At some point I had to acknowledge the wonders of this band despite or due to the fact that every single one of my favorite music-related blogs has jocked Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — which I won’t acronym-ize because it ends up reminding me of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young when, in fact, they remind me of all that’s good about the Talking Heads, early Radiohead (yeah, Heather, I said Radiohead), and hazy, distorted memories of childhood.
Matisyahu
A Hasidic reggae sensation. It sounds like a sitcom setup that inevitably ends in “Now I’ve really seen it all!” And I’ll admit that when I saw Matisyahu for the first time, the gangly visage in a black suit and hat and traditional beard, combined with a voice perfectly trained for staccato wordplay, was as disorienting as Michael Bolton bustin’ out with a rhyme that would make Jay-Z blush. Yet despite being the last guy you’d expect to find himself in a waka-waka rhythm, Matisyahu comes legit with lyrics often steeped in religious imagery which, like Bob Marley’s Rastafarianism or even Bono’s Catholicism, never cross over into dogma. It’s in those lyrics that Matisyahu’s conceit comes into focus: Zion, Babylon, salvation, temples, princes and kings — whether Jamaica or Jerusalem, reggae at its core is rebel music for true believers. Matisyahu is true, and he’s bound to make some new believers of his own.
TV on the Radio MP3
Truckstop Honeymoon
It seems like an appropriate time to post some New Orleans levee-billy — courtesy of Mike West and Katie Euliss of Arabi, LA — with sincere hopes that Truckstop Honeymoon will still be making these wonderful sounds. Bluegrass, southern rock, country, Anglo-folk all contribute the background to the wonderful narratives presented by this husband and wife crew. Check out “Capitol Hill” and “Walk of Shame” to get a sense of the political and cultural landscape, then hit their website to buy the two Truckstop Honeymoon albums.
Help the Hurricane Homeless 3 (in a Mush Records Stylee)
Les Georges Leningrad
Petrochemical Rock. That’s how Les Georges Leningrad describe their music. These crazy Montreal post-punks are concussive, explosive, and just plain loopy. Imagine Atari Teenage Riot raised as Quebequois on The Fall and performance art.
The Drips
Shouldn’t be too long until The Bronx come up for air with some long-awaited new recordings, but for now you can enjoy a side project with a couple of the members.
Popkan
This oughta keep your holiday weekend percolatin’. Hey, if anyone can, Popkan! (What do you expect? I’m on vacation here…)
Pedestrian
Two tracks from the essential Pedestrian album, Volume One: Unindian Songs. It mashes up modern day happenings and old school beats. The first cut an obvious homage to the Breakin’ films of ’84. Which films, our friend Matt Workman recently pointed out, were just released on DVD.