Blitzen Trapper “Whiskey Kisser”

by teabog on March 13th, 2007

Blitzen Trapper “Whiskey Kisser”
“Whiskey Kisser” (From the albumBlitzen Trapper)

If you’re judging bands only by the quality of their recorded output, Blitzen Trapper is easily the most unfairly ignored American group of this decade. I liken their releases to early Beck in that they manage to blend and bend dozens of different genres while producing distinctly American rocks that’s both easily accessible and completely unique sounding. It’s not only good music; it’s appealing music, the kind of music that hepsters would initially attach themselves to and then all sorts of college kids would pick up on. This is like Modest Mouse or Spoon, only better than the recent releases of either group. Simply put, it’s very good music that everyone can enjoy.

Why, then, does no one listen to it? As far as I can tell, it’s only because they’re self-released, and the band’s meager budget doesn’t buy them much press coverage. Their self-titled first album, from which the tobacco-soaked, sun-stained “Whiskey Kisser” was taken, wasn’t reviewed anywhere. Their second album, Field Rexx got a fair amount of overwhelmingly positive press coverage, but received little support otherwise. Yeah, a good review in Music for Robots might encourage a few people to check for the group at Amazon, but few are going put forth the kind of effort that tracking down a reasonably priced copy of a self-released album requires.

Anyhow, here’s Blitzen Trapper. They’re really, really good, and you should do what it takes to find and buy their albums.

Blitzen Trapper’s official website

Myspace.

Acoustic Ladyland “Glass Agenda”

by teabog on March 4th, 2007

Acoustic Ladyland
“Glass Agenda” (From Skinny Grin)

A few things about Acoustic Ladyland:

-They started out as a Jimmie Hendrix cover band. This explains both their silly name and their silly level of technical proficiency.

-Since stopping playing Hendrix covers, the band released a couple of jazz fusion albums that were a little metal influenced. If such a mélange of styles sounds difficult to pull off, it’s because it is, and their previous albums weren’t that great.

-Skinny Grin, the group’s latest LP which is yet to be released in the U.S., blends some elements of electronic Brit Pop in with the Jazz, Rock, and Metal. What’s left is something that sounds like a mixture of Passport, Herbie Hancock, Squeeze, Isis, Pulp, and early solo Zappa.

-I haven’t posted anything from this album until now because every track sounds so different from the rest. The one I’ve posted here, “Glass Agenda” is very Brit-Poppy. Go to their myspace to listen to more. And buy the album, even at the import price. It’s worth it.

Acoustic Ladyland’s official website

Myspace.

Hank Snow “90 Miles an Hour (Down a One-Way Street)

by teabog on February 28th, 2007

Hank Snow
“90 Miles an Hour (Down a One Way Street)” (From “Snow Country”)

I’m kinda ambivalent about the whole postmortem resurgence of Johnny Cash. On the one hand, I throw up a little bit in my mouth every time I see a 14-year-old emo kid wearing a black “Cash” T-shirt. On the other hand, it’s nice that indie kids have finally realized that, once upon a time, country and western music were decent, sometimes even good.

The modern country music industry is like the WWF of music. Most of the industry’s biggest starts don’t write their own songs. Many don’t even play their own instruments. Every song sounds exactly the same and the lyrics range from moronic and trite to infuriatingly retarded. Like, these people are proud of being retarded. Who in the fuck wants to listen to that?

But there was a time my friends when country/western music was a legit, honest-to-god artform. Although the subject matter was often deplorable in one way or another, it was also raw and honest. You just don’t hear people singing about beating their wives anymore, and as it odd as it may sound there’s something refreshing about coming across pictures of smiling men in crazy getups who sang songs titled “I’m gonna get drunk and kill you.”

Hank Snow doesn’t fit into the image standard image of the outlaw country singer. He’s more Hank Williams than Johnny Cash, so his music is more proto-rock than it is the sounds of a man who is coked out of his mind. He’s Canadian, actually, and so I’m sure that some country music people would immediately discount him for that fact. That and his songs often feature a slightly bluesy piano line and if it weren’t for the slide guitars and the strained twang in his voice these songs probably wouldn’t be country. He…umm, every picture of him I see he’s wearing a cowboy hat so that must mean something, right?

Hank’s Site

Buy Hank Snow at Amazon

Marine Stern “Grapefruit”

by teabog on February 25th, 2007

Marnie Stern
“Grapefruit” (From “In Advance of the Broken Arm”)

Now this is just something else. Off the hook. Off the fucking hook.

When I first heard it I said it reminded me of Hella if Hella were good and had a lady singer. Turns out, the drummer from Hella actually recorded the album. All the rest of the instruments are played by one single woman, though, and that woman can thrash.

The technical skill displayed by Stern is mindboggling, but even more impressive is the fact that she is able to write and record concise and interesting songs that don’t get weighed down by their own technicality. That’s what I mean when I said that she’d be what Hella was like if Hella were good—it’s not that Hella can’t play their instruments, it’s just that they take their technical proficiency to such an extreme that the bulk of their musical output is unlistenable (see also Steve Vai and Phish).

The music is pretty hard but well shy of metal. The song structure, like I said before, is amazingly tight, but it really doesn’t fit into any generic archetype that allows for easy comparison. She kinda sounds like the girl from Deerhoof on the this song. Uhh…I got nothing else to say.

Marnie’s official site

Marnie’s myspace, with streaming songs.

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra “Eliza Aria”

by teabog on February 22nd, 2007

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
“Eliza Aria” (from the album “Wild Swans

What’s that? You say modern classical is for homosexual and men who wear black turtlenecks? Well, fuck you then! Go pound some Busch and watch NASCAR, you worthless piece of shit.

I don’t have defend this to you. This is modern fucking classical. If you don’t suck, you like it. If you’re a retard, then you won’t.

