7/30 - Eagle & Talon

Eagle and Talon are a girlie duo from Los Angeles that seem to have picked up the mid 90s mantle from the likes of Slant 6, Sleater-Kinney, and Helium. They've got a melodic yet angular (christ I'm tired of that word - any new suggestions would be much appreciated), atonal cacophanous, sweet garagey thing going that doesn't sound much like all the other stuff coming out of El-Lay right about now.

In June, the duo released a full length album called Thracian, which they are actually offering on a "pay what you want" basis here. Be sure if you buy it not to be a total cheap douche and toss them some decent money. A couple of ladies playing occasional shows at the Echo, no matter how much indie cred they have, would probably appreciate a nice meal at the taco truck around the corner. Get some good music that makes you feel like a sexually confused, thrift store shopping, angsty college girl all over again. Okay, maybe that's just me, but still...that's wierdly a good thing.

http://www.myspace.com/eagleandtalon

7/29 - Appaloosa

Have you ever wondered what Nico might sound like if she had been introduced to Zoloft? Cuz I have. No, seriously, I totally have. A co-worker of mine once intimated that Nico's voice sounded kind of like a cross between a foghorn and someone with Down's Syndrome having trouble enunciating. Look, I didn't say it, I'm just repeating it. But I violently disagreed, folded my arms, and cold-shouldered him through 6 more hours of brain-killing data entry and his shitty Keane CD collection.

I may not know shit about the band Appaloosa, but one thing I do know is that I'm fairly certain that said co-worker would totally hate them, because Zoloft, meet Nico. Nico, meet Zoloft. Now you two go in a room with a young German guy and make some moody electro. Thank you. You're welcome.

Seiously, this is destined to be a post completely absent of any pertinent information, but I hope you'll appreciate that the crappy reportage is directly inverse to the excellent music of Appaloosa. Oddly enough, there's a pretty similarly useless interview with the band on the (500)Days of Summer film blog.

Currently, you can only buy their fine single "The Day We (Fell In Love)" from Kitsune and iTunes, but the demos on their myspace page are more than just a little fucking promising.

7/28 - Gram Rabbit

It's true that Gram Rabbit has been knocking around the high desert of Joshua Tree for a long time now, so are hardly a brand spanking new revelation to anyone who has ever been fortunate enough to spend a weekend night under the starry skies of Pioneer Town enjoying a beer and the desert's finest music at Pappy & Harriet's. Pappy's could well be SoCal's best unintentionally kept secret - a honky tonk set in the amber dirt hills above J.Tree, and nestled in a literal old west town, albeit a honky tonk that routinely boasts sets by the likes of Peaches, Eagles of Death Metal, Josh Homme, and today's Bomb, Gram Rabbit. It's not hard to imagine why these folks love the desert. It's quiet, beautiful, and filled with a heady mix of artists, musicians and desert rat burnouts alike.

I've had several occasions, myself, to spend some time up there thanks to the fact that my friend Kate moved there several years ago. As unhappy as I may be to see her less frequently, I am a big fan of any instance of a friend moving someplace I love to visit. I am an even bigger fan of visiting her when she invites over all her friends and makes some killer pork chili verde. On one nice occasion, I got to play duelling DJ with Kate's former roommate, Killer, an indeed killer chick who tours as Peaches' sound crew. On another, the party included more tacos than I could load into a hollow leg, a bounce house, and the nice folks of Gram Rabbit - Todd & Jessika.

Gram Rabbit's music is a kind of symphony of disorder - almost impossible to categorize easily in any real genre. It is in turns party electro, desert funk, and guitar madness. "Bloody Bunnies" somehow made it onto the soundtrack to the now-defunct show "Life," although I can't imagine what bloody bunnies in the road could have had to do with any kind of cop show.

They play in LA at the Troubadour on Thursday. Their live shows are as whacked as their music, so if you like what you hear, go give it a look.

