Valet is a Minneapolis band who released their fine debut album The Glamour Is Contagious in 2002. Their latest, Life on the Installment Plan, came out last year, but “Cop Stories” from the former features a hauntingly wonderful melody, the kind that gets stuck in your head, and in this case…that’s a good thing.
RX
Brilliant and hilarious speech mash-ups of George W. Bush set to classic melodies. These are gonna make your day. Six more tracks are available on The Party Party site. I have DJ Longbeard to thank for turning me onto this stuff. I’m privileged to be on the air at KUCI right before his show Synchronicity. It’s chock full o’ fun like this…dig in.
EzeeTiger
This guy Anthony Petrovic is soaking in irony: 1) He goes by EzeeTiger, yet he wears a bear suit on this cover of his latest album; b) he has song titles such as “White Castle Gestapo” and “How to Rock…for Red Bennies”; and, thirdly, he cops overdub trickery from the likes of Spiritualized and MBV, then kicks the crap out of it in a death-metal stylee. By the way, these two tracks are just lo-fi teasers of the wild smorgasbord his self-titled album has to offer.
Mobius Band
Just ain’t no doubt. Ghostly has consistently released some of the best, essential music for the past several years. When we started up 3hive (over a year ago!) Ghostly artists frequently appeared on this site. But then the label made the ghastly switch from full MP3s to clips. Oh, the delight to discover a full-length MP3 from Ghostly’s newest signing, the MA trio, Mobius Band! These gents put just the right amount of “electro” into their “rock” without falling into neu-wave cliché. Imagine if R.E.M. began in the 21st century instead of the ’80s of last. They share similar melancholy vocal mumblings and novel sonic arrangements. Get this one while you can, don’t know how long it’ll last.
*Note: Ghostly’s back with MP3s! Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Peep the newest Mobius Band MP3 “The Loving Sounds of Static…”
The Slackers
Welcome to another installment on Ska Saturday, or, as those rude girls and boys call it, Skaturday! I’m in New York City right now, and I just can’t help but think of the great ska that has come out of this city: the Toasters, the Scofflaws, the Boilers, NY Citizens, Steady Ernest, Too True, the Slackers, and many others that I won’t list here. So join with me in enjoying the Slackers as I stroll the streets of New York.
The Dears
On a recent day off, I took my wife’s truck in for a transmission flush. While checking in, the service guy neglected to mention that the entire staff took a whole hour off for lunch, which started about ten minutes after I arrived. In other words, I had serious time on my hands. I flipped through an issue of Spin, then Scientific American, People, Jet, Field and Stream and Redbook before returning to the single copy of Spin because, why not? What else was I going to do? Upon this closer, maybe even desperate inspection of the issue, I noticed a blurb on Montreal that mentioned The Dears, and they sounded pretty cool. Little did I know that a random collection of their MP3s, gathered off a smattering of label websites, would reflect my experiences at the auto shop so perfectly. There’s the smoldering righteous indignation of “Summer of Protest,” the hope and determination of “We Can Have It,” the bitter loss of said hope in “Heartless Romantic,” and finally, the goofy, bouncy happiness of “Corduroy Boy,” also known (in my mind) as “Yeah, I Got the Damn Truck Back!”
The Killingtons
My friend Neal, an extreme-snowboarding pediatrician who also has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, is a big fan of The Killingtons. I can imagine him jumping off a helicopter somewhere in the Cascades or Rockies and carving heroically down the face of a mountain in order to set a broken bone or maybe perform a needed kidney transplant on a young child, who also happens to be snowboarding on the mountain, or maybe he’d just take some tissue samples so he could do some sciencey thing with them like look at them through a microscope. Whatever. Anyway, on his way down, Neal would surely listen to the steady adrenaline of “Weekend Drive” off The Killingtons’ California Life EP. Wait, in that case, maybe it should be Mammoth or Mt. Shasta…
Printed Circuit
Can there be a better name than Printed Circuit for an electronic band? Casio keyboards, Nintendos, the Space Shuttles, Commodore 64s, Sean’s iPod, Ataris, even the new Mac mini — they’ve all got printed circuit boards. But don’t think Printed Circuit lacks a soul; au contraire, Claire Broadley of Leeds, who is Printed Circuit (and Catmobile Records), has a soul of pure pop. She just expresses it through silicon and transistors and electrons.
The Essex Green
Hopefully you were familiar with the musical offerings of Merge Records before hearing The Arcade Fire. If not, I hope you’ve done some due diligence since. The Long Goodbye, released in 2003, from The Essex Green is among the many gems in the Merge catalog. Largely underappreciated by the press, public, and perhaps even their label, songs like “The Late Great Cassiopia” alone are worth 10x the current download pricing standard of 99 cents. Thanks to the generosity of the artist however, you pay nothing. Appreciate it!
The One A.M. Radio
“Why, this singer/songwriter has the proud bearing and glossy coat of a Yale man.” Sorry, couldn’t resist. Yes, Hrishikesh Hirway (you’d change your name to The One A.M. Radio, too) is a Yalie, but far more important to this crowd, I reckon, are his whisper-quiet ballads which fingerpluck their way to your heart — not unlike those of Iron and Wine. If you find yourself wishing for just a bit more glitch to go with that guitar, check out On the Shore of the Wide World, which features The One A.M. Radio remixed by offbeat maestros Daedelus, Alias, and Caural, and holds weight on its own. (Thanks, Jeff, for dropping this in the suggestion box.)