(Featuring the wonderful vocal work of Jane Sheldon. Composed by Elena Kats. It’s a nice piano piece that would remind me of something I saw in a blockbuster movie if the scores for blockbuster movies didn’t suck)

Official website of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
” Buy this from some place in Australia.
See a youtube of this wonderful piece being put to animation

Mawal “Girl Stand Up”

by teabog on February 19th, 2007

Mawal
“Girl, Stand Up” (From Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq)

Ahh, there’s nothing quite like hearing some music made by a group of people that we are currently indiscriminately murdering. Thankfully, this wonderful song was likely recording in the 1980s, so it’s a good bet that Mawal was killed by Sadamn, not the U.S.

Politics aside, I have to say that I’m more partial to Iraqi music than I am to the music of any other middle eastern nation. 90% of the middle eastern music that we’re exposed to in the US is indecipherable droney bullshit from Morocco, and on those rare occasions that I’ve been able to hunt down things from other countries, it’s usually USA-influenced pop (which my foreign connections always assume I’m into, since I’m American and all). Iraqi music is very noticeably middle eastern—playing it at an airport will probably get you arrested/tortured—but it has a much more fast pace, dancier feel than what you probably think of as “typical” middle eastern music. This is due in large part to the insane, rapid-fire rhythms produced by the Khishba, which overrides vocal tracks and gives the music a hustle-bustle feel of impending doom.

Thank god for Sublime Frequencies, the label that releases foundsound collections of *good* foreign music. If you’re interested in this song, I highly recommend that you check out “Choubi Choubi” and a few other of their releases, particularly their one featuring Burmese music.

The website of Sublime Frequencies, the label that releases all sorts of monster foreign shit.
Buy the CD at Amazon.

Covox “Computer Love” (Kraftwerk rendered on a Nintendo)

by teabog on February 13th, 2007

Covox
“Computer Love” (8-bit Kraftwerk Cover)

This comes from an audio compilation titled “8 Bit Operators.” That compilation is nothing but covers of Kraftwerk songs done by contemporary electronics artists and performed entirely on 8-bit video game machines.

If this sounds like something that would interest you—if you’re already into either Kraftwerk or 8-bit music—then go ahead and download. You won’t be disappointed.

The rest of the disc is pretty damn good, but the vocals aren’t done in 8-bit and often distract from the rest of their respective tracks. I mean, it’s cool hearing the machine sounds of Kraftwerk sound so much more machiney, but the effect is greatly diminished when the music is set against vocals that sound much more human than the original voices did. I know that it’s extremely hard to emulate the human voice on pre-cd videogame hardware, though (“wise from yoar gwabe!”), and so it’s excusable.

Covox’s official website.
Buy the “8-Bit Operators” collection at Amazon.

The Early Years “All Ones and Zeroes”

by teabog on February 11th, 2007

The Early Years
“All Ones and Zeros”
I’m usually leery of bands with “clever” names, and an LP titled “The Early Years” from a band named “The Early Years” should have sent me running away. But I was sucked in by the boilerplate press-release text at insound.com’s website:

“The chilling, psychedelia-drenched self-titled debut from this UK band is a dense mix of the trio’s influences: Spiritualized, Mogwai, Television, Neu, and Tortoise.”

And since I had to order another cd to get free shipping I said “what the hell” and added it to my cart. Then my order came a week later and I didn’t play for a while, because of its clever name. And then, when I finally did play it, I hated the first ten seconds of “Ones and Zeroes” because it sounded like something I’d hear on college radio.

But I gave it a chance, and the teaser text was right. The Early Years sound play the same four or five chords over and over like Television and they build towards big crescendos like Mogwai. And I suppose they sound a little bit like Tortoise, too, since they drone a bit. Nothing like Spiritualized or Neu!, though, but that’s not a bad thing since I don’t see how Neu! and Spirtiulized would sound good mixed with those other bands.

Even though I kinda said in my last post that I wouldn’t do so any more, I have reverted to name dropping in order to describe this track because I can’t really figure out why I like it. It drones out without anything that resembles a hook, the lyrics are just a guy repeating the line “all ones… and zeeeroes.” I just like it. It’s got the same kind of opium-stupor “uhhh that’s pretty” hooklessness of the bands mentioned in the teaser text, but it’s very different from most of those bands because it doesn’t sound at all spacey or floaty. It doesn’t veer off into guitar solos, it doesn’t lay down keyboard backgrounds. It just captures your attention with two guitars, drums, and a bunch of effects pedals.

The myspace of The Early Years.
Buy the limited edition two disc set at Insound.

Jimmy Witherspoon “Endless Sleep”

by teabog on February 6th, 2007

Jimmy Witherspoon
“Endless Sleep”

Writing these short blog posts have really made me aware of what a limited vocabulary I have for describing music. This is strange, because I listen to more music than anyone I know, and I listen to more different types of music than anyone I know. All this means, though, is that I can toss out the names of obscure genres and make band-to-band comparisons in order to describe what I’m posting. Aside from that, I can just talk about how songs make me feel.

I’m not gonna lie on this one: I can’t make any allusions to other artists. Not only is my blues vocabulary far too limited, but Witherspoon was the kind of artist who went through enough stylistic phases that he really defies pigeonholing.

This is one of his earlier songs, from his “Blues Crooner” phase. I know just by listening to it that it rises well above its generic norm, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. Its simple chord structure is a lot more original that what I’m used to from the genre. Its low-grade recording quality helps convey its desperation. Also, its jaunty, stumbly pace does a wonderful job of presenting the subject manner of the song: a desperate man stumbling along the beach after the apparent suicide of his “baby.” The guitar is the man’s footsteps, and Witherspoon’s howls are his thoughts.

Jimmy’s official site.