The Awkward Stage ended up being one of my happy finds, with “West Van Girl,” “1000 Teenage Hearts,” and the title track from Shane Nelken’s debut album, Heaven is for Easy Girls, all being worth at least $.99 at the legal download site of your choice. Hopefully the band’s sophomore spin, Slimming Mirrors, Flattering Lights — out in June, two days before my birthday! (hint, hint, Mint Records) — will offer up another set of smart Canadian pop from the sensitive and supremely talented Nelken. “Anime Eyes” is a rocking little piece of candy sweetly luring us in.
Anime Eyes [MP3, 3.4MB, 128kbps]
Original post: 09/28/06
About The Awkward Stage, my friend Tim O. has this to say: “Here’s an album in the grand tradition of geek rock, as in Weezer, Beck, etc., even though The Awkward Stage doesn’t sound like any of them. Strong melodies and pop hooks lead a slight voice through cleverly-titled, literate and ultimately pathetic songs. Even the cover art depicts lead singer Shane Nelken going to prom with a blow-up doll while wearing a retainer and head gear. In fact, I heard Joe had the same head gear in middle school.” Wait a minute, there… Well, that’s enough from Tim O. on the subject. Oh no, wait, he has one more thing to say. “While the title track claims ‘The Morons are Winning,’ The Awkward Stage are clearly figthing back.” Brilliantly pithy, T.O. Look for Heaven is for Easy Girls on October 10.
Before I ever listened to the sloppy, (mostly) instrumental rock of Providence’s Six Star General, I liked them. Check out these blurbs from their Rhode Island-based label, 75 or Less — regarding the 2007 album Sick Stars, Sister Cyst, note that it includes “covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Butthole Surfers and Jonathan Richmond”; the album Already on One, also from 2007, “clock[s] in at 26 minutes, … their longest release to date … includes a pair of instrumentals. Influences include Mudhoney, Spacemen 3, Silkworm”; and their self-titled album was “recorded in six hours with no overdubs – 11 tracks in 22 minutes – equal parts punk, quasi-metal and distorted pop.” Unlike a lot of the garbage that publicists and label folks offer up, these assessments and observations totally match up with the ten minutes of music available for download in the four tracks below. Who cares if these guyscan barely play their instruments? They make noise and have fun at it (and for my ears at least, the less singing, the better). Check out “Sun Up Pants Down” and see what I mean.
Ok, so Great Lakes Myth Society is bringing their ornate, stylized, vaguely ’70s medieval rock to an outdoor stage about two blocks from my house this weekend! How cool is that? The 3hive crew often talks about trying to catch the shows of the bands we post, but usually our real lives interfere and we’re left with the wistful memories of life before kids, wherein we could function past 9:30 pm and therefore go to shows. With this weekend’s 
Fast talking, fast picking (on the banjo) Old Man Luedecke’s just telling stories on these snappy new tracks from his third and latest album, Proof of Love. Although Old Man doesn’t really look that old, his narrative style and attention to detail and tradition certainly reflect a degree of maturity and experience. In general, though, it’s the toe-tapping familiarity of these songs that make then all warm and shiny. I can see Luedecke twanging his banjo around a Canadian campfire, telling tales just like people do.
I swear I must have llistened to “Right Hand on My Heart” a hundred times since I pulled it off the SXSW website a few weeks ago. The full-on power rock of Athens, GA’s The Whigs is pure excitement, from the driving, droning guitars to the tight drumming, and then the bass kicks in, whoo wee. This is a great ride to be on, with a band that clearly has their skills and history down. Best song I’ve posted in 2008? Without a doubt.
In one of Douglas Coupland’s novels, maybe All Families are Psychotic, there’s a passage about how we lived in a golden age, without pain or fear, something like that… When I found Tappan Zee one day last year while digging around the Internet, that idea came back to me. Check out their introduction on the Wormco website — “It’s 1999. . . . . and what have we got to show for it?” etc. Just a little reflection, like finding an old newspaper from before you were married or had kids, from before the war, before 9/11. I like “The Only Ones,” nice and simple indie rock from the good old days, eh? Whatever happened to Tappan Zee?
Label this track from Teargas & Plateglass “dark.” Not dark like teen angst dark, but dark like Darfur, like the Balkans, like Kenya, like Cambodia. Dark like genocide. Dark like 4,000 more U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq than W.M.D.s found in Iraq; that kind of dark. “One Day Across the Valley” is almost too much; the percussive drum track, the spoken word memory of pure violence, the sparseness of the sound. Like the photos from My Lai or Rwanda, you want both more and less in the given output — more justice, less brutality, more hope, less reality. “I felt a lot of pain,” says the narrator, and it’s hard to understand how this could not be a universal response. From the album Black Triage, with accompanying videos available on the band’s website.
Brice Randall Bickford II + friends + Carrboro, NC = The Strugglers. It’s all about location, right? Grab the finely aged “Goodness Gracious” and bask in a little Southern twang & steel guitar — warm, sad sounds, protective like an grown-up version of your childhood blankie. Like he sings in the song: “Don’t you know what will happen with you staring at the world like this?” Or download “Morningside Heights,” the poppy, wise opening track from the band’s 2008 release The Latest Rights and get lost in the violin’s reel from down South to the Upper West Side. The Strugglers stripped down, sedate sound provide a nice reflection of place; that is, the U.S. of A.
Apparently, in Michigan at least, spring is refusing to be sprung, so the only thing to do is get happy. Canadian bands, especially those not from BC, have extra special cred in this regard as their weather is even worse than ours. Hence Hilotrons, of Ottawa. Fun fun weird fun — lousy, whiny vocals, heavy 80s-ish synth, bouncy, boppy awesome blast. I’ve been spinning their new release, Happymatic at home a lot, and darn if it ain’t working! Alas, I can only offer an excellently representative minute and a half (“Dominika”) for free and legal download; check out the mySpace, buy the album, whatever it takes to get happy, it’s worth it.