Jumpers and Crack

My friend Braden sent me this video of "the World's leading kitchen appliance rock group" Hurra Torpedo. The Norwegian group all wear matching track suits and have a tendency to let their cracks hang out. At one point in the video the be-cracked percussionist leers above the stovetop, with a large metal object above his head, waiting and creating suspense. What is amazing is that this cover of Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart is actually quite emotive. The group have been active since 1995! So maybe this is old new

Hurra Torpedo video

November Frost

So I know I have been quiet lately. I mainly blame it on moving and such. Another large aspect is that I haven't really stumbled upon and music that I felt the need to stand on my fence and yell it's praises. Thank god for Edith Frost. The First album I ever reviewed that went into print was her second album Telescopic. It was interesting as I took it out of a review bin based on the label Drag City. My first impressions of the album were mixed, but in the end it really won me over. My admiration of Edith has continued to grow and grow.

Edith is also one of the earliest webloggers. She used to have this web site where she wrote down the intimate details of her life with a shocking honesty. It was fantastic. I was a regular reader until she discontinued it due to some others being upset about her honesty about them! She is back in the weblogging game you can take a look here.

So yes, Edith is an honest nerd who has given me great tips about getting the most out of OS X , and writes country music that would make a farmer cry. She has a new album It's a Game arriving on November 15th. The album is excellent start to finish, perfect to hole up to on a sunday afternoon.

Lovin' You Goodbye - Edith Frost From her new album It's A Game


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I just realized that Ian has already mentioned this album, thought I don't think he has heard the whole thing yet so I guess this is the expanded edition, with a different song selection. So Ian and I agree. Edith Frost = Good

Deck the House

We know that we've been getting pretty slack around here lately, but we assure you that we're all working on devoting less time to our real lives and more to the blogosphere.

Akufen - Deck the House
I have a confession. During a rather dark twelve or fifteen month period in my life, around about the end of high school, I attended quite a few - and it pains me to admit this - raves. You know: glow sticks, bad house music, large pants, drugs made in someone's bathtub. Seriously. All of the sudden, everyone I knew was either a DJ or saving up money to buy turntables. The raves were in people's basements, obscure community centres in small villages, or even out in the woods. While everyone I knew seemed really into the whole thing, I would always be sober at these raves, most often in a state of extreme crankiness, and would be subjected to hours of the absolute worst music ever produced. The beats were always the same, just at a different tempo, and the songs themselves blended into one another in such a way that I think you had to be really concentrating to tell the difference between them. Among other things, the songs were filled with the cheesiest vocals ever conceived ("Oooo love is every-eeeee-thing, whooooaaaa", etc.), whistles, smoky smooth jazz saxophones, bad synths - I get angry even thinking about it. All that people at these raves cared about was that the music was easy to dance to, which it was. (If I can dance to it, then it is easy to dance to.) In fact, I'm willing to bet that house music is the absolute lowest common denominator in the spectrum of dance music. It is, after all, intended to appeal to a group of people, largely out of their mind on a painfull mixture of bad drugs made of household cleaners, dressed like teddy bears and sucking on soothers.

Which brings me to this song. If house music is, by its very definition, bad, what am I supposed to make of good house music? Can there possibly be such a thing? Is the whole basis for my philosophy of music criticism (ie, the question "Is this song at least better than house music?") somehow inherently flawed? You can ponder these questions while you listen to the song posted above. I'll just add that, when I first heard this song, my mind literally exploded. Seriously, it was totally gross. We can discuss the matter further in the comments.
[This song is from the very, very good album "My Way". Buy it here.]

Songs of Interest

Drag City's fall lineup is ridiculously good this year. The Silver Jews album alone would have sufficed, but with releases from Will Oldham, Edith Frost and The Howling Hex, we are spoiled fan-boys and -girls, indeed. Courtesy of Drag City, here's a few samples:

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Hearts (live)
I'm not usually a big live album fan but, for Will Oldham, I'm willing to make an exception. When I saw Oldham play solo a few summers ago, it was easily one of my most memorable concert experiences. He managed to completely transform some of my favorite songs, often approaching them from a totally different perspective than on the album by singing them in different keys, playing totally new chord progressions, or even just by placing a different emphasis on certain lyrics. The live album, Summer in the Southeast, documents a tour done a few months after I saw him and, although it's with a full band instead of solo, it seems to hold out some promise. This particular recording is fantastic sounding and, aside from the not-so-good backup singing, the track comes across as being a pretty solid performance in its own right.

