5/18 - Fever Ray

I'm not going to waste much time rhapsodizing about all the ways in which I think that Fever Ray is amazing, or how I think that it's some of the most original music I've heard in a long while. Suffice with these facts:

1. Fever Ray is a solo project by Karen Dreijer-Andersson who is one half of the strange, experimental and wonderful Swedish band, The Knife.

2. Fever Ray is spare, dark, moody, scary and beautiful.

3. Fever Ray makes some really kick ass videos.







http://www.myspace.com/feverray

5/14 - Juliette and the New Romantiques

For a while, those slides that you see before you see a movie in the theater included these bits about entertainers who had two jobs. Something like Queen Latifah who was a rapper! AND an actress! Or Rebecca Romijn who is a model! AND an actress! I always thought, "big fucking deal. I wanna see someone who is an actress AND a physicist, or an actor AND a garbageman." Or something equal to that. Because more often than not, even when someone acts and models, or acts and sings, it's pretty groan-worthy anyway. But, whatever, this isn't news. Actors want to sing, and singers want to act, and for the most part, it would be really great if they'd just stick to their day job and not torture us (I'm looking at you Lindsay Lohan). So, when Juliette Lewis formed The Licks all those years ago, I pretty much thought what most people might - Oh, Jesus, why?

Surprisingly, they actually rocked. I wouldn't say that I loved everything they did, but at the same time, it was MUCH better than it should have been. She seemed to fall into a narrow category of actors who were also legitimately singers. She wasn't so much acting like a rock singer, but she really believed and thus she was. And, reluctantly, I felt myself beginning a conversion.

Last summer, I fell into working on a movie with her and teaching her how to rollerskate. After getting to know her fairly well, I realized that whatever she's doing on stage really is very much who she is, so when she scrapped The Licks this year (which may or may not have occurred amidst some rumored drama), and formed Juliette and the New Romantiques, I was interested.

I saw a couple of shows that they did, and while the music itself is definitely good, and probably a cut above what The Licks were doing, the live show was absolutely off the charts. Her voice has honed itself to an almost Janis Joplin-like bluesy rasp, and she works the crowd like Tina Turner. At one show, she thanked the audience for coming out: "especially you - boy in the bra, and you - my lesbians in the front, and you - tall guy, and you - guy with the crooked teeth, never fix those, they are sexy!" I completed my conversion. I thought they were great.

An album is forthcoming, but until then, you can hear some songs here:

http://www.myspace.com/juliettelewis

5/13 - Bell Gardens

Kenneth James Gibson loves the sound of sunshine and Southern California. If I had to write one sentence about him that didn't contain the word "genius" at least once, that's the one. If I had to go way back on this one, I'd have to talk about being 19 years old, coming back to Austin after a dreadful and stoned summer away in Dallas, and finding that in the amount of time I'd been gone, my best friend Cathy had met this guy Ken, and suddenly Cathy, lo and behold, was playing bass in a band. Well this was all pretty dubious sounding to me until she played me this demo they'd made called "Still California." It was noisy, loopy, spacey, and dirty, but it was also a pretty good dreamy approximation of what was going through my head at that time - which was a burning desire to leave Texas and move to Los Angeles as soon as humanly possible. And I loved it.

Ken liked Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. He liked My Bloody Valentine. He loved the Beach Boys. And believe it or not, it wasn't too cool to love the Beach Boys back then. He also could make the most incredible racket with a guitar that I'd ever heard. And I'm sure he still likes all those things.

That demo made it to a 7" by their band, The Little Furry Things (later to become simply Furry Things), and later was a key track on their first album, "The Big Saturday Illusion." They were a great young band - a bunch of kids learning how to be great at what they did in front of really receptive audiences. Killing us with monstrously intentional feedback, loops of earsplitting sonic fire, and tightening it up as they went along until they found a thumping, blissful, spacey dub infused funk that blew their fellow Texan spacerockers out of the water by the time their next EP was released. It was a great band, getting better all the time, until about 1998ish. Everyone moved to Los Angeles. Ironically, California killed the band that California inspired.

Chris Michaels - 2nd guitarist, harmonies, organs/keyboard - peeled off the scene to return to the South where he found a home playing with Sparklehorse. Cathy Shive went back to school and became, incongruously, a computer programming superstar in New York. Only drummer Charlie Woodburn and Ken stayed behind to tackle LA.

