I Love Irish Ladies Who Sing Songs
While I know acoustic isn’t this blog’s usual cup of tea, we make no attempt to hide the fact that we are fans of not ugly people who make not bad music. We are also fans of places from afar, alcohol, and unicorns. My point is that if you are someone who likes all of those things, then there’s a 103% chance that you’ll like the above video from Lisa Hannigan and friends.
(Author’s note: While there are no unicorns in the aforementioned video, I imagine Ms. Hannigan comes from a place where unicorns exist and happiness grows on trees.)
Lisa Hannigan – “I Don’t Know”
The White Dr. Dre is Closing Up Shop
Sad news indeed. Definitive Jux, the premiere indie-rap record label of the noughts, is going “on hiatus,” the standard euphemism for “shutting down.” If you are a person of taste and distinction, you’ve got a couple of records from this label in your collection. In my opinion, El-P is the white Dr. Dre: a triple-genius producer (and a B-plus rapper) and incredible tastemaker who defines the boundaries of his corner of the music scene. It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that everything good in underground hip-hop over the last ten years has gone through his hands at some point; nevertheless, a eulogy is not the place for restraining your hyperbole so I’m running with it.
Def Jux will be missed. But hey, it’s damn near impossible to keep a for-real record label running in this economy, in this era of irresistibly-free music. Pour out a Sparks for them all.
Here’s a couple of my favorite tracks from Def Jux over the years. Minus Cannibal Ox, my all-time favorite Def Jukies, who I feel we kinda covered already with the RJD2 post. You can read El-P’s full statement here.
Aesop Rock – “Daylight”
Mr. Lif – “A Glimpse at the Struggle”
El-P – “Accidents Don’t Happen”
Why Annie Doesn’t Have Lady Gaga’s Job, I’ll Never Know
Maybe I’ve got my history mixed-up, but “cool kids” weren’t allowed to like regular-old pop music until 2002, maybe 2003. Keep in mind who I’m talking about here. Not “the kids who sit at the cool kids lunch table,” they listen to pop, because they’re the cool kids. I’m not talking about “the kids who smoked Camels behind the gymnasium during lunch period” either; they listened to heavy metal and goth rock. I’m talking about “the cool kids.” Maybe you were one, maybe you weren’t,* but you at least know who I’m talking about. They didn’t listen to pop, they listened to all that other weird shit. They just had to know about the pop music; that was the end of their obligations.
And then around 2002, 2003** or so, Annie comes out with “Chewing Gum,” and all of a sudden the cool kids have a why-didn’t-she-go-double-diamond pop star to listen to, I mean legitimately listen to. She’s so good! And intensely hot, and Norwegian, which is on a whole ‘nother level entirely. It’s pop. Perfectly cut gemstones of mainstream electronic pop music, just like Lady Gaga does now, and Beyonce before her, and X-Tina and Britney and Mariah before the rest of them, all the way on back to Madonna. Annie could have been the next Madonna, by which I mean the current Lady Gaga, by which I mean the reigning international queen of pop. It’s a job you only get to hold for twelve to eighteen months, and only one woman can credibly have it at a given time, and Annie should have had a turn. I guess it didn’t work out like that; the evidence is that I’m explaining all this to you right now. If you really are on top of the world, you don’t need to explain that to anyone.
So anyway. That’s Annie for you; the cool-kids delegate at the United Nations General Assembly of Mainstream Pop Music.*** She’s got a new album out and it’s super-hot, sleek electropop, the kind of stuff that should, in a good and just world, be playing on American radio ad nauseum until you’re just sick of it. If Target knew what they were doing they’d use these songs to sell dish soap and apple juice. Pop is designed for a specific purpose; to be popular by appealing to something very simple and animal deep inside your brain. And, you know, maybe that’s why she’s the pop artist that appeals to the cool kids: we love her all the more because she never really quite blew up the way she should have.
Annie – “I Don’t Like Your Band”
Annie – “My Love Is Better”
* I wasn’t. Sorry, haters.
** I didn’t bother looking it up. Does it even matter when it was? Shit. You look it up.
*** ???
Pre-Order Curtis Plum’s Album and Win My Approval
Oh hell yeah. Curtis Plum’s album is dropping on February 16th. I am super-excited for this. I have been super-excited since July of 2009. It’s weird that I’m so excited. Let me pull on your coat about this for a second; Curtis Plum is a seriously unique individual and you’re not going to hear another album like his for a long, long time.
