The Damned

Nothing like downloading The Damned on a Sunday afternoon… I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get to The Damned (Clay couldn’t believe I beat him to it), but you just don’t expect some of your old favorites to be this on top of things. I was turned onto The Damned years ago by a good friend who had amassed a huge vinyl collection, which I believe included, close to, if not, everything The Damned had released. I spent many hours at his house taping albums and recording mix tapes of The Damned. Then in 1993 his home was among hundreds burned in the Laguna Beach fire, burning along with it, yes, all that vinyl. I don’t know if I’ve ever really repaid him for turning me onto some great music, so hey, Randy, gimme a call and bring your iPod…

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Kid Koala

The first time I saw Kid Koala spin was at the Wetlands in NYC at a Ninja Tune night some years back. He plowed through a crate of novelty records and hip-hop classics with the glee (and haste) of a two year old, mouthing the words to every last cut and leaving a pile of used vinyl on the floor. The first time I saw Kid Koala perform was at the El Rey in Los Angeles a couple years later, when I saw him recreate his turntable masterpiece “Drunk Trumpet” on stage. He used the pitch control slider to extract different notes from a single horn part on a jazz record as our collective jaws hit the floor. “Skanky Panky” is a similar experience, in that it needs to be seen and heard. Fortunately for all who haven’t had the pleasure, you can do just that on his CD/DVD, Live at the Short Attention Span Theater.

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Levy

Manhattan’s Lower East Side probably doesn’t smell as good as Manchester’s hipper hipster enclaves — or anywhere else, for that matter — but the sounds coming out of the gentrified tenements these days are enough to make you forget about that whole art-rock-as-next-big-thing debacle. Case in point: Levy, named for its post-modern crooner of a lead singer, paints NYC in an appealing shade of Mancunian gray, waxing chippy to melancholy on relationships that weren’t built to last. As with that one-named icon who helped put Manchester on the map, Levy sounds best when Matt Siskin’s guitar propels the songs into the atmosphere. Put on your iPod and let Levy bounce around inside your head for a while.

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The Maughams

For years I’ve avoided saying aloud the name of this band, shared by (or maybe taken from?) W. Somerset Maugham, author of The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage and a bunch of other novels. Is it Mawm, like lawn but with an m? Or Mao-ham, two syllables? I assume the gh is silent… Anyway, these silly Canadians are causing me this trouble again, even worse than before, because I want to tell way more people about their wonderful homage-to-the-’70s lo-fi sound than I ever wanted to about W. Somerset’s psychologically searing social dramas. Check out “Jay Bird” for a catchy end-of-summer theme song.

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Kiss Me Deadly

Regular readers of 3hive will recall Sam mentioning on Monday that he should be tested for OCD (although I would replace “tested” with “treated”). You will also recall my many posts that taken together demonstrate my own obsessive compulsive behavior. It’s music; how could we react any other way? The focus of this week’s OCD-ness is another Montreal band on the Alien8 label, Kiss Me Deadly. Formerly emo/math rock, KMD have moved towards a dancier sound that’s still deeply EMOtional, full of earnest energy and rather dependent on the ’80s. If only KMD had been around in the ’80s, I might have actually enjoyed years of school and church dances. These songs from KMD’s tour-only EP Amoureux Cosmiques provide a glimpse into their full-length due out this fall.

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The Free Design

Early in its conception, Seattle-based, Light in the Attic Records acquired the re-issue rights to The Free Design, an obscure pop band straight outta the ’60s. Over the past year the label has offered up 12″ remixes by the likes of Peanut Butter Wolf, Super Furry Animals, and Stereolab. After completing the three part series you can now find all the remixes and more on one CD: The Now Sound Redesigned. This is some of the best remix curating I’ve heard in a long while and available just in time — before summer ends…

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Ezekiel Honig

Who’d have thought the “hook” stuck in my head for the past few days would be the sweet rhythm of what sounds like a printer feed tray being lifted and dropped? I know, I know, I should get checked for OCD. But Ezekiel Honig does have an ear for the latent musicality in such found sounds, which he uses to infuse his minimalist headphone techno with a real warm-blooded feel.

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Thee More Shallows

Ahhh, it feels great to be back sharing the sharing. We were having some ugly hosting problems, and during the downtime many of you dropped us lovely “missing you” notes. One letter, from Ander W., expressed sheer dismay at the fact that we hadn’t posted Thee More Shallows. As I mentioned to Ander, Thee More Shallows and their beautiful, Bay Area blend of whisper rock was at the top of my to-do list. At the top of your to-do list should be “purchase More Deep Cuts by Thee More Shallows.” Dee Kesler and company spent almost three years working on this album, so if you buy it for, say, thirteen dollars, you’re paying the band .011 cents a day for their efforts. A small price to pay for this work of art.

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