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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