The Howling Hex - Apache Energy Plan
The drum and guitar sounds on this song are so fucking good. It helps that the song itself is awesome, but I would probably be satisfied with just the drums and guitars playing random sounds for 3 minutes. It's like they were filtered through honey, pressed onto vinyl, and then recorded onto a solid gold cassette tape.

Edith Frost - Emergency
I'm a sucker for sad songs but I'm an even bigger sucker for sad songs that are played in a kind of upbeat sort of way. I'm also a sucker for Edith Frost. She sings low end like nobody else, but she has this awesome fragile/enormous quality to her voice that I can't quite explain. I just know that I likes it a lot.

[You can buy all of these albums here]

Paper Cranes and Giant Sand

Reading this post back to myself, I suddenly realize that it's suffocating on unneccessary commas. I cannot fix this right now so, instead, I apologise.

The Paper Cranes - I'll Love You Till My Veins Explode
This song is crying out to be released from it's demo production. Overall, it's demands are rather simple: some of those high-end-only 80s drum sounds, digital reverb all over the vocals, thickly layered backing oooos and aaaahs worthy of a sentimental love song, and some rough angry sounds coming out of the guitar occasionally for good measure. I know the band is recording their first EP sometime this week, so we can only pray that the song's goodness will be sufficiently amplified so as to help the band find a record label to take them in and give the rest of their songs a good home. For those of you who like what you hear, I highly recommend the Band's other two demos which can be found here.
[the band's website]

Arizona Amp and Alternator - Bottom of the Barrel
Unlike the song above, this song is the result of a successful compromise between the attractive sloppiness of the demo recording and the necessity of the studio. It manages to sound simultaneously live, almost improvised, and, at the same time, somehow complete. I think this recording philosophy is probably the very attractive/repulsive quality that makes me love/hate Giant Sand in equal measures. (You probably noticed as soon as the vocals started but, in case you didn't, this is the latest Howe Gelb project.) This song undoubtedly falls into the love camp, although I can't pinpoint the exact reason why. Perhaps it's the fact that, based on my general hatred of guitar solos, I enjoy that the solo starting 3/4 of the way through the song is not meant to bring out the melody or display any kind of musical virtuosity but, rather, to annihilate the rest of the instruments and, ultimately, the song itself.
[buy]

Bunny Bunny Bunny

While you might think that I would post something profound after such an absence here it is.
A band that I have long championed have just released a new album and I have a nice little link that will allow you to stream the whole album. I haven't finished listining to it yet, but I like what I hear. So lets put our heads together and think about Deerhoof, bunnies, noisy rock and good dancing.

Stream Deerhoof's new album 'The Runners Four' here

New Pornographers

For some reason, during the past few years I convinced myself that I didn't like the New Pornographers. I thought they were overwrought, saccharine and, overall, just too much something. Tonight, though, I went to a New Pornographers/Destroyer concert and everything changed. I originally bought the tickets because I wanted to see Destroyer, who's currently performing songs exclusively from Thief and Streethawk. Destroyer, as was expected, was awesome. (Actually, it might even have been the most consistently good Destroyer show I've seen in quite some time, but that's for a different post.) But when the New Pornographers started to play, I realized that I had completely missed the point for all these years. The wall of sound effect alone was quite impressive in itself but it can't totally account for the fact that, when played in a live setting, the songs suddenly took on this epic quality. I could see the unstoppable urge to dance spreading throughout the crowd as the night wore on, but I was shocked at how many songs came across as being classics, even though I only listen to the albums occasionally. I guess what I'm meaning to say with all this is that, Carl Newman, I apologise for all the hating. I have been converted.

Here's some songs by the New Pornographers, as well as by band members and affiliated bands.

