Archive for April, 2007
Gruff Rhys
by teabog on April 16th, 2007
Gruff Rhys
“Gwn Mi Wn” (From the album Yr Atal Genhedlaeth )
I should probably be pimping something off of Gruff’s new album, Candylion, but I’m afraid that album suffers from the same problem as did the last SFA album: forced accessibility. This isn’t to say that neither album isn’t good (both are very good, actually), it’s just that they lack the pothead edge that you find in Rhy’s earlier, drunker works.
This song is in Welsh, and since I can’t understand a syllable of it so it just might be Gruff saying “you are a fag for listening this” over and over again. I don’t care. It’s simple—just a drum beat and a vocal harmony—but it gets me all pumped up. Great for the start of a run.
St. Vincent
by teabog on April 14th, 2007
St. Vincent
“Now. Now.” (From the album Marry Me)
This young lady kinda sounds like Annie Lenox, only much less annoying. Her name is Annie Clark, and she plays a lot of instruments. She’s played guitar with the Polyphonic Spree and with Sufjan Stevens.
The song is pretty, pastoral. Hell of a springtime song, with big, sweet-sounding orchestral and children’s choir flourishes against Clark’s strong but simple vocal line eventually give way to some wonderfully out of place guitar distortion. If the songs streaming on her myspace are any indication, I’m really looking forward to her album. The base of her songwriting is this sort of wannabe Fiona Apple bluesy girl-with-a-piano stuff but then every song’s got something about it that’s completely fucked up and unexpected. Also, Brian Teasley from Man or Astro-man is gonna be on it.
Steroid Maximus
by teabog on April 11th, 2007
Steroid Maximus
“Chain Reaction” (From the album Ectopia)
Do you like the Venture Brothers? Of course you do, everyone does. But answer this one for me, Jackson: Do you like the music from the Venture Brothers? That orchestral, industrial stuff that sounds like a combination between the music from Raymond Watts, modern classical, and the music from old promotional films? Do you like that? Because that’s what this is.
Same dude. J.G. Thirlwell. He does Foetus, as well, and I’m not a huge fan of Foetus because of the vocals but everything done under the Steriod Maximus moniker is instrumental which makes it a lot better.
My girlfriend doesn’t like this music because she says it puts her on edge, like a stress headache. That’s why I like it. If you listen to this song while you’re driving you’ll do stupid things like ramming into people and flipping off cops. It’s just that kind of song.
Ladyfuzz
by teabog on April 3rd, 2007
Ladyfuzz
“Bouncy Ball” (From the album Kerfuffle)
This would probably have been my guitar rock album of 2006 if I had heard if before the year ended. That’s because it’s pretty much just guitar rock—80s twinged, hints of pop—and it’s really good.
Back to that “80s twinged” business; the temptation is to liken Ladyfuzz to throwback acts like Bloc Party, but that comparison really doesn’t work. They a female singer, for one. And they have talent, for another. And most importantly, they seem to actually value their music over their image, and they do a much better job of sounding like something that’s genuinely from 80s rather than something that’s been overproduced to the point where it has a glossy sheen and smells like magazine paper. Ladyfuzz still go for the pop production, but it doesn’t rob them of their edge. They are still, at their heart, rock musicians.
Kerfuffle’s supposedly gotten a fair amount of air and radioplay in the UK, but I can’t find a review of it on any major UK site. I don’t remember having ever seen them on a major blog, but they must have been otherwise I wouldn’t have ever heard of them. Anyhow, if this album is ever released in the US and if it ever gets any press, it’ll be huge.
The Official website of Ladyfuzz
Myspace
Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys
by teabog on April 1st, 2007
Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys”
“Spanish Dagger” (From the album Turntable Matinee)
If you go on youtube and search the word “commercial” along with any year from the 80s to the present day you’ll find one or two users who have posted 10-20-minute long strings of ads from that time period. Try it out; old commercials are really entertaining, especially if you’ve got people over who you want to leave and you can get the internet on your TV through your Wii.
I was going through commercials from the early nineties the other day, after having worked my way up through the 80s, and I was amazed at the strange design phases the commercials went through, and especially how uniformly ever major advertiser would change the feel of their ad campaigns from year to year. In 1994, that feel was entirely 50s throwback, urban but still Caucasian, with clean cityscapes and non-threatening jazz music.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boy are in the same vein as the commercials of 1994: non-threatening, Causcasianized 50s throwback (nevermind that Sandy appears to be Hispanic, I’m talking about the feel of the music). The color scheme and mode of dress are the same as they were in 1954, but everything’s been cleaned up and watered down for contemporary consumption.
The strange thing is that this watered-down sound comes across so earnest. It doesn’t feel strangled or antiseptic. You could almost believe this is how guitar rock actually sounded back then, if you didn’t know better.
The Official website of Big Sandy