- fiqsibtysr in New Single: Patrick Wolf’s “Accident and Emergency” british glamour girls
- ezpeza in New Single: Patrick Wolf’s “Accident and Emergency” blond gets fucked
- nwagukisicap in New Single: Patrick Wolf’s “Accident and Emergency” jenna jameson threesome
There is no one in the world who loves Emily Haines more than me. No one! Hmm. Okay maybe her gynecologist and that midget who has her face tattooed all over his body in different expressions. But after them, it is totally me. And when I found out she had a solo album from 1996 I was considering stabbing a few fellow Superstarcastics to get the chance to review it first. I don’t mess around. Like I said, I LOVE EMILY HAINES. (disclaimer: the current restraining order is a complete misunderstanding. I mean, her bedroom window was totally open! It was just begging to be climbed into!)
Emily Haines didn’t hit my aural radar until her work with the Oakland, Californian electro-pop band, Metric. Metric’s three albums, ‘Grown up and Blown Away’, ‘Old World Underground, where are you now?’ and ‘Live it out‘ are brilliantly seductive with their poppy melodies and surprisingly witty lyrics. So obviously I was an instant convert to the Metric system. But honestly, it was mostly for the subtle and wispy voice of their front-woman, Emily Haines. After their 2005 release, the band went on to produce and work on side projects. in 2006, Haines’ released her solo endeavor with her Soft Skeleton called ‘Knives don’t have your back‘. Where it didn’t have the fun synthesizers and bedroom dancing rhythms, it did have the wit and spunk known of Emily Haines.
But yes, yes, I digress. This retro review is about her first release ‘Cut in Half and Double‘. I was Fifteen in 1996 when this album dropped and I am sure the teenage douche bag I was would have never been able to appreciate this album for what it is, was, err will be! Right from the beginning you can hear the building blocks of what would become Emily Haines‘ distinctive sound. Her haunting voice strains through the microphone on ‘Pretty head’ where she whines about the pitfalls of being beautiful. During ‘Eden‘, Haines convinces you of her street cred and musical genius. ‘Dog‘, the albums opening song, is a playful ballad of the life of her canine companion and it’s self existential crisis. There are some tracks that date this album though. ‘Freak’ sounds a bit like the girl-y angst songs that were running rampant during that time. (I blame you, Alanis) ‘Eau De Toilette’ could have been sung by kinky blond haired ‘What if God was one of us’ bitch. But, those are the only dated sounding songs on this nine track album. It’s amazing how timeless most of Emily Haines work sounds. Or maybe music has already revolved to the point that old is now new new, and new is the new old. Or old is the new young and Darfur is the new hotel Rwanda… well you get my point.
Maybe I am not the best person to review this album since I seem to be taking notes from Fox news, neither fair nor balanced. But my personal bias aside, ‘Cut in Half and Double‘ has the charm and wit that is expected of Emily Haines. Is it Metric? No. Is it Soft Skeleton? Almost. Listening to this album has been the like flipping through the childhood photos of a pop songstress. There is a lot going on here, and when you look of all the musical magic that has come afterward, it’s hard to not like Emily Haines from the beginning.
7/10
Release Date: 1996
Label: Self Released
Source - Dlisted
Amy Whinehouse Winehouse demonstrated her admiration for self mutilation in front of a journalist from Spin Magazine when she started to carve the words “I Love Blake” into her own stomach during an interview.
Here’s the thing i love most about Japan’s reigning heavyweight champs of noise-core, Melt-Banana: most hardcore punk musicians would probably kill themselves to be able to make noise this face-meltingly original, but even a steady diet of Sparks Plus, trucker speed, and what the hell, a couple lines of blow for good measure wouldn’t get them anywhere near the altered hyper-consciousness necessary to dream up the shit Agata and co. throw down on a regular basis. Go to any live Melt-Banana show and look at the musicians’ faces in the crowd, and you’ll realize that these cats are untouchable. Give their latest release Bambi’s Dilemma a spin, and that realization will simply be reinforced.
Bambi’s Dilemma is the first proper M-B release since 2003’s Cell-Scape, which is odd in an era where indie bands are churning out records as every two years or less. But it’s well worth the wait. Since 2000’s Teeny Shiny, the band has been veering from their trademarked hardcore/noise toward pure pop music on a trajectory that would earn Einstein a posthumous Nobel in rock ‘n’ roll physics. See, Melt-Banana achieving the speed of pop is an impossibility, but as they increase catchiness and hummability, they become heavier, their velocity increases, and time ceases to function in a way humans can comprehend.
Still, the unnerving-yet-exhilerating hooks in tracks with titles like “Blank Page of the Blind” and “Cat Brain Land” are cornered by the tried-and-true M-B conventions: guitars more interested in simulating rayguns than riffage, Yasuko’s yelping, hyper vocals, and pounding rapid-fire drumming that may or may not be provided by a machine at this point (the debate is a hotly contested one amongst Melt-Banana fans; whether or not Cell-Scape’s drums were provided by a machine or by Discordance Axis‘ Dave Witte (who has drummed for them on a number of tours and, well, is basically a human blast-beat machine, so maybe both sides are right), the band’s not saying.
