- joiezabel in Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head it really is brilliant, scott. i hate you.
- hotshotrobot in Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head Goddammit, Borch, now how am i supposed to review this? I can’t top that!
- Borch in The Avett Brothers - House of Blues - May 14th Good Lord, that’s a beautiful song! The Avett Bros. were in Chicago? Why wasn’t I notified?!
Before work (back when I did work) every morning i would turn on Vh1 to try to catch this strange video about an androgynous-looking girl who is at a show with her hair cut really short so that she could effectively give this lazy emaciated scenester kid enough butch gruff to blow him off. Tantalizing, I know. But the kicker of this amazing piece of music cinematography was that she really liked him (GASP!) and it ends with her running off with him and his gang bang minded friends on their ten speed schwinn bikes.
Have I bitterly inferred a lot into this music video? Sure. But it is hard to come to the harsh realization that not all of us can be frail wispy prepubescent models. Alas, such is life. Yet what I found truly disconcerting was that during the epic love story that took place during this music video its song slowly became ingrained into my subconscious. At work I would find myself murmuring, “The sun, the moon, and the sky-yyyyy” or “I have been waiting… I have been waiting for this moment all my life…” Unsure if those were even the right lyrics I made it a point to find and lawfully download this song from one of those pay-per-tune services that you can find on the internets.
The song was “Lazy Eye” from Silversun Pickups’ 2006 album Carnavas. I was intrigued at first by the enjoyable ‘old but new’ sound they produced but, like every designer jean that professes ‘Worn and tattered look and only somewhat ridiculously overpriced,’ I was a bit skeptical about buying the cow when the milk is so obviously… thrift store jeans? Confused metaphors aside, I gave their album a listen and was impressed for not expecting much.
At first, Brian Aubert’s vocals annoyed me. He was like a poor man’s Billy Corgan, with forced sounding melodies and a strained vocal range. But then it dawned on me that that’s probably a compliment, with what the megalomaniac monster that Corgan has become. Aubert plays to his skills with songs like, “Future Foe Scenario,” which shows his versatility as well as raw emotion coming through. “Well Thought out Twinkles,” though wussier named, has plenty of spark to get your feet tapping and your head bobbing.
Musically, they are a more than competent band. “Dream at Tempo 119″ is wonderfully crafted and really demonstrates the skills of the band mates. During the song “Three Seed,” Silversun Pickups successfully sent me on a nostalgic induced trip and I found myself worrying about AP Testing and making sure I had enough extra curricular activities so that the National Honors Society wouldn’t kick me out. …What? I was a smart kid in high school. When you write music reviews, it will be your turn to brag.
Carnavas is a well-executed sophomore release (the first being the Pikul EP). Silversun Pickups play to their strengths and the results are number of really fun catchy songs. There are even a few moody alternative grunge sounding power ballads like “Checkered Floor.” Is Silversun Pickup’s Carnavas worth a listen? Absolutely. Will it be the album that changed your life? Not likely. But sometimes albums like these are great arsenal to add to the motion soundtrack that is your life.
Original Release Date: July 26th, 2006
Label: Dangerbird Records
Rating: 7/10
I can’t wait to see this band, or at least ask them about the Karl Marx reference. But first…
Some bands opt to throw in some tricks to distance themselves from the pack. I’m short on concrete examples, but I’ve been dragged (or did the dragging myself) to plenty of shows of bands whose names I forget where a cerebral edge is confused with mystifying the audience. I think of the guy dressed like The Gimp spraying the audience with a turkey baster full of God-knows-what. Of course, that was back in Cleveland, and the band needed to do something to get the audience’s mind off the music. What I’m talking about are tricks, distractions, contact lenses that make your eyes yellow… it’s been known to fill the seats. For awhile, at least.
So there are those kinds of bands, and then there are the rare birds whose music kicks ass with the artillery they’ve got, at any time of day, and at any time of Man, or at least post-hippie man. Count Chicago’s Das Kapital in the latter category. Fully-equipped to remind you that rocking-the-fuck-out still does and always will work, their combination of straight rock and punk energy is unique for its honest execution if not originality. Let’s not forget that their chord progressions and key-changes are well above most of what gets filed under ‘punk’, so thank lyrics about religion, social interaction, drinking in Chicago, and obscure characters from required elementary school reading played through music that is so primal that you forget it can still be made.
Imagine some well-read, corn-fed Midwesterners burrowing into the basement of a building somewhere west of the Kennedy Expressway and having a fucking great time ripping out some clean, fast and mind-sticking hooks. There are organ licks on songs like ‘Set Adrift Again’ and ‘Old Blue’ that are pure rock, and lacking the sneering that comes from the Green Day wannabe’s, Das Kapital is more interested in a good, noisy time than in inciting fervor, or slack-jawed drooling, for that matter. Smart rock that lacks pretension and self-righteousness? Someone’s got to do it.
Anger is also a gimmick too oft used by people who shouldn’t be given drivers licenses, let alone guitars and microphones, but these guys have no hubris to defend and they’re not out to fool you by being angrier-than-thou. Sure, they’re pissed about the shit that goes on in the world and locally, but who isn’t? Not like the mouth-breathing punks and their minions who still think that Bush-bashing is ‘edgy’ (though some things don’t get old), DK is keen and efficient. Not that they’re got a chip on their shoulder, they are more perceptive than mad, and loudly so.
