Give Miss Platnum the Food

Miss Platnum is a Romanian pop singer and total fucking role model. At one point in this fantastic video for her hit "Give Me the Food" she's stirring a brass band in an above ground pool. There are trees growing salami. Besides being extremely baller, it's all really deep, complex symbolism. The underlying message is that you should go eat a sandwich.

I've Had All of This Life I Can Handle

This is stuck in my head and I need you to feel my pain:

Destroy All Pizza Monsters

You may have noticed we changed our look again. I think this one might stick as it comes to us from the amazing brain of Vim Crony. We're especially stoked on our new mascot, Pizza Monster:

If you can think of a better name for him than Pizza Monster, leave a comment and win a prize, or link love, or nothing. Up to you. We're going to celebrate the new style and with the catchy-yet-shady sounds of Night Manager. Chew on "Pizza Pasta" off their new EP of the same name. Then go see them. I saw them with Xray Eyeballs one time and it was rad. Album art is up top.

And speaking of pizza, where can I get this sweatshirt?

I may have to settle for this guy. Seagulls love pizza. You can totally get it from MisNopalesArt. They have a tote bag too.

Dammit. Now I'm hungry.

Rise of Carnivores

Carnivores has made some strides since I saw them at Vacation Gallery in Atlanta almost two years ago. I posted about them then, and I thought they were great. But I was just down in Atlanta for an actual vacation and saw them at the Highland Inn and it was like seeing a different band -- a tighter band with a more pronounced psych pop thing going on. I was totally dancing and then a cupcake appeared out of nowhere and I totally ate it right there. I'm serious. Stop laughing.

I liked the show enough to decide that I needed the new Chandelier EP in my life so I bought it. You might need it in your life too. It's kinda like Slumber Party but the colors are deeper. Not darker, just more saturated. Well, maybe a little dark. With all the malaise in the lyrics it could be the soundtrack to a bizarre '60s soap opera.

Note that the word vacation is involved whenever I see this band ... coincidence?

Dudes of the World: Ex-Otago

So I just had to look at lots of really boring, bullcrap normative pictures of ladies and gents on magazine covers for an assignment for a class I'm taking. It was stultifying and depressing. Depressing enough to herald the return of dudecake! I believe the world still needs it. Or I still do.

Without further ado, here is an Italian indie pop quartet called Ex-Otago.Watch the video. The really skinny guy with all the tattoos takes a bath in a tin tub halfway through and it just doesn't get much better than that. It's so nice of them to be so under-dressed so often. Oh, and they've just released an album.

Garfunkel and Oates

I'm in love with the barely contained anti-social rage. And the ukulele. Their names are Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci. Can they be on TV all the time? Please?

 

 

 

 

www.garfunkelandoates.com

Comedy Week is Over

It's time for Amateur Night!

 

I just really like that song. Someone please cover it. Hunx? Are you out there? But maybe posting it was inspired by the drunk dudes who were singing alternative radio hits of the '90s outside my window late last night. I think they had bongos.

The End!

 

Now that Christmas is over and everyone else in the world has sent out their end of the year lists and I have successfully avoided reading the ones most likely to annoy the hell out of me, here is the Bad Idea Potluck Year in Quality Music Recordings. Bands and musicians will be in bold on first reference in homage to Joe Carducci. (If you want the condensed version you'll have to wait until it comes out in Stomp and Stammer in January.) I've arranged it into categories because it's a long list. First, I'd like to draw your attention to/remind you of the many feminine divinities who tossed us a perfumed flower this year just when we were sure we'd never hear from them again.

Among them is Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, whom Momar liked so much. And I could include The 5.6.7.8's because of the rad double LP of their singles that came out.

After years of absence from the music scene, the legendary 

Buffy Sainte-Marie's Running For The Drum appeared with an odd mixture of rhinestone-cowgirl adult contemporary songs to puzzle over and tracks featuring native American drumming so sick that M.I.A. or Diplo should hurry up and see if she wants to do lunch sometime.

Almost as surprising, Exene Cervenka's somewhere gone is a great soundtrack for whatever you plan to do to revisit the '90s now that it's time, and I mean that in the best way possible. It's a poetic statement from Exene the wandering troubadour that reminds one of punk's roots in beatnickery. 

Then, even though their newer dub-reggae-gypsy-punk side is comparatively more orthodox than the

primitive stylings they’re known for, The Slits are in many ways more bizarre than they’ve ever been on Trapped Animal and, in fact, more bizarre than anyone else currently making music.

