One dude from L.A.!!
Full layering!!
Eighties-choral vocals!!
Vintage synth settings!!
New album--She Was a Vision 7"
Yummy.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Maynard Man
Remember this guy?
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Something Completely Different...
This just popped up on my Gmail, and I sort of can't believe it's not in a Kurt Vonnegut novel or something: Holiday Inn Offers Human Bed-Warming Service
I wonder if you can hand-pick your bed-warmer for that evening, based on body mass and proportional emitted heat, etc. Otherwise it would be a waste, obviously.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
What Everyone Else is Blogging About
The new Vampire Weekend album, Contra is stirring up a lot of talk because it is, in the well-thought opinion of many, f--ing awesome. Though the polyphonic polyrhythms and reverb-heavy vocals on top of playful synth and samples is very Animal Collective-esque, (and familiar or predictable only in that comparison), the songs on this sophomore album are anything but sophomoric. Pretty impressive the Columbia graduates landed movie gigs (Stepbrothers and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) just two years after their inception in 2006. And the fact that they didn't go suddenly devoid of originality or creativity after first spark of fame is hopeful. It is Vampire Weekend who will be bringing us our Audiogasm of the Moment, "Holiday."
Monday, January 18, 2010
This is Hardcore!
Though we only caught the end of it, there was a very legitimate hardcore show at the Sonar in Baltimore last night, featuring the likes of Naysayer, Cruel Hand, Maximum Penalty, Forfeit, and Trapped Under Ice, local from B-more, and featuring one of the coolest servers at Sticky Rice, Brad. Again, only caught the last few songs, but heard enough to be totally blown away, impressed, and somehow comforted at seeing all the crucial pile-ups and hype that were being thrown onto stage. When are you ever going to see a totally agro, sweaty young thing, all shirtless and flailing limbs, suddenly jump onstage to carefully right the microphone that was inadvertently knocked over? The culture surrounding hardcore is as unique and deep-rooted as the music itself.
In a segmented and often pretentious culture, the spirit of hardcore forms undeniable bonds, and buzzes with the truest of life-loving mentality. It's pretty cool to see the bands from an originally D.C.-initiated genre now tour as far away as the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and Austria. Good luck to these guys on their tour, and hopefully I'll get to see an entire set soon!
Keep bringin' the real back to D.C.--we could use it!!
Oh yeah, just their amazing awesome Myspace, complete with killer rage and killer merch.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Brave New Decade
While it blows my mind that the first decade of the twenty-first century has already gone by, it is even more mind-bending how much more adept we become at adapting our surroundings to our aesthetic tastes (needs)? By which I mean that in an age of escapism through the filtering and sensationalizing of our reality, we start to demand more of art: it needs to be clever, the right mix of tongue-in-cheek irony and bold defiance to the bullshit coming in at us from all angles. It's been said before, and I will here say it again: anyone still thinking there is no Good new music coming out nowadays is sadly mistaken. Here is a list of awesome things recently brought to my attention that hopefully bring you as much comfort as it does me:
1. This band Witchcraft, from Sweden and around since 2000, who played at the Rock and Roll Hotel in 2006 but haven't had a new album since Alchemist came out in 2007. Incomparably badass and beautiful, the pillars of our great Valhalla!
1. This band Witchcraft, from Sweden and around since 2000, who played at the Rock and Roll Hotel in 2006 but haven't had a new album since Alchemist came out in 2007. Incomparably badass and beautiful, the pillars of our great Valhalla!
2. This website DC Shows Dot Net where you can research upcoming local punk and hardcore shows. Definitely would have come in handy when I was a bored high schooler in the area, once upon a time...
3. A video of Phoenix playing a live, acoustic and seemingly impromptu version of "1901" on the streets of Paris...thanks to Tori for showing this to me at work!
4. A very predatory Tiger graced the cover of Vanity Fair this month, suggesting suggestively that perhaps we were wrong, and golf is sexy after all.
...or maybe it's just jacked on cash and rep. (Rep!!!)
5. I broke down and bought an exquisite, oh-so-Edie-Sedgwick faux-fur coat at H&M for an impossible sale price I couldn't turn down, and apparently it makes the owner equally hard to miss...though, "better to be looked over than to be overlooked!" (Mae West). Photos to follow.
6. Other awesome and recent things include Paste Magazine, Kate Hudson, and Lady Gaga for making videos good for putting on mute.
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