I’m going to fill in the details for you now. Back in July I was listening to the XLR8R podcast. Sage Francis, who we all know and love, put together a megamix full of jams by artists on his Strange Famous label. So I’ve got it on in the background and I’m doing whatever, doing the dishes, practicing some chessboxing, whatever, I’ve got the podcast on in the background. All of a sudden I hear . . . well, I hear what sounds like Katherine Hepburn calling hipsters out for liking Blink-182 in junior high, over a cheap chiptune version of “No Surprises.” And then it’s gone. Half-hour later, I’m still hanging out, you know, baking a salad, painting my teeth, podcast still in the background, and here comes Katherine Hepburn again, rapping about how my cellphone’s going to give me brain cancer over another blippity-beep-boop beat. What?
So looked into it and it turns out that “Katherine Hepburn” is actually Curtis Plum, a fabulously weird and unique MC. I looked at his MySpace, his blog, the label, and I couldn’t really get any definitive information about the guy aside from some too-strange-to-be-untrue legends. His last.fm page straight-up admits that nobody has ever met him. Apparently he’s a street-rapper-slash-busker who is running for mayor of Boise, Idaho. Apparently Sage Francis signed him on the strength of a bizarre, unsolicited, stream-of-consciousness email Curtis sent him. Apparently Lil’ Wayne tried to rape him backstage after a concert on the Carter III tour. Who knows what’s true?
Curtis affects this spooky warble and writes immensely creative and arresting raps about the damnedest of subjects. The Kraftwerk-on-nitrous beats are self-produced as well, so the album really is the unified product of a beautifully twisted mind. The album doesn’t come out for another three weeks, but you should remember to buy it for a couple of reasons. Number one, something tells me Curtis isn’t destined for megastardom, so there aren’t going to be a whole lot of records from him and you need to get yourself a piece of history. Secondly, I think in this type of situation it’s important to send a message to the record labels, the agents, the powers-that-be, that weirdness is welcomed and creativity is to be rewarded. We’re pretty lucky that these songs exist, and I want a whole lot more of them. But maybe that’s just me; maybe I’m the weird one for anticipating this record for seven straight months.
I hesitate to share too much since the album doesn’t come out for awhile yet, but here’s the first CP track I ever heard. You can find more at his MySpace, and pre-order the CD from the Strange Famous website. Also, labelmate B Dolan did a verse riffing on Curtis’ track ‘Vin Diesel,’ which is, by the way, a love song. The B Dolan track is off a free mixtape that’s already been released, so you can have that too.
Curtis Plum – “Indie Rocker”
B Dolan – “Vin Diesel (feat. Curtis Plum)”
Maybe I Was Wrong About Gucci Mane
I pretty much decided as soon as I heard my first Gucci Mane verse that I would not be listening to him any longer, thank you very much. I like to think that I have a certain degree of, I dunno, let’s call it taste. Taste means you enjoy the finer things in life, and part of that is refraining from partaking in the cruder pleasures. I am all about enjoying low-brow music — Girl Talk turns the low-brow into the sublime, and I’m all over that — but I’m not about to become a champion for Soulja Boy. Publicly liking something means you have to stake a little bit of your credibility on it, and I haven’t been willing to do that with mainstream rap as of late.
A couple of my friends are Gucci Mane fanatics. They also wear trucker hats and read Marx, so I figured their fandom was just another part of their ironic personal brands. My wall of indifference has been crumbling, though, and I think I’m starting to understand what Gucci Mane is all about. It took about twenty listenings of ‘Make the Trap Say Aye‘ and another twenty for ‘Wasted‘ before I understood the simplicity of it all. Then I downloaded the new Diplo-produced mixtape Free Gucci, and I gotta admit, I genuinely like it. It’s a free download and he may end up being one of the most important rappers of the twenty-tens, so I recommend you get it and at least familiarize yourself with the kind of music that people are still buying these days.
