Sharing the sharing.
To quote my friend Rick, “The best band ever.”Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina made this wonderful lo-fi pop (in punk rock style, of course), and frankly, we at 3hive have never featured a Dischord band until now. It was time to right this wrong.
Shelter Two [MP3, 3.6MB, 160kbps]Pushed Up Against the Wall [MP3, 3.3MB, 128kbps]
I never pegged myself as a sucker for reminiscing about some bygone era of youthful indiscretions set to a soundtrack so loud that it did permanent hearing damage. Then again, I never figured that the moment I had a child, my life before that moment would become an abstraction only referential as fragmented memories and out-of-body mental snapshots. I hope that doesn’t sound too wistful because there’s nothing better than being a parent, but on our first “official” family road trip this past week there were a couple of moments when I’d just about gotten my fill of baby-friendly playlists and was ready for a quick mental cleanse of the kind that The Radishes are fond of administering. Y’know, the kind with simple riffs repeated fast and loud, driving bass and drums (provided by the former rhythm section for Ministry!), and acidic vocals that scream alienation, anger, and irony. Alas, when the baby is sleeping in the back seat and your wife has taken the reins of the iPod, you don’t always get that instant aural gratification. But when you’re home early on a Friday morning and the rest of the family is asleep behind closed doors, you can put on the headphones, turn it up all the way and get a good dose of noise, sweet noise.
This is the band I want haunting my garage this Halloween. Their simple ch-ch-chunking staccato chords, the wailing organ, the sultry, slightly off-kilter vocals teasing from down low in the mix send shivers down my spine. And oh, that fuzz! Makes me wanna shimmy and shake all night long. Bear with my L.A. bias when I say Tiger! Tiger! would make cute kissing cousins with X, Mary’s Danish, and The Gun Club. They pare down that punk-twang to its garage origins circa 1970-something. Tune into their myspace page for more fine examples.
The Santa Ana’s are roaring in these parts. The winds and smoke burn my sinuses, eyes and throat. And after spending two hours helping my 6th grader with his math homework my brain’s burnt as well. Fight fire with fire! Demander has brought a sweet equilibrium to my dry and fried skull. Imagine Siouxsie Sioux rising out of the DC punk scene as part of the Dischord family. Yeah, it’s cool, and cools, like that.
Things are always bigger in Texas, right? And Tulsa’s in Oklahoma, which is next to Texas, and thus things should be a little bit bigger there too. Um, yeah. This Tulsa’s actually from Boston, but they’ve got some big sound, and lots of it. The three songs below, from the recently released album I Was Submerged offer up a good idea of what the band’s all about. Some shimmer here and some crunching guitar there, understatement in one track (“Shaker,” which might be my favorite of the bunch) and a little 1990s Brit-rock swagger in another (“Mass”) — good stuff to fill the wide open spaces.
Let me begin today’s post with a favorite passage from the book I’m currently reading: “For what is genius, I ask you, but the capacity to be obsessed? Every normal child has that capacity; we have all been geniuses, you and I; but sooner or later it is beaten out of us, the glory fades, and by the age of seven most of us are nothing but wretched little adults.” An apt description as to why I’m NOT a genius. The only things I have the capacity to be obsessed over are chocolate and burritos. Not always in that order. The power of concentration eludes me. Like Homer Simpson, I’m so easily distracted, not by squirrels like Homer, but by all sorts of flights of fancy: reading, writing, picture taking, music listening, journaling, bike riding, skateboarding, snacking, and fathering, that I never obsess over any one thing and therefore fail to excel at anything (with the exception of fathering: I’m working like mad to raise three responsible members of society).
Likewise, Annuals seem unable to pin themselves down to any one sound. “Dry Clothes” shines through like a summery Beach Boys tune, “Bleary Eyed” trots along like a Grateful Dead jam, “Brother” inches along as an atmospheric meditation, and they drop a dance-floor beat into their remake Manchester Orchestra’s “Where Have You Been?” Eventually all these comparisons break down as the songs break down as well into something sometimes entirely different. It seems concentration escapes Annuals as well, but their lack of focus still retains a playful childhood capacity for genius.
Cheyenne is a rock group whose members are mostly from Norman, Oklahoma but who now reside in Brooklyn. Despite their current residence (go Brooklyn!), to these ears they’re much more influenced by those Southern-slash-Midwestern roots than by the affected, irony-drenched post-rock that can sometimes permeate the Brooklyn scene. And that’s a very good thing. Lead singer Beau Jennings has been compared to Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan and I’m not one to deny it, but musically Cheyenne is far more downhome and far less emo. “The Whale” builds from steady handclaps and a sturdy piano melody into monster guitar riffs and chiming keys tuned to a playful yet pensive harmony. “Painting Horses” follows a similar classic pop formula but conjures a deeper roots rock aura thanks to Josh Harper’s climactic, chicken-fried guitar solo. There’s been a rewarding Southern rock resurgence over the past several years thanks to the likes of My Morning Jacket, Kings of Leon, Band of Horses and others. Cheyenne deserves to be added to that list, even if they’ve decided to call Brooklyn home.
I’m really not a huge fan of overly theatrical pop. I don’t like show tunes at all, and musicals make me cringe. So, I have trouble explaining my fascination with the likes of Wojtek Godzisz (that’s voy-tek go-jeesh). It’s not just because the Brit is Polish — czesc, dude! Instead, I think it’s the drive in these tunes that captures my attention. Even though “December Will Be Magic Again” has all the makings of stage drama, it’s going somewhere, and that beat is moving me around the house when really I’d rather nap. And covering The Smiths is just fun.
It worked on me. Dangerbird Records (home to Silversun Pickups, Peter Walker and The One AM Radio) recently revamped their website and scooted Darker My Love into the studio to begin work on a new record. They thought giving away the last Darker My Love record might interest a few people and send them sniffing around the new site. I’m happy to help in this effort. Darker My Love first caught my ear by naming their band after a rare T.S.O.L. song and kept me listening by resurrecting L.A.’s Paisley Underground sound. They play a tougher and denser version of Rain Parade’s ’80s psychedelia. It’s Summer of Love 3.0.
Southeast Engine is fronted by a married, unemployed middle school teacher from Athens, Ohio. If that doesn’t tip you off to the manic melancholy you’ll hear in the music, then perhaps you were home-schooled. As the band’s bio says, Athens ain’t the cradle of democracy and it ain’t even the most famous Athens in college music circles. It ain’t truly the South nor truly the Midwest, either. Athens is perpetually something between here and there. You’ll hear strains of Bright Eyes, Will Oldham, Neutral Milk Hotel, Josh Ritter, and even Bruce Springsteen in these tracks. Yet the cornucopia of styles don’t clash, they just come together like good, honest music from somewhere in America.