Must admit, I’ve always wanted to have a 3hive soccer team. Many years ago, I scored over Jon’s head straight from a kickoff while he was in goal. And my most vivid memory of playing against Sam is blocking one of his shots with my face, only for the ball to drop right back onto his foot so he could slam it into the back of the net anyway, leaving me with a red face (due, in part, to a bloody nose). So maybe it would be better to have 3hive sponsor a soccer team, you know with our logo plastered on the front of the team’s jerseys.
Ryan and Melissa, both employees of Dischord at one point, included this little gem on their 2006 LP ‘Volunteered’ Civility and Professionalism. Yes, it’s a bit old, but it’s new to me and I’m kicking myself for missing it until now. The LP displays their very clever, lo-fi pop, moving from fuzzy and effects-laden guitar, to pounding drums, strumming acoustic guitars, and everywhere in between, recorded to 8- and 4-track tape. That resulting tape hiss? I think they wanted us to hear it.
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.
The artistic interpretation of a wiring diagram of the band’s setup found on their website sure tells a lot about Shy Child. It lists “Lead Synth 1”. And “Lead Synth 2”. And “Lead Synth 3.” No “Non-Lead Synth” shown. No “Just Plain Ol’ Synth” either. The three lead synths, undoubtably fighting for that “Lead Lead Synth” position, give a glimpse into the electronic frenzy that is Shy Child. Their story: the band was a side project that somehow found legs, made an album on the cheap, played SXSW, and got picked up by a bigwig producer, in this case Paul Epworth of Bloc Party and The Rapture, resulting in their new album Noise Won’t Stop.
David Sylvian resurrects what he calls a “lost classic,” in this the third and final album by the Swedish band Anywhen, The Opiates. The band dissolved before the album was completed and singer Thomas Feiner pushed on, dedicated to finishing the project. He did so at risk to his own well-being. A self-described loner, “being around people [has] always caused me some tension and discomfort,” Feiner nevertheless sought out the talents of the Warsaw Radio Symphony Orchestra. Working with them made him a “nervous wreck,” but he also described it as the high point of his musical career. The Opiates seem to benefit from these tensions. The album leads with “The Siren Songs,” a lush, celebratory epic in which Feiner revels in submitting to his muse, then slowly wanders along a road less traveled to “All That Numbs You,” a mournful study of a life dragged down by a “job you hate to buy things you don’t need.” Every step in between features Feiner’s rich baritone accompanied by either delicate or driving cinematic orchestrations. A lost classic indeed.
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.
I recently caught the last hour or so of the classic documentary Athens, Georgia Inside/Out. That LP was probably the most used vinyl of the summer between high school graduation and my freshman year of college, Love Tractor and Pylon being two of my faves at the time.
These guys dig women…or their names, at least. Not just the “Saturday Night Live” star after which they’re named (twice, for good measure), but every track on their debut album is named after famous-to-obscure female celebrities (if you can identify all of them without the help of Google, my hat’s off to you). What connection they all have with each other is a mystery to me (“Batgirl, Miss America 1954, and a French physicist walk into a bar…”). And that mystery is only furthered by their nearly unintelligible lyrics and eclectic compositions (ranging from Eno-esque to bluegrass to indie spunk). What I do know is some strangely compelling songs emerge from the artsy din, “Bianca Montale” probably being the most conventional of the lot.
There’s been a fair amount of turmoil in my life of late: relocation from The Big Northeastern City to The Little Southern City, new job, first house, first child—basically we’ve inadvertently fit all of the major milestones of adulthood into about a 12-month span. It’s got me a little out of sorts, which may explain why I’ve gravitated more than normal toward singer-songwriters. Surely I’m softening in my mid-30s, but there’s just something about an acoustic guitar and a single voice that brings focus to my overactive mind. Joe Pug’s voice and guitar have a particular resonance in this regard. Pug is a Chicago carpenter by day and a troubadour by night. He possesses the eyes, mop, and even a hint of the vocal cords of a young Bob Dylan. More importantly, he possesses the strumming fingers and lush songbook of an all-American folk singer. In Pug’s hard plucking, exaggerated choruses, and lyrical vignettes you can draw a pretty straight line from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan to Johnny Cash to Bruce Springsteen to Steve Earle to Josh Ritter. Like all of them, Pug is a populist at heart, a singer who can’t help but talk about all of us when he sings about himself and can’t help but sing about himself when he’s talking about all of us. I’m a sucker for a good line and this one from “Hymn #101” is one of my favorites right now: “I’ve come to meet the sheriff and his posse/ to offer him the broad side of my jaw/ I’ve come here to get broke/ and maybe bum a smoke/ we’ll go drinkin’ two towns over after all.” It could just be a comic-tragic put-on and you probably have to feel some turmoil yourself to truly appreciate it, but “Hymn #101” is full of lines that will fill you with both heartbreak and euphoria. It’s good to be reminded that that’s why we listen to music in the first place.
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