I just kind of want to call this entry OhmygodOhmygodOhmygod!!
Because it is technically flashback friday, I'll take a moment to expound upon my vast and limitless love for the Electric Light Orchestra, before I get to the glint of newly discovered love in my eye today for Music Go Music.
I've often put needle to an ELO record and had a solo dance party that involves a lot of unflattering arm flailing and skipping around, making me feel like a five year old the first time they hear the Hokey Pokey. And in those moments, I ask myself, "Why in the hell aren't there any modern bands that sound like ELO?!?" Or I should say that I scream that question to the sky, shaking my fist at the Heavens and reprimand any and all Gods that reside up there for giving us so much music that sounds like Mariah Carey and so little that sounds like it came from the gloriously convoluted brain of one Jeff Lynne.
I mean just take the simple categorization of the music on their Wiki page: Rock, Progressive Rock, Pop Rock, Symphonic Rock, Cello Rock.
I'm sorry? Cello rock? I guess it must have been big in Bulgaria.
But there you have it - ELO, music's glorious blender. And what a smoothie it created!!
Just feast your eyes on this:
Did you hear that keyboard saying "ba boo biddy be boo boo?" With all these synth acts out there, you've gotta wonder how a 100 million album-selling "mainstream" act like ELO can trump them in weirdness.
Let's just summarize by saying that there is not a possibility on earth that I can listen to more than one minute of an ELO song without being instantly transported to a great mood.
And speaking of good moods (and awkward segues), today's quite a pretty day here in LA. It's 75 degrees and sunny, and hell, it's Friday, so there's not much to complain about in the world. Well, not in mine at least.
And today is the day that my prayers to the musically vengeful gods have been answered. The answer to those prayers is Music Go Music. Hyperbolic much? Actually no. If you were watching my face when I first heard this band, you probably would have seen me the way I got the first time I heard Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow" after 15 years of radio silence. That is to say - big smile, hidden with my hands giggling Japanese Schoolgirl style, and a little moisture in my eyes.
Oh yes. This is it. Dripping with strings, beats like a rubber ball, and vocals as earnest as ABBA and plaintive as Blondie. It would be disco if it wasn't so...undefinable. It's huge, shamelessly happy, dramatic...ELO-esque, but unique unto itself to the point that comparing it to other bands feels slothful and lazy.
For the record: Music Go Music is an LA band. An LA band I've never seen (idiot!) nor heard of (damn it!). The singer who bills herself as "Gala Bell" is actually named Meredith, and she does double duty for another quite good LA band called Bodies of Water. Bodies of Water is kind of a nouveau-chorale folk rock act with nary a rubber ball beat in sight, but plenty of ear-grabbing guitar, which makes for an truly interesting range to straddle between the two bands. Music Go Music has their first full-length CD available now from Secretly Canadian. So go buy it and come have a dance party with me.
http://www.myspace.com/musicgomusic
Friday, October 23, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
10/22 - Washed Out
Nope, the title of the blog is not actually a description of how my brain has felt for the last month or so - and apologies to anyone who has missed me. Especially if you were trying to run me over with your car - because there were probably a few days I was totally ready for that in lieu of computer generated eyestrain and the carpal tunnels that goes along with typing somewhere in the ballpark of 50,000 words in a month. Hey, guess what? Turns out that writing a book is fucking hard! What!?!
But, this blog isn't really about me - not directly anyway - so let's get to the meat of it, shall we?
In the grand tradition of one guy with a mixer, a synth, and a drum machine calling themselves a band (what's with that anyway?), Washed Out is a fella named Ernest Greene from Georgia. He plays what that clever Pitchfork calls "bedroom synth," another term that I'm not I know the meaning of. I'll take a stab at it:
Bedroom synth: n. Music played by one guy with the name of a band that sounds like one guy with the name of a band playing into a microphone muffled with sweat socks, filtered through pixie dust and Sunday Hangovers and teeming underneath with really pretty layered melodies and soothing vocals.
Because here's the deal - Washed Out (and Memory Tapes, and Toro y Moi - two bands always mentioned with Washed Out) has really lush, gorgeous vocals that are buried under all that bedroom mess. The production is pretty low fi, but the songs are, kids listen to grandma here, a hell of a lot like what we used to call "shoegaze" or "dream pop" back when people made the same kind of sounds with guitar pedals.
In fact, if I was half asleep on a cocktail of codeine and Tylenol PM, I'd swear on my mother that "Feel It All Around" was some Slowdive song I'd never heard. Which, if you ask me, is actually a GOOD thing. England, apparently, practically ran Slowdive out of the country with ire and hatred, but down in sleepy old Austin, Texas in a dorm that looked like a prison, there were a whole lot of us ladies who thought they were pretty damn great.
And after a few listens, it starts to feel like the through-a-sweat-sock sound over all those vocals is really just a ruse to get you to bend your ear RCA-like a little closer to the speaker and go, "What are you whispering to me, you sensitive boy with the name of a band?" And your reward isn't small for doing so. It's actually pretty great.
Washed Out - you sound a little like Slowdive. And then sometimes you sound kind of like OMD covering Howard Jones (yeah, I said Howard. Jones.). You are a great soundtrack to a long bath. And I like you.
But, this blog isn't really about me - not directly anyway - so let's get to the meat of it, shall we?
In the grand tradition of one guy with a mixer, a synth, and a drum machine calling themselves a band (what's with that anyway?), Washed Out is a fella named Ernest Greene from Georgia. He plays what that clever Pitchfork calls "bedroom synth," another term that I'm not I know the meaning of. I'll take a stab at it:
Bedroom synth: n. Music played by one guy with the name of a band that sounds like one guy with the name of a band playing into a microphone muffled with sweat socks, filtered through pixie dust and Sunday Hangovers and teeming underneath with really pretty layered melodies and soothing vocals.
Because here's the deal - Washed Out (and Memory Tapes, and Toro y Moi - two bands always mentioned with Washed Out) has really lush, gorgeous vocals that are buried under all that bedroom mess. The production is pretty low fi, but the songs are, kids listen to grandma here, a hell of a lot like what we used to call "shoegaze" or "dream pop" back when people made the same kind of sounds with guitar pedals.
In fact, if I was half asleep on a cocktail of codeine and Tylenol PM, I'd swear on my mother that "Feel It All Around" was some Slowdive song I'd never heard. Which, if you ask me, is actually a GOOD thing. England, apparently, practically ran Slowdive out of the country with ire and hatred, but down in sleepy old Austin, Texas in a dorm that looked like a prison, there were a whole lot of us ladies who thought they were pretty damn great.
And after a few listens, it starts to feel like the through-a-sweat-sock sound over all those vocals is really just a ruse to get you to bend your ear RCA-like a little closer to the speaker and go, "What are you whispering to me, you sensitive boy with the name of a band?" And your reward isn't small for doing so. It's actually pretty great.
Washed Out - you sound a little like Slowdive. And then sometimes you sound kind of like OMD covering Howard Jones (yeah, I said Howard. Jones.). You are a great soundtrack to a long bath. And I like you.
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