7/24 - Flashback Friday: Lee Hazelwood

Lee Hazelwood is probably most famous for writing Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'," and beyond that for his long time collaboration with her as both a songwriter and a duet partner. And as much as "Boots" is a pop music giant, what Hazelwood molded Nancy's wispy vocals into in their other tracks was often much stranger and esoteric. Back in the early '90s I used to fall asleep listening to Slowdive's Souvlaki album pretty often. As far as nap records go, that one is seriously the king - which is no insult, I assure you, because it's also beautiful and perfect. But, as a bonus track on that CD they do a straightforward cover of Hazelwood/Sinatra's "Some Velvet Morning." When I learned that this eerie tempo shifting, fairy tale of a song was originally on a Nancy Sinatra album, I think I probably coughed out all the pot smoke I'd just inhaled, grabbed my high interest Best Buy credit card and went in search of Sinatra. Even today when I listen to "Some Velvet Morning" on my coveted Nancy & Lee LP, I can't believe that this song is 40 years old. It's like a cross between a Spaghetti Western and an acid trip!

But not to dwell so much on one single song, because Lee's other output is equally impressive. He was in a film called "Cowboy in Sweden" and cut a terrific soundtrack, and did an album with Ann Margaret (who does actually seem like a suitable follow up to Nancy), and if you can find any of those around your local record store, you should buy them immediately. Hazelwood's basement-deep vocals recall a more elusive and less serious Johnny Cash - as you can hear pretty clearly in his and Nancy's pleasing cover of "Jackson." It's a voice that rattles the seat of your pants, and spreads from your chest to your fingers. It's sad, but comforting. Masculine, but sensitive.

Enjoy.

7/23 - Mayer Hawthorne

No lie, Detroit is the birthplace of smooth soul. Being a Southerner, myself, I've always much preferred the dirty sex-you-down thump of the Stax sound over Motown, but as long as there are Sunday afternoons on Earth, the liquid language of Holland-Dozier-Holland has a home. In the outer reaches of the Detroit area, a little white kid named Mayer Hawthorne must have had a whole lot of Sunday afternoons filled with scratchy Hitsville vinyl, because crap, the guy's got the stuff down pat.

Reputedly, when he brought his music to Peanut Butter Wolf (head of his label Stone's Throw), the Wolf thought he was peddling remixes or joshing him with some deep cuts of old Motwon stuff. And it can be kind of a lot to wrap your head around the fact that this bespectacled suburban nerd is crooning out this kind of Smokey Robinson vibe. But, damned if he isn't.

And don't miss your chance to buy a sweet heart-shaped 7" for the single "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out" on the Stone's Throw site, as featured in the below video for the song.



http://www.myspace.com/mayerhawthorne

7/21 - The Dodos

It's actually my hope that I'm not pointing out anything new with this post. In a perfect world, anyone who might read this would already own at least the Dodos' easily obtainable last album, Visiter that came out a couple of years ago around the same time the Fleet Foxes released their first full length album. Frankly, it's been an unending source of confusion to me as to why Fleet Foxes are bigger than Jesus, but The Dodos have remained somewhat below the radar. On the surface, they both have the sonic quality of a sunlit Smoky Mountain stream - all soft acoustic jangling, pastoral harmonies, rim-clicking insect drums - but the Dodos bear the distinction of being equally compared to Animal Collective, i.e. another band whose sound has sent many a bearded boy's tighty witeys straight to the laundry pile, yet are not nearly as obtuse and inscrutable in the melody department as those indie giants.

So will the upcoming third album, Time to Die be the one that sets The Dodos afire? Will this trio from San Francisco rise above the status of JV team little brother to these Varsity superstars? Shit, I don't know. So far, the preview single "Fables" that has appeared on their myspace recently isn't grabbing me and yanking my eyes back into the back of my head like "Fools," "The Ball," and "Trades and Tarriffs" with their finger-picking tent-revivial goodness. But it's nice enough to make me look forward to mid-September when I can hear the rest.

