The Impediments

Sort of forgot about this one, though it’s really good garage pop, and recently got a mention at Dusted as well. It’s the Impediments…get the hell out of the way.
My review at Blurt starts:
Four teenagers, crazed by guitars and hormones, slashing out two-chord, one-take bashers at Greg Ashley's Oakland Creamery, full of spit and sweat and balls-out, foul-mouthed aggression... By now, you're either suppressing a yawn or on your way to the MySpace. There's nothing specially new here, nothing not already attempted by the Dolls/Stooges/MC5 axis of good times, nothing not raked over in a million ways by garage dwellers of every decade. And yet, the Impediments - Nick Allen, Ray Seraphin, Mike Liebman and Rene Macleay -- do what they so with particular intensity and heat ... not to mention obscenity. (Yes, they are shouting "Don't you vomit on my cock" in the chorus to "Vom," what are you going to do about it? )

And goes on


The MySpace

Múm

Went to see two Icelandic electro pop bands on Sunday…absolutely blown away by Múm and also enjoyed Sin Fang Bous quite a lot. There will be a review later at Blurt, but for now, here’s Múm’s “Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know.”

Video diary from my long run in the rain

Really dreary morning here, fog, cold, drizzly rain and of course, dark as midnight until about 7 a.m. I’ve been pretty disciplined lately about listening to stuff I need to listen to, but this morning I went a bit off the res and heard a bunch of albums that I’ve been done with for a while…here’s what came up random-style.

Thin Lizzy “Jailbreak”
I reviewed Still Dangerous, a recently discovered live recording of a late-1970s show in Philadelphia, earlier this year, and honestly, is there any better way to wake up?



Scotland Yard Gospel Choir’s “Ellen’s Telling Me”
Totally loving I Bet You Say that to All the Boys, SYGC’s debut, which reminds me, in turns, of Belle and Sebastian, the Kinks and the Lemonheads…later stuff is much twangier but still pretty good. Hope these guys are doing better.


Tyvek, “Stand and Fight”
Tyvek’s self-titled was at #3 of my mid-year list and may have slipped to low teens by now, but it’s still the best punk (or post-punk, what exactly is the dividing line, anyone?) album from this year, not counting garage which is a close call between the Ohsees and the Reigning Sound.



Red Red Meat’s “Chain Chain Chain”
This is actually just about perfect for a rainy fall morning…and perfect anyway. Look how young Rutili is here. Sic transit rock and roll.

Does anyone else really love this song?

So I was running again this morning and I had a bunch of random stuff on, and more than that, it was the same random stuff as yesterday – which is no way to listen to every possible song in the universe. But anyway, towards the end, this song came on, and I loved it so much that I played it four times in a row. It’s the Wrens’ “This Boy Is Exhausted,” and here they are playing it at the Knitting Factory half a decade or so ago. (No time at all in Wrens-world….)

Espers III

I've got a little piece about Espers' latest CD (III, out on Drag City) up now at Philadelphia Weekly.

I really like it, though it's a bit sunnier than II and neither is as wonderful as The Weed Tree, or particularly, their cover of "Flaming Telepaths."

"Caroline"

Have a nice weekend!

Jonathan Kane

My friend Holly just sent me this new video for Jonathan Kane's February. Kane was one of the founding members of Swans and has been in a whole bunch of other seminal no-wave type outfits. (He's Holly's husband, too.) Anyway, great stuff.





The woman playing guitar is Peg Simone, whom I've written about here and there.


I'm having some real problems embedding the clip, but it's worth watching, even if you have to leave my lovely blog. It's here

Up with the birds again

I may have mentioned that I am getting up at 5:30 these days. Mostly it sucks, and I am walking around like a zombie half the time, but there is one good thing: by 9 a.m. when I sit down to write this ridiculous blog, I have already listened to two, three records and run 6-10 miles.

About my run this morning, let me just say that I started out in fog and very dim light and that, with three miles or so to go, the sun broke through and everything turned to soft colors like the inside of an oyster shell. I ran from town, along the Connecticut River, and though we are somewhat past peak, the trees are still radioactively, psychedelically colorful, some of them as if they had caught on fire and others like they got some acid mixed in with the ground water.

About the music, I’m not going to talk about The Joshua Tree because I mostly listen to that with my son (who had to be at school early this morning, earlier even than the very-early bus, so I drove), and you have undoubtedly already made up your mind about it one way or the other.

However, I will mention Elliott Brood’s Mountain Meadows, a really very fine rough-house country-ish album, with banjo (expected) and garage-y group shouts of “hey, hey, hey!” (unexpected). Mark Sasso and the rest of Elliott Brood (a band name, not a guy) is from Toronto. They probably know the Sadies -- my guess is that they would all get along really well. Mountain Meadows is the band’s second album, and it’s out now on Six Shooter records.

Here they are playing “Write It All Down for You” which is just such a good song.

I’ve also been listening to Now It Can Be Told: Devo at the Palace 12/9/88 a good bit, since buying it for $5 in the bin at Turn It Up. I didn’t actually have any Devo anymore, and being the age I am, they obviously played a role in my formative years…so it’s been sort of fun, but I’d forgotten how kitschy they could be. The album starts with kind of an unplugged version of “Jocko Homo” but gets going about halfway through with “Girl U Want” and “Whip It.” It ends with a medley that includes “Shout” “Disco Dancer” and, oddly, “Somewhere” from West Side Story.

Here they are in their heyday, eight years before the concert that I’ve been listening to:


And finally, Introducing Brilliant Colors is absolutely kicking my ass. I had it on a random mix yesterday while I was running right next to the Au Pairs’ “You” (for reasons I won’t go into, I have to listen to random mixes in alphabetical order, by artist name, or my iPod gets very confused), and it won, hands down. So I listened to the whole thing today and it totally rips…hope I’ll get to review it somewhere. I wanted to do it last summer when it came out on some tiny little label, but they had run out of copies by the time I asked and anyway passed this band onto the slightly bigger time. If you like late 1970s girl punk, it’s sort of in that vein…really fun, have to listen to it 7-8 more times to get a handle on it.

Here they are in Brooklyn last summer