Viva L'American Death Ray Music

Four songs. Might as well be four bands. Still no idea exactly what VLADR actually is, but I like some of it a whole lot. (I like the first track, the one that sounds like the Fall, really excessively.)

I reviewed the EP Behold! A Pale Horse for Dusted, and it went up today.
Guessing the shape of Viva L’American Death Ray Music, too, requires a certain amount of mental flexibility. The Memphis trio — Nicholas Ray of (Limes, Golden Triangle and ‘68 Comeback) leads on guitar and voice, while Harlan T. Bobo plays bass and Jeffrey Bouck (Lithops, Polyphonic Spree) plays drums — refuses to be boxed into a category. In fact, they range so far over the range of possible sounds that it may require a larger sample to get any sort of handle on who they are.



Here they are at Goner Fest

Jason Falkner is OK, are you?

I’ve been really enjoying this new Jason Falkner album I’m OK, You’re OK, though I don’t think I can review it anywhere. Falkner is really one of the great power pop songwriters, horribly overlooked. He got his start with the Three O'Clock in the late 1980s, then joined Jellyfish, then the Grays with Jon Brion. What I really loved, though, was his first solo album Presents Author Unknown, and especially the song “She Goes to Bed.” I don’t think I’m OK, You’re OK is quite that good, but it’s very good anyway.

I’m linking two videos, the first is “This Time” from the new album, performed live at Spaceland about a year ago.


And the second is “She Goes to Bed” which is one of my favorite songs, ever, period.

Las Rubias Del Norte

Do you guys remember Chiche Libra? I’ve written about them a couple of times (and a MOG post about their cover of “Popcorn” was, I think, the most popular thing I ever wrote there…who’d have thought?)

Anyway, Olivier Conan, who started Chiche Libre also runs the Barbes label (and is part owner of the club with the same name in Brooklyn) and also plays cuatro in Las Rubias Del Norte, whose new album Ziguala, I reviewed for Blurt this week. Here’s a link to the review.



A live version of “El Alcaravan”

Archie Bronson Outfit …hey, check out that opening track!

Okay, I’m repeating myself. I posted about ABO a few days ago. But now I have a review up and I’ve listened to Coconut ten or eleven times, and I’ve decided that I really only love the first song. Which is “Magnetic Warrior.” Which I posted last week.

So you get to see the video again. Silly, isn’t it?


Oh, and here’s the track they want you to hear, which is called “Shark’s Tooth.”

Maybe you want to read the review?

White Hinterland

I’ve been a fan of Casey Dienel’s for a while now (how could I not when she recorded her breakout Wind-Up Canary in Western Mass during the dead of winter?), and really enjoyed her latest White Hinterland album even though it sounds nothing like the fresh-faced, piano-bar-crossed-with-bedroom-folk debut that I feel for in the first place. Of Kairos, I wrote “Dienel has made a sharper break from the past, building chilled, echoing, dub-infused caverns of sound and singing within them in a very sophisticated, R&B flavored style.”

The review was in Blurt yesterday or maybe the day before


“Icarus”

We watched Hoosiers last night, and I got unexpectedly teary and nostalgic about Indiana high school basketball…Of course, I couldn’t wait to get out at the time, go figure.

Splinters…but not in my feet

Another entry in this fuzzy, not-too-serious, girl-led pop category, this one from four Berkeley grads trying desperately (and mostly succeeding) to camouflage their smarts…not bad at all, but on the evidence of “Oranges”, they could do better.

My review, up Friday at Dusted



“Mysterious”

These New Puritans

You’ve got to pause when any band – except Clogs who have a life-time pass – start to toy with bassoons. Indeed, the history of fully-orchestrated rock albums is littered with things like Days of Future Past….proceed with great caution. Still, These New Puritans latest CD, Hidden is a good one, brave as lions but twice as musical.

Here’s a bit from my Blurt review, quietly up yesterday amidst SXSW madness:

Even if Hidden didn't work - and it mostly does - it ought to be celebrated for sheer bravery. On this follow-up to 2008's Beat Pyramid, These New Puritans again build a framework of big thwonking hip hop beats. It's just that instead of overlaying them with stripped down rock songs, as they did on the debut, they have added a whole post-modern orchestra of sounds - strings, bassoons, vibraphone, flute and brass. It's a surprising turn, perhaps foreshadowed in the more flamboyant crevices of Beat Pyramid, but here wholly realized and stunning.

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“Orion Hidden”