I do have to note that I saw them play in front of the American Mammal Diorama in the Natural History Museum near USC, and that is hard to top. But, a close second may be arriving. The Dodos will be playing at The Getty on August 8th.

7/20 - My Gold Mask

This boy/girl duo out of Chicago is cranking out some kitchen-sink blues/rhythmic/pop stuff that is gaining some attention in the almighty blogosphere lately. And while I'd say that their freshman effort available on Bandcamp is still pretty rough around the edges, it sounds like a band slowly settling into their skins and crouching down to run an otherworldly race. If this is the stretching period, in other words, then I'd imagine that what's to come should be worth watching out for. The female vocals vary between slightly creepy to boldly aggressive, and the nylon-stringed electric guitar that roils along the background reminds us of a time when college rock didn't require a degree in advanced electronic engineering.

You can download the album here. The songs Bitches, Your Coo Ka Choo, and Monomania (below)* are even eff-ar-ee-ee. Yep, won't ding your cherry Paypal veneer one bit.

And for those of you reading this on your Commodore 64s, you can even order this album on cassette. Technophobes unite!



*Hot yam, I actually figured out how to put a real song on this thing!

7/17 - Introducing Flashback Fridays

I've decided starting this week that rather than intermittently filtering in some of my classic favorites, I'm going to do it each Friday, focusing especially on some classic clips culled from Youtube and elsewhere.

Today's flashback I'll dedicate to a couple of underrated 1960s girl groups - The Flirtations and The Exciters (a girl group with one boy), and a couple of terrific videos made for a couple of truly thumping songs.

The Exciters come to us by way of Jamaica, NY circa early '60s when their first hit "Tell Him" topped the Billboard chart. Lead vocalist Brenda Reid was backed by Lillian Walker, Sylvia Wilbur and Herb Rooney (later to be Reid's husband). "Tell Him" was not only a monster hit at the time, but it was also an important (if overlooked at the time) milestone for female vocals. Where women in music tended to sing demure, romantic odes to love, Reid's powerhouse voice urged a more active, forceful feminine role. The pattern set forth in "Tell Him" was taken on ten-fold with their second, sadly less successful, single "He's Got the Power." Even though Reid sings of being under her man's sexy love spell, she does so in a marked bellow of defiance that lets you know she might just be enjoying the fight. Doubtlessly, The Exciters' muscular female vocals and subject matter were precursors for the tough sounds of The Shangri-Las and The Ronettes later.

The Flirtations were a trio (and occasional quartet) from the UK that found some success in the later 60s both in England and in the US with their hit "Nothing But a Heartache." If there is such a thing as girl-soul-metal, this song is it. If you listen to the levels in this urgent floor burner, you can't help but imagine that every dial was fiery red in the recording booth. The song was released on the Deram label in 1968, and featured the vocals of sisters Shirley & Ernestine Pearce and Viola Billups. The video for the song is a real head-scratcher, and though I don't believe that it was a Scopitone video it does resemble one in its esoteric location and theme.

Both of these songs can be found in the absolutely kickass box set - One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found by Rhino, which is easily the greatest Christmas presents I ever received in my life (thanks mom). And if you are interested in more strange and wonderful videos such as these, and you are in Los Angeles, there is an event at the Egyptian Theater this Sunday discussing the history and technical development of Scopitones (which were "video jukeboxes" that predated MTV by a couple of decades), and showing some choice clips. Read more about that here.

7/15 - Goldielocks

Since yesterday's selection was a little on the sad side, let's make today opposite day. Nothin' sad about female British MC, Goldielocks. Sassy, adorable, and a little edgy, she fuses good time street party with social sarcasm and lays it down over a catchy hands-in-the-air kind of beat (provided, while performing live, on the tables by her very handsome husband). Continuing to get mileage out of the three days I spent sweating out SXSW, Goldielocks was yet another act that played on 3/20 at the Beauty Bar (sharing the bill with prior Daily Bombs Solid Gold and Juliette and the New Romantiques - what can I say? It was a fucking awesome showcase). In fact, here's a picture.



