Har Mar Superstar (Sean Tillmann) performing Prisoner (from his latest R and B drenched "Bye Bye 17 album) at the Dirty Laundry / Get Bent CMJ show at Pianos in NYC on October 2012 - courtesy of super duper cool Dirty Laundry.TV. On Prisoner, with horn sounding riffs sweetly lifted out of Saturday Night Fever, Tillman uses his potent pipes to great effect. When he pushes his voice to it's edge he hits this truly lovely and gutsy sweet tone which sounds soooo good.
Ladies and Gentlemen, girls and boys, dogs and cats (both
domesticated and feral) .. it is time for American Pancakes Friday Five
Favorite Fuh Videos! This is a new feature and since AP is first and
foremost about music, they will, by and large, be music videos (but not
always). Today we are sharing great songs with videos that didn't cost a million bucks to make, in fact, most probably cost about $69 or some beer and a pizza. Click on the titles to play them at their source (that way you
can enlarge- customize your HD preferences yada yada). Enjoy!!
Blank Realm is this trippy alternative rock / post punk band out of Brisbane Australia. There sound can pulsate with all the fury of Thee Oh Sees on acid- (check out Acting Strange) or get trippy and psychedelic in an almost Growlers-esque beach goth way as is the case in Cleaning Up My Mess. The video directed by Josh Watson and filmed in Bowen Hills, Queensland, Australia has the spirit of a super eight home party movies. The guitar hook after the choruses are so damn infectious and Watson cuts to dirty fun in the bathtub to highlight these amazing eruptions in the song. Fun and chill and kind of bad ass- perfect for a Friday.
The Growlers "Salt On A Slug" feels like an insomnia induced carnival ride. The song is built on a creepy organ bed instead of their usual drunken guitar lines. The video seems to be compiled of public access footage and I gotta say that each one significantly adds to the trippy atmosphere of the song. Cool songs made even more weird by the images here. I like this alot and suspect I will view it about 12 more time today.
This video for the Cosmonauts sonic chomper "Motorcycle #1" blends motocross films shot on a wall with the band cast in layers of silhouettes. Simple but super effective especially when the song is so damn driven. Starting off with a hooky bass line it quickly falls into a tom tom beat. churning walls of guitars and vocals. Awesome.
Moody and brooding are used a lot when reviewers refer to Athens, Georgia band Twin Tigers. I would throw some other adjectives their way like lush, explosive, trippy, art rockish (is that an adjective?) and avante garde. In some ways they feel very much like a modern indie version of early Radiohead (circa Pablo Honey). They have that same tortured, angsty sound to their music. Twin Tigers melodies can lie in the pop shallows but the overall feel is very cool and arty. The video for Red Fox Run employs some of the trix of the trade for low budge music videos, acid burnt colors and public domain footage from gangster to horror to stripper videos.
Tipper Whore's "Two Sticks" is a bouncy fully erect new wavish "ooooh... ooooh" pop song that is perfect to pogo to. Tipper Whore's music sensibility sets somewhere between the doo wop punk of Hunx and His Punx and the almost cabaret art rock of Dante Vs the Zombies. Apart from the straight out fun, the vocal performance is superb. I really like this guys voice and the band has their chops down solidly. The video is a one shot deal with an array of people hiking by that you would definitely want to hang with. The tone is Blair Witch Project meets National Lampoon.
Album Hits Stores Tomorrow, Album Release Show in NYC 5/5
Ceramic Dog and Northern Spy Records are proud to present the music video for “Lies My Body Told Me,”
via ALARM Magazine. The song is the lead-off track on the band’s new
full-length record which officially drops tomorrow, April 30, 2013.
Entitled Your Turn, the album is the sophomore effort from Marc Ribot’s three piece rock band and its first release on Northern Spy.
Ribot and his crew have been very busy of late, just returning from a successful jaunt in Europe and now preparing for the ‘Your Turn’Record Release Show at Le Poisson Rouge on Sunday, May 5.