Just prior to Furry Things' inception in Austin, another band was making music there that might as well have been the yin to Furry Things' yang. While Furry Things kicked up a heartswelling, moody racket, Stars of the Lid were creeping in your ears with minimalist pocket symphanies of warm chords and sad refrains. Stars of the Lid's Brian McBride and Ken are both perfectionists in their own way, and friends as well. Hearing the chorale-quality swell of Brian's music, mixed with Ken's ear for harmony and sundrenched melody only seems like a strange fit until you describe it like that. And definitely never seems a strange fit again after you hear how nice it comes together.

California is still being very good to Ken Gibson, and very good to those who love his music. Brian and Ken's new collaboration is called Bell Gardens, and they're wonderful. Unfortunately, they are also taking their sweet time to come out with a proper album of songs. But, snippets at least can be heard currently on their myspace. And of all the things these guys have done so far, I like this one the best.

http://www.myspace.com/bellgardensmusic

Also check out Furry Things, Stars of the Lid, and some of Ken Gibson's electronic and dub projects:

http://www.myspace.com/kennethjamesgibson

http://www.myspace.com/furrythings4

http://www.myspace.com/starsofthelid

5/8 - Gino Washington

I suppose this week is a lot less about brand new music for me, because I've been revisiting some of my 60s soul collection and enjoying the hell out of it. Not too long ago, I bought this Gino Washington CD off of my friend Mr. Tim Murphy (prounounced like Timurphy - one word, like Prince, and other super important people who don't need two names), who is pretty much my guru for all things Soul and R&B, and frankly, Garage Rock as well. He assured me I would love Gino Washington, and indeed I do.

Gino served his musical time in the burgeoning R&B scene in Detroit in the early '60s - around the same time Motown was making its indelible mark in the world of popular music. Unlike the Motown acts, however, Gino represented a little bit more of a raw, untamed brand of dance music - with the stage moves of James Brown and a rough-hewn Jackie Wilson delivery. He was just 13 when he wrote his hit "Out of this World" and I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the finest teen-written songs I've ever heard. It holds up mightily alongside bigger hits of the day. Gino was purportedly inspired by Jackie Wilson, Elvis Presley and Johnny Mathis, and each of those inspirations shows in the music. He's frantic, yet smooth - alternately brash, and subtle. Equally adept at floorshakers and clutch-and-hug crooners.

Just for the record - this is not the same as Geno Washington who recorded some light weight soul sides in England in the later 6os as Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band. As a result of Geno-with-an-E, Gino-with-an-I never made it over to England to play due to the confusion of the monikers. When he finally heard Geno Washington's stuff, his response was a very indignant, "I NEVER RECORDED NONE OF THIS CRAP!" He said, "I herd this guy's records and got physically sick! he better hope he never meets me. I told a promoter in England to book a duel." You gotta love the man's fire, and I'll guarantee that every spark of it burns in his music.

5/7 - The Rockafire Explosion

When I was a little girl, all of the best birthday parties were always held at Showbiz Pizza. There were games, there was pizza, there was beer for your parents, and there was the Rockafire Explosion. The Rockafire Explosion, to me, was pretty much the most rock and roll, totally awesome thing I'd ever seen. It was a band of animal robots. Some people might say that the Rockafore Explosion isn't a real band, but when I was 8 joining that band was one of my dreams in life. There was something completely awesome about watching a big fat gorilla rocking the piano, and a bipedal wolf ventriloquist trading barbs with a hayseed bear in striped pants. When other kids were pretending to be Cyndi Lauper, I shit you not, I was putting a collander on my head and sitting behind a mini piano with a home made Rockafire logo, and lipsyncing to one of the Rockafire 45s I won from skeeball tickets. It sounds crazy, and it's a little embarrassing, but it's true.

In the late 90's Showbiz was no more, and the Rockafire became a thing of the past to everyone but for a few lucky diehards who bought whole band set-ups and put them in their garages. But thanks to those guys, we get some really unbelievable YouTube brilliance.

I can describe it as much as I want, but it's nothing like seeing it, so here's a few clips. The first is a trailer for a great documentary I just saw tonight, actually. The second is a video of the band singing "Pop Lock and Drop It" which is pretty much one of the most mindblowing things I've ever seen. I only wish I could still go to my local pizza place, order a pie and a pitcher and see this stuff live again. It makes me smile.

5/6/09 - The Do

From Finland via Paris, The Do (pronounced "doe" as in do-re-mi-fa-so-etc.), this duo has recently sprang onto the scene with a very infectuous single called "On My Shoulders," which has already be treated to a few obligatory remix efforts. In this case, the remixes never quite add to what is so wonderful and simple about the original. Singer Olivia Merilahti sounds like a pixie hitting puberty - one of the first raspy sopranos I've heard in a long time - with inflections a bit like Bjork, purposely tripping over her words.