If you could drag that lens about two audience spots to the left, you'd see me holding a half-empty can of Sparks and halfdancing like people are ought to do when standing in a crowd of, oh, about 20 people - all who seem really happy to be there, but none of whom are drunk enough at 3pm to bust any kind of devilmaycare moves. Head bob/foot tap combo it is, then.

In a nice PR move, Ms. Locks was free with the handouts of her Bear Safe EP after the set. I snagged one, smiled, nodded, mumbled my thanks and then proceeded to allow three of my friends to upload it to their computers. In thanks for my mild crime spree, today, I give you Goldielocks. Buy some of her music. It's great stuff to listen to while putting on your Saturday night lipgloss.

Also, read her blog. It's a good time.

http://www.myspace.com/goldielocksmusic

7/14 - Yonlu

This month, David Byrne's brilliant label Luaka Bop, realesed Yonlu's first - and sadly destined to be only - album, called A Society In Which No Tear Is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre. The music on the album is a collection of bedroom recordings by a talented and deeply introspective teenager, whose ability to fuse Western modern folk soundscapes (with many, maybe too many, hints of the late Elliot Smith), with variations on Bossa Nova rhythms and Caetano Veloso-style guitar picking, seems remarkably beyond the depth of his 16 short years.

Sadly, before Yonlu (aka Vinicius Gageiro Marques of Porto Alegre) was to turn 17, he took his own life. His music was discovered on his computer posthumously by his parents, who had no idea that he had been recording anything.

Perhaps surprisingly, the collection of songs that Luaka Bop has put out, also include a lot of joy and whimsy. The playlist is uneven and wavering, as you would imagine the mind of a teenager may be, but it also breathes and sparkles. The naked quality of the tunes is destined to make the disc one of the more important recordings of the year, even if it is equally destined to be one of those discs you'll only want to hear alone with your headphones.

Luaka Bop has generously made the whole album available for listen on Yonlu's web page.

7/13 - Django Django

What is it about the name of this band that makes me think of a hipster Hamburgler? I really can't help but saying the name Django Django like RubbleRubble, and then I get oddly hungry for a Quarter Pounder w/Cheese. And while one has to assume that the name at least obliquely refers to guitar legend Django Reinhardt, the music gives us no indication of any kind of sonic connection.

What we have here is a folk/electronic, rhythmic, acoustic/electric mish mash created by a group that has to be really sick and tired of being compared to, say, early outings of The Beta Band. But, hey, I like the Beta Band, so it's no insult from my end. And I like Django Django. I find the swelling, layered vocals to be somehow both soothing and tense at the same time, and overall just plain pleasing.

As yet, the band remains unsigned. However, you can order a nice copy of the Storm/Love's Dart 7" on Pure Groove. As a bonus, you can order it with a poster of some kind of esoteric album art that will send a big ole Fuck You message to your kid's Jonas Brothers posters.



http://www.myspace.com/djangotime

7/9 - Shirley Ellis

You know that Name Game you used to play as a kid - "Phil Phil bo Bill Banana Fanna Fo Fill...etc."? Well, maybe you don't know that you can pretty much thank or blame Shirley Ellis for that song (though the youthful glee of putting the names Mitch and Chuck through the treatment is all your own).

Ellis had a relatively brief career spanning from about 1963 - 1968, wherein she had three pop singles blaze into the top 10, and one other modestly successful soul side presented as a coda to her years as a singer. She was born in the Bronx in 1941, and began singing in the '50s with a now-forgotten group called the Metronomes. Toward the end of that decade, she hooked up with manager/songwriter Lincoln Chase (who had already penned the hit "Jim Dandy" for LaVern Baker), and together they released the semi-novelty floor-burner "The Nitty Gritty" in 1963. Ellis' version of the song, sadly and strangely, was released only as a live cut. Though the stereo quality is uncommonly good for this treatment, nonetheless, no known version seems to exist without the distracting swell of the audience in the background. This, in my opinion, is the one thing that makes Gladys Knight & the Pips' later cover of the song the superior of the two.

