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popular culture, lasted all weekend
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Public Access EP
Virgin, 2003
This might be the major label world's first attempt at skinny-tie retro. The rhythm section backed Beck for a long time. If you confined Beck to early 80's influences, you might get a pile of sounds like this; punk and jangle guitars, cold synth riffs, New Romanitc smugness, and early MTV pop hooks. The singer has the same spazzy vibrato of Feargal Sharkey of the Undertones. Each song overloads the ideas, and it never exceeds the sum of it's parts, but it's a fine looking pile of parts. When they don't remind me of the Undertones, they remind me of ABC. That's an odd, fun, accomplishment.
12=3 (Here Comes the Doctor) is the best track. Grafts together a dry post punk verse, a wet early-U2 chorus and an cocktail interlude like Spandau Ballet.
Black Jettas cops the Blue Monday riff and has really catchy hook. It's probably supposed to be the hit, but the smugness gets out of control, and it's annoying. Maybe these guys are just a novelty act...
Sex Symbols on Parade ...but if it's Spizz Energi style novelty, who cares? Where's Captian Kirk? Yes.
The Beat goes On - Fell off the back of a truck carrying John Hughes soundtracks albums to Goodwill. Wonderfully overproduced, ridiculously catchy, seriously wangs your chung.
posted Thursday, October 30, 2003
The new Belle and Sebastian single, "Step in to My Office, Baby" is a perfect four minute pop epic, and strong evidence that they might be among the all time greats. Not many bands that start out so modestly can make it to the sixth album, a bigger label, and a much bigger producer without some sort of wash out.
Like the earlier "Lazy Line Painter Jane," it takes the giant-room sound mid sixties pure pop and grafts on a delicious bastard-Scotsman lyric. This one is about on-the-job harassment. And this time it's got baroque Brian Wilson melodies, and the quiet symphonic bridge. Instead of the Joe Meek organ that was featured in "Lazy", this song has a flute. Those mid-sixties studio geniuses loved flute. It's like Clarence Thomas sat in on the Pet Sounds sessions. Sly, evil and incredibly pretty, it's a vampire of a tune. Relax, don't do it, if you were thinking of thinking they were headed downhill.
posted Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Review: Modey Lemon
Thunder + Lightning
Birdman Records, 2003
Bass, how low can you go? Why are the Modey Lemon the seventh or eighth great band I've heard of late who don't have a bass? A friend just called me up and was talking about the White Stripes and the "pure guitar sound". But he's a guitarist. The insert on this disk identifies half of this duo as Paul Quattrone: Lead Drums. Maybe that has more to do it- despite the lack of low-end, it shows the oblique but total conquest of hip hop in pop culture. The beat is all.
The other Modey Lemon here sings, whacks at a guitar, and gets fizzy white-noise leads out of a Moog. Just enough variation to keep the needles pushing into the red for 35 minutes and still thrill all the way through. They uncover some serious rock here. I've heard countless attempts at living up to the Stooges death trip, and "Enemy" is as close as anyone has ever come; the dumbed-up blues riff, the machine rhythm, and most of all, the sentiment: I'd rather be your enemy than to be nothing at all.
"Ants In My Hands" plugs in the sawtooth patch on Moog, then eats the brown acid. "Tongues" has got funk drums and speed-riff guitars and tells the world to shut up. "Predator" doesn't stop punching you in the face. "The Other Direction" is uptight. And the singer is young and good looking. Damn.
posted Tuesday, October 07, 2003
I think the NFL is spamming me. All the names in my junk folder this morning make for quite a threatening sounding defensive line:
Martin Posey, Hershel Raymond, Joesph Peacock, Kai Summerlin, Evert Seabrook, Jaquith W. Fleugel, Colin Carron, Vital A. Thorpe, Jules Caudill, Graham Kendall, Ernesto Lyons, Genaro Pitts, Ralph Witherspoon, Santiago Crow.
posted Tuesday, October 07, 2003
the hall of real estate agents
yinzermulletI've found new music with iRate
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