he does, as do fellow REMer Scott McCoughey, Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate (remember them?) and drummer Linda Pitmon.

Their first release, Volume 1: Frozen Ropes & Dying Quails, will be released on July 8 on Yep Roc records. The song "Past Time" is already up on Myspace and lyrically sounds like a baseball encyclopedia put to music (with some whoo-hoos thrown in for good measure).

This could be something to get excited about if the songs don't suck. But anything mentioning Oscar Gamble's afro is alright with me. And really, looking over the track list, how many awful songs about Harvey Haddix could there possibly be? (None, that's how many.)

MMFRR#11 -- Amerodd

Often, in lieu of actual people wanting to be my Myspace friends, I get piles of friend requests from bands and musicians attempting to get me to check 'em out/attend their shows/join their street teams. Naturally a great bulk of these bands are awful and I want nothing to do with them, yet the requests keep coming. As a mild form of revenge I have decided to review these bands. Welcome to another therapeutic entry of what I like to call Myspace Music Friends Request Review.

You asked for it, and now you've got it: India-rooted Canadian hip-hop. Yeah, boy!
Meet Amerodd.
Before you click yourself over to Amerodd's Myspace space I must caution you. There is so much crap all over everywhere that your web browser will ask you what it did to deserve such torture. Mine died the first time. If your computer can't handle the pain then maybe you should just stay right here.

Amerodd is angry. He's an angry person, but he's not quite sure how to focus his anger. Players and ballaz make him angry. B****es and hoes make him angry. Police and racists make him angry. People who call him a virgin make him angry. And finally, basic grammatical rules make him angry. What's left to do but RAP about it? And when you lay down your tracks, and you're still angry, what do you do then? Barf homemade graphics all over your dang Myspace. My favorite is the one that reads:

F*** Hoes,
F*** the Law,
F*** you all motherf***ers
who want to f*** with Amerodd!!!
Go ahead call the b**** a** cops!!!

Sans asterisks, of course. Next to the image of an AK-47, of course.

Okay, so we see WHAT Amerodd is. But WHY? Aren't Canadians a docile bunch? Where is this rage coming from? In the bio (which is an absolute headache to read) we learn that Amerodd was born in India. The details are vague (or mashedly unreadable), but apparently his family fell on hard times prior to their Canadian voyage. And whatever strife he endured out east didn't let up when he came west. My theory is that he probably got made fun of in Canada because the only word he bothered to learn in English was b****a**motherf*****.

Somehow along the way he mistook himself for a gangsta. For whatever reason he felt the need to represent.

I'll give him credit for being one of the few Indians on the hip-hop scene. The Canadian hip-hop scene at that (which, now that I think about it, is probably the only place this side of Calcutta where you could get away with such a combo). You know what else I give him credit for? His tunes aren't half bad.

Wait, what?

Yeah, that's right, I spend paragraphs dumping on his silly posturing and the laughable image he's created only to come back and say his songs are worth listening to? The imagery and frontin' have been hip-hop's greatest downfall, and once you get past that you'll usually find that there's no substance to a lot of rap's "artistry". With Amerodd's music (seperate from the Amerodd characature he's created, at least for now), he struts what he has, and it ain't much. All he has, when it comes down to it, is his anger, his ethnicity, and his belief in Jesus.

These three components of Amerodd's being haven't been resolved with each other and that in itself creates sort of a fourth component, one of conflict. It doesn't appear that he's really taken charge of this conflict, hence all that posturing, and what results is this baffling swirl of lyrical content. With his Punjabi accent he asks Jesus why these motherf***ers are acting like b****a** punks, and when will He (the good Lord) do something about it? Or how soon will Amerodd blast them himself? Fascinating, and probably for all the wrong reasons.

Three songs are available on Amerodd's Myspace. "Jealousy and Hate" has a pretty sweet sitary beat but otherwise follows the well-trod gangsta rap path. I've got a bit of a soft spot for angry street hip-hop (though, honestly, I could never get into 2pac), so I kind of dig this one. "End of My Life" is a more passive song and Amerodd comes off sounding like a victim (how ungangsta-ly). The third song, "Curfew", is an odd little disjointed musical jaunt. Something about a Hindu-Muslim society, something about escaping from prison, something about a military mission. I'm sure it makes perfect sense in Amerodd's brain, but to me it feels like an unintended experiment.

And that seems to be Amerodd's greatest strength. The best parts of him are unintended. He's trying to do all the "right" things as far as hip-hop is concerned, but he comes from such a different place that, while fileable under the "wannabe" category, the end result is more curious than bland.

I rate Amerodd 6 busted caps out of 10

The Letter Q

In this series I spotlight five bands and/or artists whose names begin with the same letter. I try to feature active (or recently active... it's hard to keep current with all the break-ups) performers so as to reflect who I'm listening to and enjoying at the moment.

Q

Gordy Quist
Gordy is a Texas-based singer-songwriter (and if you're going to do the countryfolk thing then you best either be from Austin or Nashville) whose musical output is actually fairly diverse. He'll rock your socks with some honkytonk, or he'll still your soul with a gothy bluesy ballad. Quist is also a member of the group Band of Heathens, but I'm not interested in them right now because their name doesn't start with Q. If you go to Quist's official website you can actually stream 7/11ths of his latest album, Here Comes the Flood, released last year. Listen to "Judas 'Scariot Blues".
Also listen to this demo of "Green and Blue".

Queens of the Stone Age
You know who these guys are by now, and by now you either love or hate 'em. Launch that music player! Pirate lightbulbs!

Quo Vadis
Montreal metal, though sadly they don't sing in French (as if you'd be able to tell anyway). But they are all about the metal brutality, and they're FAST. If you think it's all just studio tricks, listen to their songs from the Live in Montreal album. The band's drummer is fairly well known in the Canadian death metal scene as he's been featured on the cover of several drumming magazines. He's also a physicist, for whatever that's worth. Quo Vadis has been around since the mid-90s so they've had lots of time to practice their precise chaos, and they probably know the exact chord progressions necessary to make your head explode.
Lots of .mp3s on their official website.
Lots of streamies on their unofficial Myspace page.

Quasi
Also making music since the mid-90s is the trio named Quasi. For a long time they were a duo, the husband and wife sort. The husband and wife part didn't work out, but even as divorcees the band lived on. I have no idea how their new third member (officially inducted into Quasi in 2007) fits in relationshiply. ANYWAY, the music is unique (poppy indierock, yet very experimental) and incorporates various un-rock'n'roll instruments like the rocksichord, synths made to sound like rocksichords, and classical stringed instruments. You can find them on Touch and Go Records, and I suspect they're due for a new album soon.
Quasi on Myspace.

Sara Quin (feat. Kaki King)
Cheating, I know, but Q's are hard. Here we have Sara Quin of Tegan & Sara fame doing an REM cover with Kaki King. This song is from Stereogum's tribute to Automatic for the People, and the rest of the covers can be found HERE.
As for this tune, it sounds like Tegan & Sara high on Nyquil.
"Sweetness Follows" .mp3.