The offhanded, playful nursery-rhyme like lyrics of "The Name Game," which became her next release, proved so popular for the singer, that she duplicated the formula in the far-superior single "The Clapping Song" a year later. For my money, "The Clapping Song," with its chanting, rhythmic sing- and clap-along melody, may be over 40 years old at this point, but has scarcely been trumped as one of the best danceparty songs of all time. For her last hit, Ellis released the excellent, more traditional soul, "Soultime," which has been sampled to excellent effect recently by the group The Go! Team (in their song "Bottle Rocket".

It's astounding how well Ellis' so-called novelty pop songs have held up over the years. It's no secret that the "disposable" pop music of the '60s turned out to be quite recyclable in sound, style and tone, but it says a lot that the original versions still play so well next to the music of today.

7/8 - Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band

Despite the unwieldy name, these local Seattle contemporaries of last week's Daily Bomb Champagne Champagne, are determined to make you remember it. Rather than taking the pervasively popular electro-twiddling route, MSHVB brings some guitar rock back to the College Rock table. And despite loose and virtuosic twin guitar showdowns, they also manage to make some music that is as easy to sing along with as your ABCs. Songs like "Who's Asking" and "Anchors Dropped" bring exciting, blazing radio anthems to your speakers that both soothe the ears and pound the pulse.

According to the band's press, the band formed in 2008, when lead axman Benji Verdoes was impelled to keep a promise to his 13 year old brother Marshall. Reportedly, in a move of sibling solidarity, Benji promised then 11 year old Marshall that when he got good enough at his new drumming endeavor, they could form a band. Apparently the incentive worked, because two years later, MSHVB surfaced. Luckily for the rest of us, not only did Marshall get quite good at his instrument, but together with Benji and another two equally talented friends, they formed a GOOD band. Had I made the same promise to my little brother, we'd have likely made music only our mother could pretend to love. So, good on you, Verdoes Bros.

An EP is now available on Secretly Canadian's sister label, Dead Oceans.





http://www.myspace.com/mtsthelensvietnamband

7/2 - Champagne Champagne

I'll admit that I don't know a whole lot about this band. So, no cheeky asides, no non sequitur biographical ramblings, no in depth explorations of musical context. Basically, Champagne Champagne is a group of guys out of Seattle that play some hip hop infused with jaunty acoustic strumming. They're sometimes offhanded and languid like the Gorillaz and more often a whole thing of their own. They say that they got together to play "feel good music," and I'd say that's about as good a description as any. Shout outs to Molly Ringwald and Appalonia should give you the idea that this isn't posturing street-based rap - nary a bitch, a ho, or a nigga in sight - but something a little more East Coast, liquid, cerebral stuff.

You can download their full album here. And preview some tracks on their myspace.

7/1 - Koko Von Napoo

What better way to start the month celebrating American independence, than with the presentation of a new band from France. Oh, sure, as gifts celebrating our questionable freedom go, Koko Von Napoo's music might not be quite as weighty and impressive as that tall lady of liberty standing in the harbor up in New York, but it's French at least. A stretch? Yeah, okay, I'll admit I just thought this band sounded pretty nice. They DO make me feel thankful for my freedom to wear headphones at work, at least.

Enough of that nonsense, though. What we have here is yet another band that has slinked onto the scene with a savvy, continental and sophisticated 7", available to physically own through the Rough Trade website, or to download on iTunes. If you happen to be a fan of Altered Images, I think you'll love this one. Even if you aren't, but like your songs jerky and swirly, with hand claps and slightly accented chripy female vocals, this is totally your flavor, man.

The A-side is "Polly," and the B-side is called "JonBon." Their myspace page also features remixes of "Polly" by Chateau Marmont and Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya Ya, the former of which is actually as good as the original song, the latter of which is complete feces.

http://www.myspace.com/kokovonnapoo