The big breakthrough came a few days ago. “Gucci Mane ain’t shit,” I said to myself. “All he raps about is selling drugs, getting money, and buying jewelry for his dick.” And I heard a small voice in the distance say “just like Busta Rhymes.” Hmm. That’s a good point. Gucci Mane raps about that stuff because that’s just what people rap about. That’s the idiom he’s working within, and it’s unfair to criticize someone’s efforts because of their idiom. Granted, rapping about drugs and money is really easy. That’s how Gucci Mane can make thirty albums a year seemingly without putting any effort into it. It takes a lot of work to make that kind of career seem effortless.
Basically it’s difficult for me to just like or dislike something on its own without worrying about what it means for me to like or dislike something. Sometimes music is good because it’s easy to enjoy. See for yourself.
Gucci Mane – “Dope Boys (Bird Peterson remix)”
Gucci Mane – “Excuse Me (Memory Tapes remix)”
Gucci Mane – “I Be Everywhere (Mumdance remix)”
All Robots Do is Make Disco
Photo by Shawn Mortensen
I don’t get it. Robots are the future. This is uncontroversial. Robots have been taking over the world since 1921, they took their first human life in 1979 (not long after Kraftwerk’s Man-Machine, btw) and since then they’ve been takin’ the jobs of hard-workin’ Americans. And . . . well, that’s about it, really. Robots are getting lazy. Damn robots, resting on their laurels when they could be taking over. Some robots these days even have drinking problems.
Oh sure, there’s still a dozen movies every year where robots push humanity to the brink of extinction in ever-more-creative ways, only to be defeated by an American man who shouts a lot and believes in the power of love. Doesn’t count. Movies are fiction. All robots do these days is make disco music. And I bet you thought I was going to mention Daft Punk in this sentence; good call. But I didn’t come here to talk about Daft Punk. I came here to talk about Golden Bug.
I’ve never met Golden Bug personally, so I can’t tell you if he is a robot himself or if he just comes from a robot family. What I do know is that he’s already conquered France and Germany and, if Bang Gang is to be believed, Australia as well. And his disco is fucked-up. It’s nasty. Heavy on the two-and-four with flashing lights and the distorted synth lines that Herbie Hancock foresaw but could not stop in time. I didn’t come up with this, I’m lifting it from Bigstereo, but Golden Bug is “nu-disco with robotic vocals, cut up fervently like powder on a glass table at Studio 54.” Sounds about right.
His earthly masters La Tebwa think they control him. Yeah right. Just like Carl Denham thought he controlled King Kong.* See how long you can control a robot fueled exclusively with pure cocaine. My message to La Tebwa is simple: melt him down while you still can.
Here’s some of his tracks. I recommend you take off your shirt before you listen: it seemed to do the trick for me. If you’re moved to buy it, start here.
Golden Bug – “Assassin”
Golden Bug – “Last Dance in Tokyo”
Golden Bug – “ExExEx (In Flagranti remix)”
*Spoiler alert!
“And she lied down / Staring up at the stars / And let wild dogs lick her face…”
I do some work at the local college radio station. It’s almost as sweet a gig as the whole blog thing. Here’s how it works: labels and artists send us unbelievable quantities of CDs and beg that we play them. We listen to most of it, and the best stuff goes on rotation. The rest…never really gets listened to, unfortunately, and it just ends up in a big, unloved bin. Periodically I’ll go through it and check out what falls through the cracks. And lord have mercy, I would hate to see the crack that Joe Gideon and the Shark slipped through. It’s got to be a serious crack indeed to be big enough for Joe Gideon’s balls to slip through.
I’m already embarrassed by that metaphor so let’s move on. Joe Gideon and the Shark are this brother/sister duo from London who used to be in Bikini Atoll. Nowadays they play minimalist alternablues story songs. I’m not lying about it being stripped down – most of the time you’re only going to hear a grungy bass, a drum kit, and an amazing story about a journey through life or sharing a moment backstage with Ray Charles. The lyrics really are outstanding, by the way:
Was a writer, musician, fishmonger, politician
I went all spastic like Lars von Trier ;
Wrote a book which was a spectacular success
Spent all earnings on weed and crystal meth
Think Nick Cave if he fired the Bad Seeds and brought in the White Stripes as his backing band. In fact, the internet seems to have informed me that they toured with Nick Cave, and if so, then well done to them. Here’s a couple of their songs. Thing is, I don’t really expect them to be a big success, certainly not due to this blog posting. Their best songs are long journeys through life. It’s not the kind of thing people are used to enjoying via music blogs or Hype Machine or what-have-you. But I like it. And man, I really want more people to like it too.
