Hype Machine Picks This Week

Active Child.

One dude from L.A.!!

Full layering!!

Eighties-choral vocals!!

Vintage synth settings!!

New album--She Was a Vision 7"

Yummy.

http://www.myspace.com/activechild

Valentine's Violence

Oh goodness, goodness, it's been forever since the last great concert that took place at the Ottobar in Baltimore on that holiest of crap holidays, Valentine's Day, but good music never dies and the hype lives on forever, so the flagellation stops here.

Strike Anywhere has been around forever, so of course I'm just finding out that I dig their tunes and their philosophy. Anyone who keeps a healthy spirit of discontent and refusal to settle for the status quo is godlike in my book. I have to give it to them for their willingness to revel in their own contradictions: a hardcore band out of "redneck" Virginia, led by a dread-whipping lead singer (who yes, can actually carry a badass tune as well as rip some vocal cords) with the usual two-minute fury of drumsticks and flailing bodies but with carefully punctuated changes and even harmonies without that super-saturation you find in pop-punk (shudder). But not to overstate my case, here are some pictures and a very telling quote from their FAQ page on their website, describing their tour experience.

As a band, we have no uniform, no party line . We tend to revel in the contradictions and humanity of these ideas, living them on a scale where we still travel, play shows in a variety of venues, using many different operating methods, kind of on a case-by-case basis. And at the end of a tour, you know, we go back to a relatively safe place where we can live with our little families; groups of hometown friends, significant others who hold it down for us - where we dig into working shitty jobs, writing music, participating when we can in direct action, contributing music and time to benefits for causes we believe in. We try and push the ideas beyond the two minute hardcore song into the world beyond counterculture - rescuing animals, and just trying to be decent to friends and strangers. . . .But we risk so little in comparison to so many . Therefore, Its so disarming and pure to see a community engaged fully, risking everything in defense of ideas, justice and joy against a state apparatus where you can just disappear if you make too much trouble. ( So if the cops don't get you, the nazis will - and if the nazis don't get you , the police will, and if you are alive by the afternoon and no one's chasing you, you CHOOSE to come to our show, set up a table full of subversive, inspiring literature and ... protect us ( a punk band from Virginia, U.S.A. ) from these enemies of your everyday existence ...? My mind was blown by so many things on this tour . )
The men and women in Minsk and here in Moscow were living this everyday, not just through art and theory, but with the sustained courage and discipline that shone like the Winter Sun behind their eyes.