Expect to find the band in peak form, as they will also have a short
Japanese tour under their belt by that time. All upcoming dates below:
TOUR DATES
5/1/2013 - Club Quattro, Tokyo, Japan
5/2/2013 - Club Quattro, Nagoya, Japan
5/3/2013 - Club Quattro, Umeda, Japan
5/5/2013 - Le Poisson Rouge, New York, NY w/ Hubble
5/27/2013 - Pritzker Pavilion, Chicago, IL w/ Lee Ranaldo
5/28/2013 - Constellation, Chicago, IL
MUSIC VIDEO FOR “LIES MY BODY TOLD ME”
MORE INFO ON ‘YOUR TURN’
Your Turn features 13 tracks, several written solely by Ribot (Los Cubanos Postizos, John Zorn, Tom Waits) and one by Smith. Others are group efforts by Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily (Will Oldham, Laurie Anderson, Jolie Holland, Yoko Ono) and Ches Smith (Xiu Xiu, Good for Cows, Secret Chiefs 3),
two of the best young players on the New York/California underground improv/experimental rock scene. One track, "Bread and Roses," is based on a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim. Perhaps the oddest but most fascinating track is the trio's enlightening re-imagination of the Paul Desmond-written Dave Brubeck jazz classic "Take Five." Recorded at three different New York-area studios, Your Turn wasproduced and mixed by Greg Saunier, the drummer of buzzy indie band Deerhoof.
Ribot, who describes Ceramic Dog as a "free/punk/funk/experimental/psychedelic/postelectronica collective," says that Your Turn was two years in the making. "Second records are notoriously hard to nail down," he explains. "We tried to make it a few times. Finally we got it right -- meaning, we got it to sound wrong, exactly like us."
"If you listen closely, you can hear the rage, hope, disappointment, ritualexcess, love and anarchy that were in our personal and collective airspace during those years," says Ribot. "There were (and, we hope, will continue to be) several kinds of riots going on ('Lies My Body Told Me,' 'Bread and Roses'). And yes, the CD is 'political' ('Avanti Popolo' - a traditional folk song the Italian labor movement adopted as their anthem, 'Ain't Gonna Let Them Turn Us 'Round'). But what fun is raging against the machine if you can't also rage against the bar line and the tonal system ('Take Five,' 'Ritual Slaughter,' the title track)?"
Late last year, we reviewed the album "Restraint" by Seattle Washington post punk pop threesome Orca Team. The much loved band broke up and it came to our attention back in January that front man Leif Anders had formed another band
called "Week of Wonders" trading his fluid bass work for solid guitar lines that can be trancy and translucent one minute and erupt into bright bursts of sound the next. "Week of
Wonders" calls what they do "tropical punk" and there are a fair share
of Caribbean and South American rhythms but the punk pop (imbued with a
late 60's aesthetic) is still there all rolled up into a potent and
dancey sound.
They are heading on tour in May and luckily for us So Cal residents, they are snaking their way down to LA.
Check out their Bandcamp, some videos and go see them in a town near you!
Deerhunter's much anticipated Monomania album is less trippy and shoegazey than one might expect. Although there is plenty of ambient elements and over modulated vocal and instrumentals here, a lot of the tracks are pretty mellow (by Deerhunter standards). The overall tone is early 70's glam / punk and 60's pop simmering in a garage rock stew with heavy, thick doses of noise. In the same way that Foxygen pulls such heartfelt homages to 60's pop, on some tracks Bradford Cox stirs up the sonic ghosts of John Lennon, Harry Nielsen and Mark Bolan (at least in my mind). The creative decision to wash many of the tracks in varying degrees of distortion gives them a live, potent, in your face house party feel but sometimes the amount of slap back and noise does detract from the intensity of Cox's vocal performance. In the end, Monomania is like a marshmallow rolled in a hundred carpenter's tacks, dangerously abrasive with a softly sweet center. Here is an over view of all the tracks (my favs in bold):
NEON JUNKYARD: Lovin this track. Sprinkled with what sounds like reverse guitars and bubbling bong noise (did I imagine that?), it is thick in a trippy, noisy haze. Bradford Cox's vocals sound like a megaphonish John Lennon in spots. It is the type of song you want to hear often and just might discover new gems of sound each time you revisit it.
LEATHER JACKET II: Built around a solid guitar hook, the wash of effects turn this into more of a soundscape of turmoil. In fact, at times it can feel like a live ending to a song when instruments are destroyed. This is the kind of song to drive your parents out of the room.
