Truly, truly worth checking out. I enjoyed what Adam from icouldietomorrow wrote up for this peculiar albeit absolutely gorgeous mash-up of lo-fi riff-age (tooo manyy hyyyphens), bewildering soundscapes, and lines spoken and shouted in Italian and English respectively. If you happen upon our blog, please take a detour over to the icoulddietommorows and give this a try. If your familiar with anything involving d.vassalotti, be it Cult Ritual, Merchandise, Neon Blud etc., this will not disappoint and may result in Tampageist.
Purchase from Vinyl Rites here and check out the 7 inch he put out through Katorga Works under the moniker ( ) at this boring website.
-Frank's last commercial inspired post for a while.
From the ice-rink that is Buffalo, NY comes a firecracker of a split 7" that should make any Buffal-killing Queen City Punk proud. Brown Sugar is definitely one of the most entertaining bands I was able to see last year, and their tour ended on a very high note when they shared the stage in Brooklyn with powerhouse players Rational Animals back in December. Their lead singer Eddy takes snotty vocals and space invasion really seriously and, let me tell you, the 4 songs that make up the b side of this split will challenge any iron minded listener to refrain from pillow moshing. Just take in the lovely simplicity of lyrics like "good ol' days/just sticks & rocks/no gunshots/just sticks & headlocks/good ol' days." For back-to-basics nerds, this is a must-listen.
A side??
Mayday! is another Buffalo band and Feral Kid label-mate of Brown Sugar. They remind me a little of the band Morbid Opera from Fla. and the 80's. Surfing is permitted on Lake Ontario and your not going to regret it.
Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder where the "why did you hurt me?” paradigm of lady-fronted pop music came
from. The blues is an obvious answer. However, when I actually listen to older
lyrics like Bessie Smith and Elizabeth Cotten, they're talking about how they feel instead of analyzing dudes. Analyzing someone else loses some of the
power that comes from the singer expressing their own feelings. My unfounded conspiracy
theory is that the whole “why did you hurt me (was it yr dad)?” trend was a weird marketing ploy perpetrated
by Phil Spector in the sixties, but I really don’t know. Anyway, I’m always
grateful to hear introspective tracks that play around with the concept
and start telling a different story.
Waxahatchee
is Katie Crutchfield of P.S. Eliot and Bad Banana's solo project, and American Weekend is her first
full-length release following a 2011 split with Chris Clavin. The acoustic tracks contain short and simple
melodies reminiscent of a Guided by Voices’ jingle, and the lyrics are like tiny devastating short stories. Despite the haunting,
melancholy tone, American Weekend conveys a kind of bravado and even humor that puts
it outside most 90’s hand-holding pop activity.
Everything sounds slightly underwater.
"bathtub"
Always from a first-person perspective, each song sounds masochistic and sad and desperate, which ironically or not is why I find American Weekend a “feminist album.” Crushers like “catfish” and “rose, 1956” insist on irredeemable loss. “rose 1956” could easily be about a grandmother’s life: “now i hide out from telephone
wires at waxahatchee creek/ your body, weak from smoke and tar and subsequent
disease/ you got married when you were 15.”
These tracks remind me of the private, inward anger that I associate with my American
Weekend generation, and the weird integrity of refusing to be any less sad. Only slightly less underwater than "bathtub," “catfish” is by
far my favorite track. The melody is so repetitive and the lyrics are so
careful and precise that it makes me think of very barely contained anger: “we
stick to our slow motion memory/its 1 in the morning and 90 degrees/and though
now it is hovering darkly over me/it'll look just like heaven when i get up and
leave/you're a ghost and i can't breathe.”
[Anyone
who wants to talk about feminist mourning, catfish, Phil Spector or mood music, feel free to
get in touch].
-Rachel
Waxahatchee is on tour at this very moment, and you can find American
Weekend here from Don Giovanni.
A welcome mat of sorts. Here is the sophomore release from this Flying Nun heavyweight. New Zealand's contribution to the explosion of indie pop and twee bands during the late '80's and early '90's cannot be overlooked when discussing such outfits as The Clean, Look Blue Go Purple, Dead C, and my personal favorite, Straitjacket Fits. I don't remember when I first heard Melt but I knew I was nuked from the start.
The vocal companionship on this record between guitarists Shayne Carter and Andrew Brough is nothing short of amazing given that the two project very different sounding styles of play. Carter's guitar work on the opening track "Bad Note For a Heart," and following in "Missing Presumed Drowned," is so gritty (read:kiwi) sounding compared to Brough's more jangled and pop-driven tracks like "Down in Splendour" and "Hand in Mine." When their worlds collide in the album's heaviest track "A.P.S." I'm left feeling like I'm hearing this band for the first time.
Apparently they're still kinda big in the college town of Dunedin, NZ, re-uniting for a brief tour in 2005, but I imagine that finding actual copies of this or any of their other releases is hard. If anyone knows anything more about that, please share with us.