The year was better for all of them, but the strange and beautiful and only briefly absent Antony may have bested them all with the strange and beautiful Crying Light. That is, he might have were it not for Is It Love Or Desire, recorded by the even stranger and equally beautiful Betty Davis and only released this year thanks to Light in the Attic.

The ladies had a good, good year and as did rock music. Those two lines converged for me in Screaming Females' Power Move, which was absolutely the best rock album this year. I have no idea why Screaming Females isn't selling out stadiums where people buy expensive tickets so they can go inside and cry and cut themselves in abject worship.

Mika Miko put out a fun-to-the-point-of-being-meatheaded album and then split up, leaving a void that was quickly filled (at least in my little world) by any number of exciting all-girl messes.

Though nothing for me can top the rush of C.Y.S.L.A.B.F, Pens in particular seems to reach for the Pony Thrash Crown with Hey Friend, What You Doing? I include Vivian Girls in this category easily, because the band's sophomore album Everything Goes Wrong shows off a capacity for wild energy formerly concealed by the cool perfection of the eponymous debut. And then there was Brilliant Colors' Introducing and Finally Punk's Casual Goths. Get them all and make a mix and then jump around on the bed. 

(But if you really want to dance put on Kid Sister's debut Ultraviolet. I'm listening to it right now and it's making me feel like taking crazy risks, like, I don't know, buying another hip-hop album again someday. Plus, I want nails like she has on the album cover. I want them badly.) 

It all takes the sting out of letting go of Mika Miko. And Vivian Girls are coming close to filling the gaping hole that Sleater-Kinney left in my life. It works out see: Sleater-Kinney has a song called "I Wanna Be Yr Joey Ramone" and Vivian Girls has a guitar player named Cassie Ramone and they are both badass trios. Okay, it's working out for me.

The second best rock album of 2009 was In the Valley of Sickness by Thomas Function. Other favorites that didn't disappoint include Reigning Sound with the gently heartbreaking Love and Curses, Hunx and His Punx with the Gay Singles collection, The Dutchess and the Duke teaming up with Greg Ashley on Sunset / Sunrise, Pissed Jeans' King of Jeans, The Ettes with Do You Want Power, King Khan and BBQ Show with Invisible Girl, and especially The Mountain Goats with The Life of the World to Come.

And my beloved Stuart Murdoch went off on quite a tangent with God Help the Girl. It's a lovely, but not incredibly memorable album. It makes my list because it tells a memorable story that I plan to revisit. Still hoping the movie comes out.

I discovered new music this year too. Check out: Bloody Panda, Summon. I saw them live and the singer/screamer genuinely frightened me. They're some kind of art/death metal and I'm in love. 

But most of the stuff I got into this year is a lot easier on the ears. Pick up on: The Beets, Spit in the Face of People Who Don't Want to Be Cool; Thee Oh Sees, Dog Poison; Nite Jewel, Good Evening; Those Darlins, Those Darlins (Like Patsy Cline, Holly Golightly and a hot toddy. Extra points for random drunk driving PSA.); Music Go Music, Expressions; Madeline, White Flag; and Paramore, Brand New Eyes, because Jessica Hopper made me do it.

The best of all of these that I heard only this year were Thao with the Get Down Stay Down with the stunning, stinging Know Better Learn Faster; the ridiculously catchy and deliciously dark Blank Dogs, Under & Under; and The Rural Alberta Advantage,  Hometowns. This last one has love songs on it that give maturity a good name. The kind that make you want to go home and hug your old man. I hadn't heard anything like that in a long time. 

One last phenomenon that I really appreciated was the smattering of wide releases of previously obscure gems. Light in the Attic released, not just Is it Love or Desire, but gave Serge Gainsbourg's 1971 Histoire de Melody Nelson to Americans on CD this year. Then Drag City gave us Death, ... For the Whole World to See. The Numero Group gave us the amazing double LP of '70s soul that pairs with the photography book Light: On the South Side. Putting things like this in CD stores where the feckless likes of me can find them is the lord's work, I tell you. Special thanks to these great and wise record labels. So, that's it. Or at least that's how I remember it.

Editor's Note: I don't know what to tell you about what's going on with all the fonts and typefaces here. Sorry.