Bring it, fellas. Can’t wait to see the show, and that goes for everyone.
There’s a sense, I think, in which guitars are kind of like gingersnaps: they both have a certain magic to them when they’re nice and crunchy.
Chicago’s The Red Tie Affair are a band that understands this. Their particular brand of angular rock is heavy on gloriously crunchy guitars playing riffs that fit together as precisely as the links in a chain fence. It’s a sound that’s reminiscent of some of the older “emo” bands (they kind of remind me of Mineral in places, though you can tell their songs apart), but without the affectation that’s made the genre a punchline over the last several years. It’s just a guess, but I don’t think you’ll see them break down in tears halfway through their setlist.
But if the overall texture is like a chain-link fence, lead singer Brooke Blary’s voice cuts through it all like one of those as-seen-on-TV Amazing Ginsu 2000 knives. (I’ve always wanted one of those, by the way; you never know when your life is going to depend on your ability to cut through a three-inch metal pipe or a handful of rusty nails — feats that are impossible for ordinary knives.) She’s got a powerful instrument, sort of like a hybrid between Cristina Scabbia and that girl who sings for The Donnas, and she uses it to inject a measure of passion into the music that really raises it to another level. I’ve not seen her or the rest of The Red Tie Affair before, but they seem like the sort of singer and group that would be very good live.
Which, of course, is yet another reason that I’m heading up to Superstarcastival on June 2nd, something that I can’t recommend to you highly enough. In the meantime, their myspace page features three songs from their album Photographs and Broken Glass, that should tide you and the rest of the proletariat over, at least until that great day arrives. “Don’t Even” is my favorite, I think, (and it’s downloadable!) but all three of them are quite good, and worth a listen or several.
The thing that annoys me about comic books? They never show what the super-villains do in their off time. Sure, we get the occasional glimse of Peter Parker struggling with his love life, or Batman engaging in some corporate merger. But what about the bad guys? What are they doing with all that stolen filthy lucre? Surely they have hobbies.
Well, allow me to let you in on a secret. Lex Luthor, BraÃniac*, Mysterio and Ra’s Al Ghul commit their dirty deeds to pay for their band.
That band is called IfIHadAHiFi, and they will rock you with SCIENCE!
Sure, they pretend to be four clean-cut boys from Milwaukee, but that’s just them being smarter than you - they get you to let your guard down, then twist your brain until it bends to their booty-shaking will! Everything about the band is smart - the palindromes, the so-tight-you’d-swear-it-was-computerized rhythm section, the Albini-esque guitar chime, the synths that aren’t new wave so much as no wave…
But this is knowledge used for Sinister Ends! Heck, the chorus of “(The HiFi Vs.) Potential Energy”, the first song on 2004’s No More Music, clearly states their criminal intentions: “WE WANT TO STEAL YOUR POTENTIAL ENERGY!!!”** Your only defense is to pogo until you drop!
Nowhere is their mad science more obvious than the stage. You know shoegazers? IfIHadAHiFi are whatever the opposite of shoegazers are. You will witness acrobatic feats of pure rock at the Beat Kitchen on June 2, the likes of which may never be repeated.
It’s a shame that there’s probably some fire code that keeps them from having a Tesla coil on stage, as it would seem to be the most appropriate accessory: electric, noisy, chaotic and potentially dangerous. But really damn cool.
* When I was writing this, I hadn’t yet seen hotshotrobot’s post in loving memory of the BAND Brainiac, but now this reference seems even more appropriate.
** They really do sing in all caps, bold and with exclamation points, I swear. Hit their myspace page and see for yourself!
10 years ago today, we lost a hero.
As their Southern Records website has said since 1997:
On May 23, 1997, Tim Taylor died in a car crash. This was the end of the band; there could be no Brainiac without Tim. The loss is & was overwhelming to everyone who knew him personally, and to many fans who loved the band.
I’ve explained how important Brainiac are to me on this blog before. I won’t take up your time now to repeat myself. Instead, i ask you today to knock one back for our dead friend, and to blast the track i’m loading here for you. Here’s Timmy singing “Velveteen Freak Scene,” the unlisted hidden track at the end of the vinyl version of Brainiac’s first full-length, Smack Bunny Baby.
Timmy, i knew you the tiniest bit, but i love you and i fucking miss you.
(by the way, he’s the guy farthest right in the photo.)
So, it’s not really a secret that I’ve always admired the work of Massachusetts musician Elijah Wyman, especially after reviewing his albums that aren’t even in print.
But what may be a secret, or at least not particularly well known, is that the man’s got an extremely rare kidney disorder that’s nearly killed him. (It’s kind of a novelty, actually — a musician suffering from a kidney ailment that’s not self-inflicted.) Anyway, he’s got a transplant lined up now, but as someone trying to make a living from his music, the expenses are pretty high.
So, he’s got a site lined up at which you can contribute anything you’re able. If you like his work, or like supporting independent musicians, or just like being nice, I’d recommend you swing on by.