THE MISSING: Lovely steady moving beat with trancy guitars that conjure up cool nights and wreaking gentle havoc. Pretty melodies and the solid bassline with really cool half steps in all the right places. This song plays like fond somewhat sad memories. It kind of embraces you. Sweet song.
PENSACOLA: Like a Strange Boys sound drug through the gravel driveway this feels like down home country cow punk song that you want to dosey doe to.
DREAM CAPTAIN: Heavy dose of 60's psychedelic glammy vibe. Could this be an ode to Blues Image? I doubt it but it made me think of them in a way.
BLUE AGENT: The spartan production and staccato rhythms pull you into this song that feels like a story you want to fall into: "I'm a blue light... I'm a crippled coward, shining into the night"- Playful and a bit abstract which is always a good thing.
T.H.M : Mellow with a pop heart. It is cool and quirky and actually reminds me of Nielsen, if Harry was in an alcoholic stupor :) "took to bullets to the brain... my kind brother he was insane" - One of the biggest surprises on Monomania.
SLEEPWALKING: Cool sock hop Smiths style beat with dancy guitars. Fluid and fun with a care free romantic feel. Not a stand out track but it still works.
BACK TO THE MIDDLE: Dancey track that straddles a hipster pop feel somewhere between Foxygen, King Tuff and The Strokes.
MONOMANIA: Apart from the relentless amount of distortion on almost every aspect of this track, it has a totally pop skeleton with bouncy melodies. The last third erupts into a cacophony of screaming guitar and ambient sounds that sound like jet fighters and eventually the rattling bite of a revving motocross bike (?)
The new MGMT song "Alien Days" is a trippy ride if maybe a slightly familiar one. The boys seem to steal phrasings, melodies from themselves which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean it is dreamy and super duper lush. It does have a meandering quality like a movie without an ending. Anyway, I have a big soft heart for MGMT- push play, close your eyes and start tripping.
"Soft Treasure", the name of Titanics latest album is an apt one as the songs contained within smoothly caress your senses in a cool chill wave of indie pop and ambient bliss. Titanics is Mark Lombardo's brainchild and his smooth vocals that contribute heavily to the sound are stirred well into his lush mix of synthesizers and beats. Derek Rogers provides some potent guitar work on songs like Cars, Low Frames and Two Days. These tracks have a very cool vibe and a decidedly retro 80's pop feel like they could of been in a John Hughes film while teenagers navigate their messy lives. In this sense, Titanics sometimes feels like a loving homage to a more romantic time. I also get this sense when I listen to Future Islands and to some degree, Sam Flax (although his brand of retro almost jazz rock feels a bit more kitschy to me). Down On The Bottom feels so free and easy as to be a slow motion glide on on a perfect wave... "liquid resolve and we stay with our limbs cut down"- This song in particular feels like it has a story arc of sorts and the abstract yet emotionally sung lyrics beg you for the back story. The dreamy ending is so damn engaging.
There is a fair amount of straight instrumental ambient compositions on this album. Table Bet glides into a really slick dreamy vibe. Sounds a bit mysterious with a hint of danger around it's corners. Treasuresoft is a constant slow build of synths and feels like a fluid interlude. Yoota gets you lost in it's repetitive piano riff with an electronic beat holding it down. It meanders a bit but in a good way. Clouds, Ponds, Myths has three distinct sections as the name suggests and Lombardo creates some evocative sounds to be sure but (to me) while many sections work well- as one continual sound bed it feels less cohesive than it should.
Soft Treasure is an earnest piece of ambient work full of songs that make you want to submit to it's sense of tranquility while pulling on your surreal side. Many of the songs will certainly grow on you, embrace you fully. In a world full of head banging and moshing, it begs you to keep the dance gentle and introspective.
One wonders if Elias ever smiles. As I watch this live performance of Morals (which is one of my favorite tracks on Ice Age's latest album "You're Nothing") I cannot imagine the corners of his lips every turning up. Obviously doing so during this emotionally blue track would be weird but I hope the punk ethos is not so thick in these young boys musical blood as to poison any sign of pure silliness (for example). Anyway, this track LIVE is pretty damn awesome.
Ladies and Gentlemen, girls and boys, dogs and cats (both domesticated and feral) ..Once again, it is time for American Pancakes Friday Five Favorite Fuh Videos! Since AP is first and foremost about music, they will, by and large, be music videos (but not always). Click on the titles to play them at their source (that way you can enlarge- customize your HD preferences yada yada). Enjoy!!