Momar's End of the Year List

I will post my own in a minute but my cat Momar's is so short that I thought I'd just post it quickly here. He only liked two albums this year, which stands in stark contrast to the omnibus list I plan on posting if I ever get around to it. This was a rad year for my ears, but Momar turned his little nose up at everything except for Hope Sandoval and the Warm Invention's Through the Devil Softy and No Age's Losing Feeling

I should explain. Momar has had several previous owners, all of them known to me, who are pretty dedicated music fans. I can't say for sure but that may be why he is more responsive to music than any cat I've ever met. He grew up competing with the record player for attention. He hates The Clash and he loves Coco Rosie. (I may have explained this all before.) He was a big help when I was putting together a year end list for Empty-Headsmind last year and I tried to get him to listen to some Japanese hardcore and some Screaming Females for this blog earlier in the year and I guess maybe he started to feel kind of exploited and just went on strike until I put on these two albums. So these endorsements should count for a lot.

It should be noted that Through the Devil Softly is pretty high on my own list.It's a deadly pretty album; soft and velvety enough to sooth an upset stomach, but soulful and sharp enough that you won’t feel like you’re going soft: a little bit chamomile and a little bit chai spice. This is how psych-pop is too be done, unless you want to put one part of that phrase or the other in quotes. Somehow it pairs very nicely with the Mountain Goats’ release this year, The Life of the World to Come. Momar favors soft focus soundscapes, poppy touches, and I think he prefers female vocals. He curled up very near the laptop, apparently in blissful repose, but with ears just slightly cocked, listening to Sandoval's demonically delicate songs hovering somewhere between madrigal and country ballad. This after almost a year of leaving the room if there was music playing.

Losing Feeling gets more of an honorable mention on my list but it was nice to hear from some masters of the fuzzy and the poppy in a year when so many people tested those waters. And Momar did stay close to the record player while it was on, absenting himself as usual when I changed the record. I might have put on the 5.6.7.8s. He likes female vocals, just not those.

If you don't believe my cat reviews albums, well, you can come over. He might do it right in front of you. Maybe.

Maluca

Those red fringe stockings she's wearing in the beginning are on my Hanukah list.

You Like Sparks?

How about Mr. Bungle? Well, Max Tundra's Parallax Error Beheads You is random and cerebral like those guys but with less smirking and more respect for the tired conventions that make pop music worth listening to. Good beats, for instance.

If you like electronic pop music, this album has the potential to keep your brain and your feet busy. And I know that's the only way some of you maniacs ever find any peace.

Stricken City

Not sure if singer/keyboardist Rebekah Raa is singing in English or not sometimes but it's always very pretty. She gets a lot of comparisons to Bjork but she actually reminds me of an indie pop Siouxsie Sioux in a weird way. The average of those two should give you an idea of her band Stricken City's debut Songs About People I Know.

It's really an unusually lovely album for something so driven by rock beats and tinny guitars. And, though it is often reminiscent of The Sundays, if you can dance to The Smiths, you can dance to this. Unfortunately, like The Sundays, it's not the most musically adventurous stuff and neither is it particularly catchy. Still, it's definitely worth a listen. It's not boring by any means. The touch of '70s punk and new wave in their '80s indie pop sees to that, however, the most interesting thing about this debut is the way the band turns such influences into a work of perfect timeliness. It comes out a kind of sunlit goth rock; ecstatic and strange.

Party Pooper: An Intimate Evening with The Emotron

I wrote this months ago for a zine I don't think is ever going to exist:

I was really excited for the show at 141 Moreland that The Emotron was playing. But I didn’t know The Emotron was playing. My friend Sandra sent me the Myspace for this band called The Measure[SA]. The hooks in the songs and the unselfconscious yearning in Lauren Measure’s voice enchanted me. I marked the day they were to play on my calendar. I couldn’t wait.
I rounded up a couple of friends and headed down to the house show. When we arrived there was barely room to stand on the porch, but we found out The Measure[SA] wasn’t playing. The Measure[SA] had some extenuating tragedy and so it was just The Emotron and some other guys.
There was no time for disappointment, however, as about four people in turn gleefully told me the tale of what happened last time The Emotron played at 141 Moreland. According to legend, a woman, unconnected to The Emotron and anyone who told me the story, joined in the performance by trying to suck his dick while he was singing. So he peed on her. This was an easy distance to travel for both of them because he was already naked. I guessed the guy didn’t like being upstaged.
That’s approaching GG Allin levels of fucked up, I thought, but it’s nowhere near that level of premeditation. How could it be? And, surely, no such thing would happen this time. I’d be a horrible person to say I was sorry I missed it last time and I wasn’t sure if I was or not. Or if I would have shown up if I knew that would be the scene.
When something like that is premeditated, you didn’t miss anything, I promise. But when it’s unplanned you at least have something to think about that you didn’t bargain for. It’s a strange kind of gift — unexpected horror during a concert — and one I would feel strange about seeking out. But, you see, I was already there.
I saw a band that specialized in providing thoroughly expected horror one time. They played in an art gallery next to a tattoo parlor. The art gallery was showing some really hackneyed bondage photos. The band’s name was some play on the word “fuck” and there was urine and blood and nudity and drums and guitar. The music was a stale punk-rock backdrop for the front man bashing himself in the head with the mic until he bled copiously. I remember feeling tired. It was really late but I felt like seeing the whole thing since I had gone down there to check it out. And I had gone to be certain that I wasn't missing anything. The rest of the audience seemed kind of into it.
I wonder how many bands out there are still rehashing that self-mutilation for fun and profit shtick. It takes a special person to do something like that all the time but it also loses something (everything?) when you realize they do it all the time. But something about The Emotron puts him in a different class. And his show couldn't have felt more different from The Whatever-Fucks's show.
The Emotron’s deal could be construed as self-humiliation. Or, maybe, audience humiliation — depending on what the audience is expecting. Or, just maybe, this is who he is and what he does and the audience's expectations aren't really a consideration. I'd like to imagine that.
I was expecting entertainment. One of the guys who helped put on shows and lived there at the time specifically promised, if nothing else, I’d be entertained.
The Emotron, an ethereally spindly kid with an angelic face, started singing karaoke style over something that sounded like video game music from the '80s. The song employed only the crudest, purest building blocks of pop melody. He wore a black wig and a cowboy outfit and sung his heart out about the fact that people his age bought houses and got married. Presumably, he didn’t. But you got the feeling he didn’t really want to do those things either.
So I got my hooks and my (vague) yearning. Plus, The Emotron mostly seemed to yearn for the '90s, something I can identify with. That’s all the entertainment I’ll ever ask for right there. But then he threw in costume changes and all this violent lurching. With each song he peeled away another layer of clothes, taking on a new persona with each costume he revealed. That was almost more entertainment than I can handle. One grand visual revelation was his actual hair, which was shaven to look like he had a dad-style receding hairline. If I recall correctly, he also has an Izod alligator tattooed on his breast.
No tease, The Emotron wound up in a skimpy thong. It was like a bachelorette party, except mostly the boys were all up in his shit. They lurched and sang along with him until it felt like the room was rocking. There was some spitting.
He upped the ante again when he used some sort of foamy hair care product as fuel to light his crotch on fire. He repeated the stunt after dispensing with his thong. All of this happened very quickly and in an atmosphere of sweaty, beery frenzy, yet it stayed just inside the lurid-but-cozy realm of a sideshow. That is where The Emotron revealed himself to be an showman of vaudevillian caliber. Because I don’t think many of us saw it coming when he took a shit on a towel.
While the electronic calliope played on, The Emotron lay on his back and held his narrow butt cheeks apart to expel a tidy log onto its receiving blanket. With a stage illusionist’s speed he folded the towel and whisked it out of sight. The fragrance lingered but, other than that, he erased every sign of the deed with military precision — a surgical strike on most, if not all, human and animal social taboos and all applicable health codes. It seems that The Emotron needs no uninvited volunteers from the audience to do this sort of thing. Some people left. Even the dudes who were drinking beer out of his mouth calmed down a little.
This was something more than entertainment or other than entertainment. Or art even, though it did make me think. And it wasn't show business in the normal sense of the word either. Everything is context. This guy pooped on the floor at a punk show at his friend’s house. And he's been doing this sort of thing for awhile.
I have a feeling this is The Emotron’s real life. There isn't too much punk like that these days. I'm not even totally sure if there ever was. I guess that's why I liked the show even though I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for and, by all accounts, he has peed on strangers who may or may not have been mentally competent at the time.
In closing, I don’t know what it would say about art or pop music or public defecation if The Emotron ever got booked for the Whitney Biennial; but, after watching his YouTube videos, I can say The Emotron definitely should have his own kids show. He teaches vocabulary words and projectile vomits Yoo-Hoo at will. That would be a huge hit with the little guys. Also, Kids love poop jokes more than anyone.