New Pornographers - The Laws Have Changed
This song kicked my ass tonight. I almost forgot how simultaneously complex yet catchy it is and, up until today, I didn't even realize how amazing the lyrics are.

Destroyer - Streets of Fire
You can't beat the original, but you can make it sound better. They easily proved this tonight.

Neko Case - Dreaming Man
This is Neko Case covering Neil Young from Harvest Moon, the only adult contemporary album that I consider a must own. Really, it all comes together when she says the Aerostar line, in spite of the gender confusion problems. Or perhaps because of them.

The Battles - Lycanthropy
I think the guitarist that played with destroyer tonight is in this Vancouver band. Even if he isn't, Dan Bejar played keyboards on this song. At least I think he did. Even without him, though, this song is awesomely good.

Immaculate Machine - Broken Ship
I missed this band tonight, which I regret, but the girl played some mean keyboard and tambourines with the new pornos.

[It goes without saying that you should buy all these albums but, because it's late, I hope that you can find them on the internets yourselves without the assistance of handy links.]

Steve McBean Retrospective

[Note: This post is originally from April 28, 2005, but, after seeing the McBean fronted Black Mountain earlier this week, I feel the need to revisit the songs. The band managed to play an outstanding set despite being forced to play on borrowed instruments - their own had been stolen in New York a few days earlier - and despite being on the tail end of what seems like an eight or nine month tour schedule. Anyway, for those of you who missed this post in April, these are easily some of my favorite songs.]


With the well-deserved success of Black Mountain and the Pink Mountaintops, Steve McBean is finally starting to get some recognition. I've been listening to McBean fronted bands for a long time now and have been waiting patiently for the rest of the world to catch on. My first punk rock show in grade nine was to see McBean's early punk band Gus, whose album The Progressive Science of Breeding Idiots for a Dumber Society on Nomeansno's Wrong Records is still among my favorites. Ex-Dead Teenager, McBean's next band after Gus, broke-up after only putting out a few self-released cassettes, although thankfully you can download their posthumous new wave/hardcore album at the Hive Studios website here. The unfortunately named Jerk with a Bomb marked a major change away from the punk rock noisiness of McBean's earlier bands to a stripped down rock/folk format. The early JWAB shows, with band mate Joshua Wells playing simultaneous drums and keyboards, were amazing and the first two albums Death to False Metal and The Old Noise are both great in their own right. However, their next album, Pyrokenisis, moved the band to a new level of quality and was marked by the addition of a full time bass player. I can't recommend the album highly enough and, given that it’s still in print, suggest that you purchase it here. I won't say much about Black Mountain and the Pink Mountaintops because they're getting a lot of press and you can read about them elsewhere. I will, however, strongly urge you to buy their albums and see them live if you get a chance.

Gus - Bad mouth expands (1995)

Ex Dead Teenager - Bon Scott (1998)

Jerk With A Bomb - I believe in mutilation (1999)

Jerk With A Bomb - Fine health is at home (2002)

Pink Mountaintops - Rock'n'Roll Fantasy (2004)

Black Mountain - Druganaut (2005)

Songs of Interest

More substantial posts should be on their way in the next week or so, but until then here's a few songs to think about.

The Silver Jews - I'm getting back into getting back into you
Before David Berman's voice drops so many octaves that it ceases to be audible, I have a feeling that one day he may just be recognized as the greatest country singer of his generation. This song is filled with so many sad bars, suburbs, ex-wives, brandy, grizzled singers and Texaco signs that it pretty much condenses the theme of every country song ever written into just a few verses and somehow transforms the genre into indie-rock.
[buy]

Hayden - Skyscraper National Park
I have a feeling that Grandaddy has been trying unsuccessfully to write this song for the past two albums or so. Not to slag Grandaddy, who I actually quite like, but this is a really, really good song from a really, really good album.
[buy]

The Gris Gris - Skin Mass Cat
This song was recorded at the bottom of a swamp while the band floated above in a glass bottomed boat. For percussion, the drummer tapped a broken microphone against the boat's hull. And to record the vocals, the singer's head was held below the water by his band mates for the duration of the song. When the recording was finished, the band decided to dedicate the song to the "new halloween".
[buy]