Bulbous Saccharine Sounds

January 30, 2011 at 9:55 pm | Posted in Music, One Last Kiss, Shoegaze | Leave a comment
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Sometimes I’ll have mp3′s laying around on my computer that I have no idea where they came from. The computer will be playing on shuffle and something will come up that I don’t recognize it. Then I’ll be gobsmacked at how good it is, and wonder where the hell I got it. That happened more than a couple times with Sweet Bulbs. I had a couple songs that I probably downloaded either from Skatterbrain or Gorilla vs Bear. While I was downloading, one of my kids screamed about something and I promptly forgot to listen to them. Months pass by, then Kissing Clouds comes up on shuffle and I’m finally hooked. Better late than never I suppose.

Not to let my serendipity go to waste I thought I would post a couple songs by this band from the greater NYC environs that you can pack away on your hard drive to discover at some later point. Of course if you are a shoegaze fan with a penchant for the Lilys before they went mod and the Swirlies before Seana left then you may want to intentionally listen to Sweet Bulbs right now and on purpose. Their album just came out on Blackburn and is ten songs of swirling rampaging maelstrom guitars and distant, slightly reverbed, and mostly girl vocals. Honestly these songs sound like they could have been recorded with vintage 90′s equipment and one of them plucked out to be included on One Last Kiss.

mp3: Sweet Bulbs – Kissing Clouds


mp3: Sweet Bulbs – Down On My Life

Order the album from Blackburn Records, vinyl edition of 500.

Not Loafing

January 25, 2011 at 10:47 pm | Posted in Music, PDX | Leave a comment
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Down in Portland, apparently there’s a band called Archers that likes to post videos by the likes of  the Sound, the Chills, Chameleons, Magazine, dB’s, Soft Boys and Christmas among others (wonder if they’re into the Embarrassment and Number One Cup too) on their Tumbr.  The building blocks are obviously there and based on this song they’re building high and fast.  Evil City Music is 2 minutes 45  of diving and slicing guitars, amphetamine fueled vocals that builds to a mad crescendo and then flips itself on its back flails around and sadly ends.   The band have one single to date which you can get via their bandcamp page and apparently they’ve hooked up with Heavenly Records in the UK who will be releasing a single and Portland’s Eggy Records who will be including a song from them on an upcoming four-way split single.


Thanks to yvynl for the heads up.

The Mind Spiders Are Coming

January 24, 2011 at 10:39 pm | Posted in Music, Vinyl | 3 Comments
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The first salvo from the Mind Spiders came with last year’s World’s Destroyed 7″. It was packed with four great songs and no one was sure if this was a one off thing for Mark Ryan of the Marked Men or not.  Turns out that there’s a lot more where that came from because Ryan in his Mind Spiders persona has just let loose a full album.  It’s got the swagger of T-Rex, the rabble-rousing of Jay Retard and a certain sleek, moody psychedlia reminiscent of Love and Rockets.  Damn, based on that last sentence it sounds like it could be a near perfect record.  It should also be noted that they have a theme song (which every self-respecting band should have) in Mind Spiders Theme and an amazing cover of Little Richard’s Slippin’ and Slidin’  that puts this record over the top for me.

Should I go on?  Maybe you should just order up a copy of  the album over at Dirtnap and surprise yourself at how good this record is.  Your choice of blue or black vinyl. While you’re over there be sure to pick up the White Wires, Goodnight Loving and Tranzmittors records from last year if you haven’t already.

mp3: Mind Spiders – Neurotic Gold

Bees In Your Bonnet

January 23, 2011 at 9:27 pm | Posted in Music | Leave a comment
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Harking back to the days of Magnetic Fields‘ albums Holiday and Charm of the Highway Strip, New Brunswick, New Jersey’s Honeydrums have unleashed a debut three song ep that will have you wondering if someone unearthed some lost tracks from that era of Magnetic Fields.   Deadpan barritone vocals, kitchen sink sythesizers and a general aestheic that looks to Factory Records wrapped up in modern day lo-fi to create a sound that isn’t brand new, but certainly enjoyable.

The band promise to keep these EP’s coming at a fast clip.  You can download it for free at their bandcamp page or hit them up over at their Tumblr for a cassette version of which there are only 24 copies?!

mp3: Honeydrums – Romperstomp

Kicking The New Ka-Knowledge

January 20, 2011 at 10:29 pm | Posted in Music, recid review | Leave a comment
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After owning the 2009 singles countdown here at the Finest Kiss with two singles in the top 40, Fergus & Geronimo took it easy last year with only one single released, the notable Never Satisfied on Hardly Art. It seems as though they let the iron cool a little after their slew hot singles from 2009, maybe because the duo Jason Kelly and Andrew Savage started out as a moonlighting gig from their other bands (Teenage Cool Kids and Wax Museums).  Whatever the case Fergus and Geronimo are back and  this time with a full album called Unlearn.