Ray Wise's striking countenance will always have a bit of the creep factor because of his spot on schizophrenic performance on Twin Peaks. Yeah, you remember. He played Leland Palmer, Laura Palmers grieving and possibly possessed father. In the Beach House "Wishes" video he has the voice of an angel as he presides over a strangely surreal half time show. Directed in perfectly twisted slow motion by Eric Wareheim of the comedy duo Tim and Eric it sparkles and shines. Add this amazing and haunting song and everyone in this stadium seems more like cult heads than simple sports fans.
By the end of this video, YOU will be singing "My little grungy doll in your overalls" and be captivated by the single minded lo fi quirky mind of Prince Ness. With a bass line that at least is partially reminiscent of The Crystals "Then He Kissed Me"- Grungy Doll sways like a slow dance in your socks as Prince Ness articulates in a monotone way all kinds of thoughts from race relations to personal relations in a matter of fact way. It can sound off the cuff but also sound punkly poetic. Charming and askew. Remember when Jeff Goldbloom got into that contraption with the Fly and became Brundlefly? Well if the Shirelles and Wall of Vodoo entered that DNA blending machine the result may sound like Prince Ness.
Directed with an kind of stoic eeriness by Josh Lawson, "Creeper" by Swim uses the stark contrast of black and white imagery effectively. The electronic indie pop is just as stark and can feel slightly detached but totally danceable. It is cooly mid 80's, lush and spartan at the same time. The vocal performance is pure and wonderful.
After gleefully reviewing the video for Feeding People's little cinematic masterpiece "Island Universe" back in September, it was encouraging to see Dick Thompson back in the directors chair. He always brings a well crafted story tellers hand to the way he frames and edits his shots plus both videos have a dark, slightly perverse side which makes me wonder what is dwelling inside Mr. Thompson's head (or basement). Ashley Tolman (who plays Big Mother) has an absolutely naughty smile befitting 70's grind house or soft porn.She oozes humor and sexiness at the same time as the powerful down beats of Feeding People's Big Mother rocks away.
What the fuck?? I am not sure what I just saw but the two chaps who open and close this really weird video raise it above the mere WTF category with their solid comedic acting chops and, besides, where else can you see dolphin boobs.
Fat History Month makes songs that can sound punk progressive and totally lackadaisical at the same time. A song like Everyday is Christmas can make you feel tipsy one moment and angry the next and this is just from the ever changing shift in tone and texture, and time signatures. The wonderfully down trodden Cat in a Box will have you taking in strays and become a cat lady even if you're a guy: "I'm in a cardboard box that's soggy wet and I still think it's keeping me dry." This somewhat acoustic track still feels as thick and strident as the rest of the album exploding when the drums kick in. Is it really about a cat (?), no way. Love this track.
Melodies seemingly wander aimlessly on most of these tracks and guitar strings bend and half step almost as a matter of course making this all seem like a dreamy askew trip. The discordant nature makes you feel the compositions in your gut. The title track, Bad History Month feels itself like a dusty Western. Very much like a lazy ride on a horse until it gets all heavy and disjointed like a rock slide. Some of the music interludes are absolutely head tripping.
The Future, musically, pumps out some progressive garage strains that somehow make me think of At the Drive In. Probably the most conventional composition and still out there as it implodes, breaks apart, gets a bit mellow and pretty and then ends with a electronic industrial sound. The last track, I Ate Myself And I Want To Die is avant-garde, weird and beautiful at the same time. As it slows to breathe, the guitar lines chase themselves as the rest of the song feels like it needs to catch up. This song moves along in a linear fashion, not feeling the need to follow conventional patterns (who needs verses and choruses anyway). This can feel oddly rewarding, each part revealing new discoveries. For some of you, it might be so strange as to be off putting. Me, I revel in things that are different and applaud what Fat History Month is laying down. These songs may feel like fever dreams but they are dreams nonetheless. Open your mind and check Fat HistoryMonth out.
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Robb Donker
PRESS NOTES reveal that: The band will be heading out on the road with labelmates Pile this Spring for a six week national tour that has already generated a great deal of buzz from college radio, making several stops in California, including an instore performance at Origami Vinyl on April 10th.