The other available songs run the gamut. "Playground hustle" sounds like a gaggle of children rapping to synthetic sitars, toms, and pennywhistles. Then "Queen Dot Kong" sounds like Eminem by way of Nellie McKay. Honestly, nothing quite lives up to the stuttering brilliance of "On My Shoulders," but boring they are not.

Their myspace page reads like it was written by someone on a three day meth binge, so there's not really anything coherent to learn there, but I doubt they'll remain mysterious for long.





Find The Do on myspace here: www.myspace.com/thedoband

5/5 - Miike Snow

Instead of keeping up with my Bombs of the Day, I decided to take advantage of the great weather and my friend's birthday and go drink a lot of wine up in Solvang and Los Olivos. I'd be lying through my grape-stained teeth if I said I knew a damn thing about wine going into it, other than the fact that I like it, and that if it comes in a box, a jug, or costs $2 you'd better hold on to you fucking head, because it's gonna want to run screaming from your body the next morning. After sampling no less than 100 different wines this weekend (miraculously sans screaming head and roiling stomach), I think it's safe to say that I've gone from knowing nothing to knowing exactly as much as I could absorb faster than the wine. That is to say, if I was told about anything past the 8th sample or so each day, you can bet that I wasn't really listening.

As per usual, I made a mix tape for the drive up the coast and through the mountains. I tried to pick some happy, upbeat, sunny songs that would complement an early day drive on a much-needed vacation, and I think that succeeded. My traveling companion, however, is more the turn-the-radio-down-to-inaudible-levels-while-we-talk than the oh-shit-I-love-this-song-let's-tunr-it-up-and-just-talk-louder type. So, given that there really isn't much time when one of us isn't talking, I didn't get to much of it until this morning while sitting in my much less conducive cubicle.

But I do remember one recent download that I put on there that caught my ear Saturday night on our way back from 40 sampled wines, an Italian feast, two beers, and a honkytonk bar, and that was Miike Snow's "Animal."

Miike Snow is a group, not a dude. It's made up of three guys - Pontus Winnberg and Christian Karlsson (also known as Bloodshy and Avant, who are responsible, oddly enough for Britney Spears' "Toxic") and Andrew Wyatt (the frontguy for Fires of Rome). I've found myself singing "Animal" to myself on my scooter off and on since I downloaded it last week, and as far semi-sparse, textured, and earnest electro-pop songs go, it's pretty epic. And if it's not quite epic enough for you, you can check out some pretty sweet remixes by Crookers and Treasure Fingers. It says a lot about the state of pop music today that something created by the creators of wildfire FM mainstream hits such as "Toxic" can also make music that fits right in with the Coachella/All Tomorrow's Parties set...without significantly changing the overall feel of the music! As alternative music goes more toward house, dance, and disco, oddly enough it starts to converge with the light oblivion of mainstream music, then vice versa, until there's not as much difference between the two as there used to be.

I used to listen to Saint Etienne back when I was in college in the 90s, and I remember wondering what it is that makes them destined to fail for general crossover appeal for American audiences. Eventually I landed on the notion that they just weren't ironic or deep (or pseudo-deep) enough for the U.S. At that time there was just no room for a band that just wanted to play unapologetically happy-sounding music that you could dance and sing along to. At that point, even Madonna was trying to take herself seriously for fuck's sake! But, it seems like what goes around comes around. Lord knows, you can't throw your neighbor's baby without hitting a bar or a party or a club still playing the same old tired 80s hits to get the drunks dancing. There's a good reason for this - there just hasn't been as big a collection of accessible, singable, danceable music since then. Maybe now is the time. Or maybe this music will prove to be as disposable as the early 90s rave output. But I do know this - it feels good. And if it feels good, do it.

Miike Snow has just recently (within the last week, I think) built a myspace page, and it's proved that "Animal" isn't just a one-off by any means. "Song for No One," "Silvia," and "Burial" all start out sounding like they could well be Saint Etienne covers themselves, but all built texture and momentum as they go along until you find yourself suddenly listening to quite a symphony of sound. As a bonus there's a remix they did of Vampire Weekend's "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance" on there, which - if there are any yous out there to ask me - is a nice improvement on the original.

The full album hits iTunes and stores on June 9th. For now, check them out here:

http://www.myspace.com/miikesnow

Here's a video a YouTuber made for "Animal." All the other posts are the Crookers remix, which isn't as nice at the original, so this is the best I've got. And following is an audio track of Miike Snow's stellar Vampire Weekend Remix.