At first listen I feared my enthusiasm for Fergus & Geronimo was waning a little due to the gap between releases.   I think I put the album on at least five times and couldn’t remember anything after the second song Wanna Know What I Would d If I Was You? I couldn’t figure out why this was happening.  Was it because the album lacked songs with discernible hooks? Had my capricious tastes shifted that fast in a year?  No, it was because the second song was so bad difficult with it’s monotone vocal, colonial flute, and spiteful lyrics that aim at music critics or some other bad guys knee deep in the scene.  Once I started skipping this song when listening to Unlearn making Girls With English Accents go straight into the soulful Powerful Lovin’ this album started to click with me.  My favorite parts of Fergus & Geronimo are the songs that incorporate soul and doo-wop and those moments are sprinkled throughout the record with Powerful Lovin’ and the title track being the best examples.  My second favorite part of Fergus & Geronimo is their 90′s inspired indie rock songs.  Michael Kelly, Baby Don’t You Cry, and World Never Stops all mine the Pavement, and  Sebadoh vein of history.  My least favorite part of Fergus & Geronimo are the stranger, and based on what I’ve read their Zappa influences. I find myself reaching for the skip button when Wanna Know What I Would Do and Where the Wals Are Made of Grass come up, but that’s coming from a non-Zappa fan.

Unlearn is a varied album with many subtleties that will keep you coming back, and with a little programming or needle lifting, you can pick and choose your favorite style(s) of Fergus & Geronimo and concentrate your ears on there.

mp3: Fergus & Geronimo – Powerful Lovin’


mp3: Fergus & Geronimo – Baby Don’t Cry


Order up a copy on vinyl or CD from Hardly Art

Bears, Breasts and the British Public

January 16, 2011 at 9:52 pm | Posted in 7 inch, Music, Singles | 2 Comments
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Continuing this year’s theme of 90′s tinged nostalgia is a brand new band from England appropriately calling themselves the British Public. Their first single came out late last year on the Tip Top label.  It’s called a double A-Side (forgot to add the double A-side to my 7″ gripes post).  In any event the better of the two sides, which we will call the A-side is Bears.  It has it’s Pavement-isms and a little bit of the Carpet People (sorry, obligatory obscure reference) dourness to it.  I love the stuttering la-la-la-la’s, na-na-na-na’s a, and the b-b-b-b-b-b-bears choruses.  The other side contains Breasts and nearly as good with it’s horns and similarities to Nick Lowe creates a good argument for calling this a double A-side.  The record arrived at my house on Friday and it’s been on near constant rotation this entire weekend.  If this song tickles your fancy get on the horn and order one of these because it’s limited to 250 copies.  The band are promising an album sometime this year.  Hope that this single is just the tip of the iceberg.

mp3: The British Public – Bears (order the single from Tip Top Recordings)

Puberty

January 14, 2011 at 11:29 pm | Posted in Music, Seattle | Leave a comment
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I remember this time I was lost north of Boston trying to get to Salem to check out a witch trial and the House of the Seven Gables. I stopped at a gas station to get directions and the guy at the station told me to go through Puberty, and stay straight to get to Salem. Looking at the map, I couldn’t find Puberty. So I ask him, “Where’s Puberty?” He tells me to just keep going down the road I’m on and it’s the next town. I show him the map and say I don’t see a Puberty on the map. He points at Peabody and says it’s right here.

If you’re looking for a new Intelligence single, you won’t find it. Instead, Lars Finberg and Susanna Welbourne of the Intelligence have a new band called Puberty. Last winter the band debuted themselves at Trainwreck which was a series of dance parties slash shows they put on in a set of train cars south of downtown Seattle. While not a far cry from the Intelligence, Puberty open things up a bit more and look to Tones on Tail and Funboy Three for inspiration. Finberg and Wellbourne sing and are backed up by some Seattle ringers that include Dave Hernandez (Shins & now Intelligence) on guitar Curtis James (Old Haunts) on drums, Drew Church (Cops) on bass and Michael Jaworski (Cops, Sunset Booker and Mt Fuji owner) on keyboards. The first single from Puberty is due on Toronto, Canada’s Telephone Explosion.  The two songs on the single are miles beyond the demo’s that were floating around last year at this time.  Check out Invitations below with it’s spaghetti western guitar intro and watch Telephone Explosion‘s site for ordering information any day now.

