Lester Bangs’ favorite song was “96 Tears†by ? and the Mysterians. John Peel’s favorite was “Teenage Kicks†by the Undertones. Both were love songs by garage bands that could barely play chords and likely couldn’t read music any better than I can. The message is clear: for the most vaunted of audiophiles, “bad†is the best kind of rock music because the whole point is that it’s supposed to sound bad to somebody, hopefully your parents and/or local law enforcement officials and church leaders. By those standards, the Atlanta group Black Lips is pretty damned good. Granted, their really-old garage sound is slightly more preening than authentic, but that seems to be purely a matter of birthdates. You don’t get the sense that they’re being anything but their goofy-ass selves when they sing about having a bad day or set off on some epic live shows of Brian-Jonestown-Massacre proportions. For that, we salute them.
Uzeda
I was listening to my iPod last night on the way home and had a distinct sense of déjà vu. This sound, this Uzeda, may be from Sicily but that pummeling rhythm, freeform guitar and piercing vocals could have been coming directly from Chicago in the mid-‘90s. And for good reason: Not only are they on Touch and Go and have been since the mid-‘90s, but Steve Albini is their recording engineer. So not only do Uzeda shake the paint off the walls, but they do it in a supersonic way that only Albini can conjure. Oh, to be young and insatiable once more…
Aimee Mann
Out here on the fringes—that’s where we are, blog readers, the fringes—it might not be cool to cop to liking the Christmas standards. Then again, maybe I’m alone on that one and there’s no chip on anyone else’s shoulders. There certainly isn’t one on Aimee Mann’s. The reigning champion thinking girl’s singer-songwriter-goddess offers up an album of standards with some awfully fine originals in-between, making it a Christmas album that your mother will love as much as you do (although we make no recommendations on how to get her off Mannheim Steamroller altogether). Since there’s only one weekend left, shoppers, hop on over to your friendly neighborhood online music store and pick up the album. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” will give you just enough of a taste to hold you over until your download is complete.
Kama Aina
I like to think, mainly because it makes me feel less pathetic, that everyone who went to college and studied something other than business administration had some kind of youthfully pretentious obsession. Mine was Marshall McLuhan, the new media oracle from the Great White North who looked like a professorial Salvador Dali, had a cameo in a Woody Allen movie (nay, the best. cameo. ever.) and was an astoundingly salient bullshitter. I ain’t saying I don’t still love the man, just that nearly a decade after graduation it’s funny to look back and think of taking my dog-eared copy of War and Peace in the Global Village to my bartending gig at Benihana and intensely and conspicuously reading it between mixing Mai-Tais—as if any of my Japanese coworkers gave a damn. We were so cool once, weren’t we? Anyhow, I think of McLuhan’s fabled “global village†now because two of my favorite Japanese acts (the other one is Cacoy) this year have come to me from the Danish label Rumraket, which is doing for non-European music in Europe what Minty Fresh has been doing for European music in the U.S. of late—namely, rockin’ it. Kama Aina, whose name is Hawaiian and whose sole member is Takuji Aoyagi, doesn’t rock it, per se, he soothes it with loopy little lullabies built around clean, undistorted percussion, guitar and other sweet, naturalistic sounds. “Hotaru†is prettiest on headphones, where you can nearly see each bang and pluck. But if you’re just not that visual, check out the video for “Glasgow Sky,†which is as inventive as Bjork and twice as contemplative.
Hello Saferide
Remember a few weeks ago when I gave you some music that my pal Lisa had recommended? Well, she’s done some more spot-on MP3 hunting, and rather than give my own take on it, let’s hear directly from the woman herself. Take it away, Lisa…
Everyone loves love. We really do. We love us some love. And because there simply aren’t enough misanthropic recluses out there who can’t find other humans to care for their sorry selves, there is a truckload of songs made to feel how we feel. And that’s great. Really. It’s great. That said, it was breath-of-fresh-air time when I finally to listened to Hello Saferide – a guitar-playing Swede who’s a little nutty, a little neurotic, totally self-conscious and, OMG, she’s not even a little bit afraid to be such a girl.
Hello Saferide wishes her ex-lover the very worst on Valentine’s Day, she hopes you keep your socks on in bed because, well, she’s still scared of feet, and she knows that “somebody” ordered too many drinks last night and “somebody” reckoned that dancin’ on the bars was all right. Yep she’s a total mess, but she delivers her personal brand of nuttiness with such quirk, flare and snark that I’m right there with her. It’s nice to hear someone feeling how SHE feels, not how she thinks the rest of us will. And somehow, underneath all of that idiosyncrasy and Hello Saferide-ness, it’s all totally relatable.
Christians & Lions
If you were to strip the music from the songs of some awfully fine lyricists like Bob Dylan or Conner Oberst, you would likely be a little perplexed by what you’re hearing. Indeed, the few attempts there have been to give Dylan’s lyrics a more literal interpretation on stage and on the big screen have been so disastrous that it can make one lose respect for the incoherent old bastard. Fortunately, when such lyricists set their thoughts to a simple melody, what they say doesn’t have to be open for the simplest of interpretations. So even though you can easily find out why Sam Potrykus named his band Christians & Lions, or you can dissect the big-brained, big-hearted meanderings of songs like “Gimme Diction,” you can just as easily get lost not in what the words mean, but in the way they rise from the music like smoke from an agitated candle, creating a deductive harmony you can ponder or simply take on your own terms.
Kay Kay & His Weathered Underground
The first minute of “Hey Mamma” pays major homage to the Beatles of a certain era you can probably guess by looking at the photo. After the first minute, as Hunter S. Thompson might say, it gets a little strange. But strange is good, and Kay Kay manages to toss around strings, percussion, and even what sounds like a player piano to spritely effect. The songs on the band’s MySpace page are equally confounding yet somehow appealing to the ears. Kay Kay will be coughing up a cassette-only EP soon, so pick it up and, hop in your 10-year-old Subaru and crank it until you can’t hear the engine noise.
Frida Hyvonen
As a parting gift for the last week at my job, my coworker Lisa sent me some music recommendations—and when Lisa sends recs, I tend to listen because her mad skillz at free-MP3-mining far surpass my own. Frida Hyvönen was on that list, though with the caveat that the record was released nearly a year ago in Frida’s native Sweden (it’s spankin’ new on Secretly Canadian in the U.S.), so for you Northern European seekers, this may be old news. But for the rest of us, it’s a refreshingly enigmatic gust of cool air. Hyvönen is a sort of Scandinavian Joni Mitchell, a post-feminist proto-poet with the voice of an angel and the outlook of Kierkegaard. The track here is short and bittersweet. The rest of the album multifaceted and addictive. Take Lisa’s advice and pick it up.
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The Silent Years
Listening to The Silent Years takes me back to my oh-so-glorious college radio days. We were on the AM frequency and didn’t have an FCC license so we couldn’t broadcast off-campus, which wouldn’t have been so limiting if it hadn’t been a commuter campus. The quietude afforded us time and space to make mistakes, build playlists with no real agenda, and explore the piles and piles of promo CDs stacked around the studio (despite signs asking that everything go back to from whence it came). The Silent Years is like a band I may have found in a pile, an earnest young outfit with vaguely nihilistic lyrics sung, possibly ironically, with great emotion, and riffs that made me nod my head but weren’t obnoxious enough to cause consternation. Coulda been Texas is the Reason, or Ash, or any of a dozen others. I would throw it in the rotation, maybe play another song at the top of each hour, and be fully obsessed before my timeslot was over. Anyhow, The Silent Years give me fond memories and have the potential to become an aural obsession that I’d like to tell the world about, or at least those of you who get the signal.