Joe Gideon and the Shark – “Johan Was a Painter and Arsonist”
Joe Gideon and the Shark – “DOL”
Joe Gideon and the Shark – “Civilisation”
You can buy their music at the label’s website.
I Would Royal Deluxe Your Socks Off
“Royal Deluxe” sounds like a kinky sex move that I’d like to spend time practicing with your sister sometime this weekend. It is also a new track from Topaloff.
Your best shot at catching him live – is if you’re lucky enough to be on the list for one of his private club parties…in Paris. The only things I know about Paris & France are:
I have never been there.
Every song I’ve been sent from Paris in 2010 is the tits.
Jay Reatard Died Today
The shitty thing about this modern age of ours is that bad news reaches more quickly, and from more angles. I just noticed on twitter that Jay Reatard died today. I checked Matador’s website and yeah, it’s true. He was 29. They don’t say what happened. Drugs, probably. Who knows. Also there might be 100,000 dead in Haiti, but that’s another story altogether.
If you’ve heard of Jay at all, you probably liked his music and are as disappointed as I am. I blogged about him awhile back, and I figured I’d be bringing him up again sometime; shame it had to be like this. He was a great songwriter — he made pop-punk that people like me are allowed to listen to in public — and while I never got to see him live, Youtube’s got evidence that he was a rock machine onstage.
Condolences all around. You’ll be missed.
Jay Reatard – “See Saw”
Jay Reatard – “Rotten Mind”
Am I Allowed to Amend My 2009 Best-Ofs?
Let’s play a game. It’s a pretty simple game: think about all the things you know about Poland. Can you name a city in Poland? Alright, Warsaw, obviously, but can you name any others? Nope? Not even Krakow? You’re slapping yourself for that one, aren’t you? Alright, who’s the Prime Minister of Poland? Don’t know? Is it even a Prime Minister, or is it a President, or something else? Don’t go and get on Wikipedia, there’s no prize or anything, I’m just trying to prove a point.
The point being that you really don’t know a damn thing about Poland. That’s because if you’re reading this there’s a better-than-50% chance you’re an American, and if you’re an American there’s a better-than-50% chance you don’t know or care about other countries. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, I’m just speaking the truth, and letting you know that about 1.2% of our readership is Polish and is pretty disappointed in you for not knowing about The Car Is On Fire.
Of course, I’m an American as well, so I’m no different. My knowledge of the Polish indie-rock scene begins and ends with The Car Is On Fire, and that knowledge only goes back like three days. I wouldn’t have even brought them up if I didn’t think they were totally fucking rad and that you would love them. How rad are they? They had an album out a few months back, and if I had heard it back then it’d be a shoo-in for any best-of-the-year list you care to mention. It’s that good. First of all, it’s produced by John McEntire, who worked with Stereolab and Tortoise, so it sounds crisp and clean. The songs are bouncy and bright and they hit you instantly; the chord changes are like swinging across the jungle floor snatching onto vine after vine. I’d say they sounded like of Montreal, except a) I don’t really like of Montreal and b) those kinds of comparisons don’t make any sense. I could just as easily say they sound like a cross between The Beatles and Tupac Shakur. Like They Might Be Giants had a baby with Gogol Bordello and named it Phoenix. I’m not sure what I have to tell you to convince you to click the little arrows at the bottom of the post that make the music play. Just click them and you’ll see what I’m trying to get at.
And for your information, this isn’t some nobody band from nowhere that I picked up in a thrift store and am talking up to boost my credibility. Their last album won a Fryderyk, which is basically the Polish equivalent of the Grammy. Bet you didn’t know about the Polish Grammys, did you? There’s a 98.8% chance you didn’t. And again, I’m not trying to make you feel bad. On the contrary — I’m just trying to get you to listen.
The Car Is On Fire – “Ombarrops !”
The Car Is On Fire – “Cherry Cordial”
The Car Is On Fire – “A Song Like No Other”
You can buy their albums here.