Getting Dizzy From the Acid

January 11, 2011 at 10:15 pm | Posted in Music, Norway, Psychedlia | Leave a comment
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It’s been almost four years since the last Lionheart Brothers album Dizzy Kiss. I figured that they had taken too much acid and broken up after that wonderful psychedelic record. I guess they didn’t just enough acid to get lost in the woods for a few years and come back with a new album called Matters of Love and Nature.  The record is set to be released at the end of this month on Racing Junior in Norway.  The first song released isn’t a huge departure from Dizzy Kiss, but when you can effortlessly mesh XTC, Caribou, Beach Boys and Neu! into an acid tinged symphony, why mess with a good thing?

mp3: Lionheart Brothers – Dizzy (from Matters of Love and War)


Anika

January 9, 2011 at 11:06 pm | Posted in Dub, Music | Leave a comment
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One record that would have made my list for last year had I heard it prior to the last week of December is Anika‘s self-titled debut on Stones Throw.  Bill over at Sound Bites was more astute  than I and smartly included it on his list which is how I found out about it.  Anika was a political journalist who somehow met former Portishead maestro Geoff Barrow in Berlin and bonded over dub, punk and girl groups.  That sounds like a match made in heaven if you ask me.  Barrow was actually looking for a singer for his new band Beak>, somehow over recording the record live, raw and strictly no over dubs in a mere twelve days it no longer was a Beak record but an Anika one.

Anika sounds more than a little like Nico.  She sings a little flat and off key and with little emotion.  On paper this shouldn’t work, but oh how it does.  Barrow and Beak create a sparse dub soundtrack and while the majority of the nine songs on the record are covers they sound so different from the originals that you easily forget about them being covers.  The record starts out with a cover of Twinkle‘s Terry  (You may remember Twinkle’s Golden Lights as covered by the Smiths).  Terry has similarities to the Shangri-Las‘ Leader of the Pack, and this rendition with its Speak and Spell synths and grand piano makes it sound so desolate, bleak and weird.  It’s delivered as if by the Grim Reaper herself, and you know Terry is doomed.  From there the bombs drop and this dub record sounds like a war zone.  The air raid sirens sound and Yoko Ono‘s Yang Yang hits and soon thereafter a reinvention of Dylan‘s Masters of War and the Kinks‘ I Go To Sleep which takes on an Eno-esque quality.  There are two originals Officer Officer and No One’s There both with big Jah Wobble bass lines that hold their own.  This is one stark record and some amazing slight of hand by all involved making this record sound as cohesive as it does from it’s seemingly incompatible pieces to create an uncomfortable warmth that makes it impossible to put down.

mp3: Anika – Terry (from the album on Stones Throw)

mp3: Anika – Yang Yang (also from the album on Stones Throw)


mp3: Twinkle – Terry

Baby, Baby, Babies

January 7, 2011 at 5:25 pm | Posted in Funhouse, Gigs, Music, Seattle, Video | Leave a comment
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The Babies at the Funhouse, Seattle | 5 January 2011

So the Vivian Girls broke up right? I know they haven’t but at this point it almost seems like a foregon conclusion.  Usually when a band calls it quits and they start individual projects you hope that each of the new bands will be equal to or greater than the original band.  That never seems to happen, but with the Vivian Girls that definitely seems to be the case.  The evidence so far: Frankie Rose‘s album from last year was excellent.  Katy Goodman’s La Sera project put out a winning single and Cassie Ramone’s new band the Babies had two great singles and now they’ve got an album waiting in the wings due on the Shrimper label early next month.

Wednesday night at the Funhouse the Babies brought their Appalachian tinged indiepop to town. The Babies are fronted by Ramone and Kevin Morby who plays bass in Woods.  They both play guitar and share vocal duties. Ramone’s singing showed a confidence that is somewhat lacking in Vivian Girls. In fact she sounded downright inspired and her version of the woman down a holler belting out songs may be one of my favorite parts of the Babies’ songs. The other favorite part was Morby’s guitar playing. His adept picking style added to the rollicking mountain sound the band have.

Songs like Meet Me In the City and Breakin’ the Law were unabashedly fun and evoked something between Lee & Nancy and Kenny & Dolly and John & Exene.  The duo were backed with a more than adequate rhythm section that included Justin Sullivan on drums (he played with Ramone in Bossy) and the Funhouse soundsystem must have had its tubes cleaned out over the holidays because it all sounded really good.  Don’t let the country and Appalachian references scare you off, the Babies have their feet firmly planted in rock even though Ramone has temporarily foresaken girl groups and C-86. This collaboration between members of Woods and Vivian Girls teeters slightly more towards Woods territory and is all the better for it.

mp3: The Babies – Run Me Over (from their album due 8 February on Shrimper)


Here is a video I shot of the song Wild 2:

Here are the remaining Babies tour dates:

01/07 Reno, NV – Holland Show Space
01/08 Sacramento, CA – TBA
01/09 San Francisco, CA – The Hemlock
01/10 Oakland, CA – TBA
01/13 Los Angeles, CA – The Women House
01/14 Los Angeles, CA – The Smell
01/15 San Diego, CA Tin Can Ale House

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