Perhaps the most obvious progression in the band’s sound can be found in the sudden increase in trippy psychedelia in the tracks “Type: Ecco System” and “Last Target on the Last Day.” Usually, the band reserves these effect-drenched acid flashbacks for album codas, but placing “Type” in the middle of the album forces it into the spotlight, as it breaks up the rapid-fire sequencing in truly jarring fashion.
Bambi’s Dilemma is by no means Melt-Banana’s best; for my money, that title goes to 1998’s Charlie, a must-have for any lover of all things noise. But still, these kids are producing music i dare say is more original than anything else you’ll read about here, and it still rocks pretty goddamn hard on top of it. Most musicians concerned with originality for originality’s sake tend to forget that rock music is still supposed to be, you know, rockin’ and fun. Not so with Melt-Banana. Every life show is a huge, fleshy, sweaty bruise of a party, and Bambi’s only real dilemma is figuring out where to take the party to next.
Release Date: April 30, 2007 (yeah, so i’m a little late, sue me)
Label: A-Zap Records
Source - ONTD
Beth Ditto performed tonight at the Glastonbury Festival in Jolly Ole England. Now, many of us heavier set listeners praise her to be the second coming of dearly departed Mama Cass. Hell, she even has the tattoo to prove it. But what is it about her that makes scenester, fagsters, hipsters, and poseurs alike indiscriminately drawn to her? And no, it’s not gravity! (though a very good theory I hadn’t really thought of)
I was surfing the web looking for info on gold ‘ole Presidents Bush veto of the recent stem cell bill and stumbled on this:
Tiffany may quite possibly be the worst singer ever
She should stick with taking her clothes off.
For our next review, we’re going to do some creative visualization. First, I’d like you to close your eyes. Breathe in, breathe out, clear your mind. There, that’s good.
Now, I’d like you to imagine a rock band. Five players, in the standard format for bands of that size: two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboard player, a drummer. Make sure they’re wearing something to mark them as “indie” — maybe dress a couple of them in too-tight polo shirts with horizontal stripes, and then give the others an open button-down shirt over a dark tee. Just for the heck of it, to complete the look, give a couple of them glasses that they stole from Elvis Costello’s nightstand. You can make them have dopey expressions on their faces, but at least in the promo pictures, don’t let any of them smile.
Have you got that picture in your mind? Excellent. You’re doing great. Do a couple more of those deep breathing things if you want — you’ll probably need it.
All right, now we’re going to move to the next part of our exercise. I’d like you to imagine this band playing their instruments. Make sure there are some light but choppy guitar riffs playing, the kind you’ll hear twenty years from now filling up disc five of The Complete Kaiser Chiefs boxed set. Now, if you will, imagine some lazy, one-finger bass playing. I’d like you to add a fluffy, feathery coating of synthesizer sounds — imagine Linda McCartney playing from the sheet music to Seven and the Ragged Tiger. I don’t want to tax your minds too much, so feel free to use the drummer from Panic! at the Disco if you want.
Actually, if you’re having trouble holding all of those details in your minds, you can use the entirety of The Bravery as your template, but be sure to purge from the music any last remaining vestiges of creativity. It’s for your own good, I promise.
Now, as our final exercise, I want you to focus on the kick drum. Try to visualize the letters on that drum, the words that they’re forming. They should make a phrase, preferably an in-joke that isn’t actually funny, one that conveys the idea of humor but that lacks anything to make you laugh. Something like “Scissors for Lefty” ought to do.
Congratulations. You’ve now recreated the experience of Underhanded Romance, without having to suffer through all 11 tracks of it.
Indeed, the second album from San Francisco’s Scissors for Lefty represents what I hope against hope is the nadir of the new wave revival in almost every respect. It’s a turgid, repetitive, tired affair, one that lacks any sense of joy, beauty, or skill. One site described the band’s music as “flirty,” but its more lascivious moments sound more like someone who doesn’t speak any English trying to sound out the words to the script of a Benny Hill sketch. The music not only has no originality — it doesn’t even have any inspired rip-offs. It’s the musical equivalent of copying all the answers for your exam from the kid in front of you, even though he’s only making a C in the class anyway.
Oh, and there are lyrics. Here is a sample: “I don’t love you, but I love, love, love you, and I don’t miss you, but I miss, miss, miss you” (from “Got Your Moments”). No, it doesn’t really get any better than that. But thanks for asking. You’re the best.
I tried to think of something good to say about this album, just so that you wouldn’t think that I can’t say anything nice, but the best I could do is to note that listening to “Wandering Arms” means that I now have a much better idea what a Chris Isaak tribute album to The Killers would sound like. For whatever that’s worth. Also, I’m pretty sure that “Marsha” would be a good theme song for one of those teen shows on the CW — probably one that’ll get canceled halfway through the first season. We should give it a name, like Dreamforest Lagoon, or Santa Monica Nightz, or Some Barely-Legal Girls in Bikinis Have a Relationship Crisis. Then They Have Another One…
Anyway, that last bit was a pleasant distraction from thinking about this album. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I think I’m going to go find another one.
Release date: June 12, 2007
Label: Rough Trade
Rating: 3/10
