I’ve been sitting on this one for months now…a testament to how much great music 3hive has in store for you this year! Angela Penhaligon (aka Piney Gir) comes to us from Kansas via the UK. Random right? Her album, Peakahokahoo, is all over the musical map as well; take this first song here as an example. Slippery with slide guitars, it starts off with a twang, breaking down to 808 electronic wizardry in the second verse. Then it all swells together for the chorus. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G” takes the familiar children’s rhyme, backs it with an Italian noir-ish soundtrack, and sets it in Vegas. The one constant? Her solid, silky vocals.
Imaginary Baseball League
If the kids in suburban Detroit are talking about an obscure indie band from Tennessee, it means: a) Imaginary Baseball League is going to be the Next Big Thing, b) someone here has a cousin in Murfreesboro whose best friend is dating IBL’s drummer, or c) the Internet really does work as a way for people with like interests to connect, thus overcoming the boundaries of distance, culture, etc. Whichever answer works for you, go with it, you know? And if you like what you hear of Imaginary Baseball League, first thank Megan and then check out their website for a bunch more downloadable tracks.
Valet
Valet is a Minneapolis band who released their fine debut album The Glamour Is Contagious in 2002. Their latest, Life on the Installment Plan, came out last year, but “Cop Stories” from the former features a hauntingly wonderful melody, the kind that gets stuck in your head, and in this case…that’s a good thing.
The Dears
On a recent day off, I took my wife’s truck in for a transmission flush. While checking in, the service guy neglected to mention that the entire staff took a whole hour off for lunch, which started about ten minutes after I arrived. In other words, I had serious time on my hands. I flipped through an issue of Spin, then Scientific American, People, Jet, Field and Stream and Redbook before returning to the single copy of Spin because, why not? What else was I going to do? Upon this closer, maybe even desperate inspection of the issue, I noticed a blurb on Montreal that mentioned The Dears, and they sounded pretty cool. Little did I know that a random collection of their MP3s, gathered off a smattering of label websites, would reflect my experiences at the auto shop so perfectly. There’s the smoldering righteous indignation of “Summer of Protest,” the hope and determination of “We Can Have It,” the bitter loss of said hope in “Heartless Romantic,” and finally, the goofy, bouncy happiness of “Corduroy Boy,” also known (in my mind) as “Yeah, I Got the Damn Truck Back!”
The Killingtons
My friend Neal, an extreme-snowboarding pediatrician who also has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, is a big fan of The Killingtons. I can imagine him jumping off a helicopter somewhere in the Cascades or Rockies and carving heroically down the face of a mountain in order to set a broken bone or maybe perform a needed kidney transplant on a young child, who also happens to be snowboarding on the mountain, or maybe he’d just take some tissue samples so he could do some sciencey thing with them like look at them through a microscope. Whatever. Anyway, on his way down, Neal would surely listen to the steady adrenaline of “Weekend Drive” off The Killingtons’ California Life EP. Wait, in that case, maybe it should be Mammoth or Mt. Shasta…
The Essex Green
Hopefully you were familiar with the musical offerings of Merge Records before hearing The Arcade Fire. If not, I hope you’ve done some due diligence since. The Long Goodbye, released in 2003, from The Essex Green is among the many gems in the Merge catalog. Largely underappreciated by the press, public, and perhaps even their label, songs like “The Late Great Cassiopia” alone are worth 10x the current download pricing standard of 99 cents. Thanks to the generosity of the artist however, you pay nothing. Appreciate it!
Marbles
Robert Schneider has a special place in my heart. It’s not just the perfect pop he has cranked out under the monikers of the Apples in Stereo, the Marbles, and Ulysses. You see, he’s such a swell guy. Many years ago, I left Utah with my girlfriend to drive to Denver under the guise of visiting my sister, when in fact, I wanted to see the Apples. By the time we reached Denver, my girlfriend was my fiancée, and the first thing we did upon arriving was head to the Lion’s Lair (oh yeah, it was a dive) to see the Apples with special guests, The Drags. While we didn’t tell them we just got engaged, we did tell them we made the trek from Utah just to see them (and my sister, in case she’s reading). They embraced us as dear friends. The love affair will continue when the Marbles play Memphis on March 24th supporting their new album Expo and Clem Snide.
Clem Snide
For a group that has sounded so methodical for so long, this new, Tennessee Waltzy pace is nearly euphoric. Likewise, there’s a sonic sheen to “Fill Me With Your Light” that seems almost…polished. But beneath all of the unassuming hoopla is the same old song: the guys who come across as more down on themselves than anyone else have this strange power to make us feel a whole lot better about ourselves.
Pepito
I was in New York, briefly, over the weekend with just enough time to buy a cheesecake from Carnegie Deli for my valentine (oh, she loved me for it), and to stroll through Central Park under Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates. Piped into my head through the trusty iPod, Pepito’s playful, stuttering pop was a wonderful audio accompanyment.
Yo La Tengo
I have it! Yo La Tengo!