Let me end 2007 with hollAnd, one of my favorite all-time bands, who I first wrote about on 3hive in May 2004, although it’s not so much a band as it is one Trevor Kampmann, musician/producer/former-child-TV-actor extraordinaire. A dozen (or more, depending on how you count) releases, along with even more production credits, over the last dozen or so years. From the day I bought the Sea Saw (his first moniker) seven inch Stereo on a whim at No Life Records in LA until the recent release Love Fluxus and my new favorite hollAnd song “French Grass” (replacing his cover of Human League’s “The Lebanon”), I’m man enough to say it’s been a love affair.
Air Miami
Having previously confessed my love for Mark Robinson, founder of Teenbeat Records and driving force behind Unrest, Flin Flon, Air Miami, among others already listed elsewhere on these pages, I must share my excitement over the Teenbeat release of two previously unreleased Air Miami albums, Fourteen Songs and Sixteen Songs. Robinson started up Air Miami with fellow Unrest member Bridget Cross after that band’s breakup, and “Airplane Rider” is the single that preceded their 1995 LP Me, Me, Me. I still use their wonderous song “World Cup Fever” and all of its remixes to help me get through non-World Cup summers.
Plastic Passion
On these very pages I have previously used the term “dance punk disco funk” to describe the Rapture. So please pardon me for applying the same label late on a Sunday night to London’s Plastic Passion. Owing an obvious debt to the Cure for inspiration and the name of their band, Plastic Passion are a rough and raw complication of their post-punk/new wave influences in an age where similar bands are perhaps a bit too slick in their production. I can unfortunately only imagine what grand fun their live shows are, combining said roughness with the palpable energy of their songs.
Pet Politics
Magnus Larsson, as Pet Politics, is the Swedish Jeff Mangum. Fortunately for us, Magnus is presently recording music, unlike the reclusive founder of Elephant 6’s Neutral Milk Hotel. I don’t mean to say that Pet Politics is a copycat, but while Magnus’s songs stand on their own, they also share the best traits of NMH, as in haunted, bizarre lyrics, pleasantly-driven pop, and that sturdy, powerful lead vocal with a unique cadence. The song below is a b-side to a limited 7 inch pressing on the London label the Great Pop Supplement. More songs available for download on the myspace page.
The Warlocks
Having started out on BOMP Records, former home of kindred spirits the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Warlocks made a big jump to a major label. So what happened with that? As expected, the big label boys got all up in the Warlocks business, and after one album, they’re back in indie-land at Tee Pee Records…home of kindred spirits the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Feeling lazy after the holiday, I’ll leave it to the Warlocks themselves to describe their new LP Heavy Deavy Skull Lover: “Eight electric tales moving from space-marooned heavy blues to angelic, opiated dream haze—all propelled via the crud-fuzz of White Light/White Heat Velvets and Jesus and Mary Chain and the sprawling, melted constructions of Spacemen 3 and Red Krayola.”
Freezepop
What do 80’s electronic dance popsters Freezepop have in common with the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols? They’ve all been included in the video game Guitar Hero!
Life has been good for Freezepop since we first posted about them on 3hive in July of 2004. They’ve been included in said Guitar Hero game that the kids love so much, and they’ll soon be in some MTV game (I’m not so good with reading to the end of press releases), but they sure keep pumping out the 80’s inspired electronic pop. So let that be a lesson to all you young bands and kids just playing Guitar Hero out there; keep doing your own thing, and maybe you, too, will someday be featured in Guitar Hero XXVII.
Original post July 7, 2004:
In their own words, Freezepop is “hip enough for hipsters but nerdy enough for nerds.” That pretty much says it all.
The Mary Timony Band
You know, Mary Timony. Helium. Mary is still going strong, still telling us about the world, still giving us little glimpes into her soul, into her life, combining her raw talent these days with the experience that comes from years of making the music that she makes. The Mary Timony Band says it all. She is the band.
The Evens
To quote my friend Rick, “The best band ever.”Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina made this wonderful lo-fi pop (in punk rock style, of course), and frankly, we at 3hive have never featured a Dischord band until now. It was time to right this wrong.
Shelter Two [MP3, 3.6MB, 160kbps]Pushed Up Against the Wall [MP3, 3.3MB, 128kbps]
[ingenting]
File under: Better Late Than Never. [ingenting] may mean “nothing” in their native tongue of Swedish, but this wonderful single, a favorite of mine since Labrador offered it for free, oh, about 11 months ago (see first sentence), is anything but. The post-punk guitar, the keyboard-driven simple melody, the disco bass, and the crisp drumming are awfully catchy and do not deserve to be horded by me any longer.
Ravens and Chimes
Last week while on a family bike ride, my ears suddenly heard the sound of drums pounding in a garage. As we got got closer, I was able identify this beat as a definite 80’s era hardcore punk beat, then gradually to hear distorted vocals and then the way too low guitar. Finally getting within range I saw a bunch of high school boys playing something I didn’t expect; I’m pretty sure they were covering Black Flag. Not like how Korn or Fall Out Boy would play Black Flag, but Black Flag like a bunch of kids in a garage would play Black Flag. I was impressed.
So how does that tie into this post about NYC’s Ravens and Chimes, a decidedly non-punk band of NYU students? Like our little punk friends in the garage, what they are playing is unexpected. In the case of Ravens and Chimes and their debut album Reichenbach Falls out October 9, their indie pop folk rock, like a younger, peppier Bishop Allen influenced by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (their cover of his “So Long, Marianne” is below), displays a maturity that is a bit of a surprise. Perhaps their devotion to their influences has led them to play more from the heart. And perhaps as a thirtysomething I’m not giving the kids, be they liberal arts college students or high school boys in a garage, enough credit these days.