Archive for September, 2007
The Black Lips fifth album, and first studio album for VICE, is titled Good Bad, Not Evil. The title Good Bad, Not Evil is inspired by the Shangri-Las song “Walk Right Up To Him (Give Him A Great Big Kiss). The album was produced by the band in their hometown of Atlanta at The Living Room studios aided by the band’s friend Ed Rawls, a bartender at the nearby Drunken Unicorn bar, just around the corner from where fellow Atlantans Outkast work.
The Black Lips formed when as teenager after school friends Cole Alexander (guitar / vocals) and Jared Swilley (bass / vocals) signed up their friends Joe Bradley (drums / vocals) and Ben Eberbaugh (guitar). After swiftly becoming one of the Atlanta underground’s most talked about bands, and along the way being banned from numerous venues for their wild live shows, the group released albums and seven inches on different underground garage labels like Bomp and In The Red. Tragically, Eberbaugh was killed in a freak traffic accident but the band carried on with New Orleans-born Ian St Pe. These events would go on to influence the song “How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Had Died”, a stand out track on Good Bad, Not Evil. The album ranges from dirty psychedelic blues songs about Holy World War 3 “Veni Vidi Vicci” outright pop hits like “Katrina” (written the night the band found out that the Hurricane of the same names had devastated New Orleans) and Bad Kids (based around certain band members’ experiences with juvenile detention centres). There’s also the bruised, tender album closer “Transcendental Light”, a song written by Ian about discovering his mother’s body. Cole Alexander told us: “On this album we were really inspired by ourselves, especially our first two albums. They really changed the way the whole game was played. I think our work really transcends all genres and continues to influences us all on a daily basis” For us, the album’s a fresh, exciting take on the wildest records of bands like 1960s Peruvian punk bands like Los Saicos, the Stones, 13th Floor Elevators and the raw pop exuberance of Cavern-era Beatles. It’s probably the most out-there, funnest album you’re going to hear all year.
Taken from: vicerecords.com
MySpace: myspace.com/theblacklips
September 20th, 2007
Returning for the first time since it was initially staged in 2004, JOE’S PUB IN THE PARK captures the quality and range of performances that have made Joe’s Pub, now in its ninth year of providing music at its downtown home, one of the most acclaimed and popular clubs in New York City. Pub in the Park brings that talent and diversity into The Public Theater’s most visible and accessible venue, the annual home of Shakespeare in the Park. Drawing from a pool of the literally thousands of artists that have performed at Joe’s Pub, the event’s programming combines musicians from varying genres and backgrounds together onto multiple full-length artist bills designed to bring disparate audiences together.
Highlights include:
Beirut / Balkan Beat Box / NY Gypsy All Stars
September 26th 2007 7:00PM
Indie pop and global sounds collide with a bang! Don’t miss the fireworks as underground sensations Beirut, raucous multidisciplinary party band Balkan Beat Box and the world-class instrumentalists of the NY Gypsy All-Stars storm Central Park, presented in association with the NY Gypsy Festival.
Click here for info
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20th Century Boy: Marc Bolan and T.Rex 30th Anniversary Celebration / David Driver Sings The Scott Walker Songbook / Justin Bond is Close to You: The Songs of the Carpenters
Saturday, September 29th 2007 7:00PM
An evening of tribute to three great musicians as David Driver performs the work of Scott Walker, Tony nominated performer Justin Bond recreates The Carpenters’ Close to You album and an all-star collective commemorates the memory of T. Rex leader Marc Bolan.
September 11th, 2007
Saturday September 22nd start from 10pm
DJs: D-Marco, Mrs Moustache, Shantastic, Maria del Carmen del Mar
Band: Dead Animal Marathon
at Rose Live Music
345 Grand St
Williamsburg, NY
September 8th, 2007
England’s Go! Team play a fast and furious mix of 60s girl groups, 70s car chase TV themes, 80s lady MCs, and 90s guitar squalor. Their 2005 debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike was critically lauded for its cheerleader anthems, syrupy string samples, and mad-as-a-hatter horn arrangements. This release bombs melodies into the stone age with its needle-in-the-red anti-production approach. It lurches from bubblegum pop to white noise in a heartbeat. Contributors include Chuck D, the original Double Dutch Divas, Rapper’s Delight Club, Marina from Bonde Do Role, Solex, and Washington, DC’s Frederick Douglas All Star Cheer Team.
The album will be released September 11
September 7th, 2007
Architecture in Helsinki make boisterous, Technicolor-toned indie pop, and they do it with a verve that is alternately thrilling and exhausting to listen to. This quality seemed to be the main focus of all the hyperbolic praise prompted by the band’s 2005 release, In Case We Die, and rightfully so. It’s hard to deny the infectious charm of “Neverevereverdid” or the sugar rush of “Frenchy, I’m Faking,” but once you get past the candy-coated shell, Architecture in Helsinki don’t provide a lot to chew on. Much of this can be attributed to the band’s self-consciously awful lyrics, which range from 10-year-old-doing-a-Madlib juvenile to stream-of-consciousness bizarre. On Places Like This, however, songwriter/vocalist Cameron Bird and company seem to acknowledge their lyrical deficiencies by taking them to the logical extreme of self-parody, while keeping all their kitchen-sink instrumental layers intact. They know it’s silly, but they don’t give a shit, and neither should you.
That’s not to say that some curiously dark edges don’t exist on Places, as when Bird bittersweetly sings about “Leaping off the edge of this world” on album opener “Red Turned White.” But from there, things get loopy. “Heart It Races” is a dreamy love song with ethereal steel drums, and it’s followed by the prototypical Architecture in Helsinki party-jam “Hold Music,” complete with left-field tempo shifts, bells, and whistles. That song, along with “Like It Or Not,” provides a great example of the band’s refreshing self-awareness, replacing attempts at sing-along choruses with shout-along, onomatopoeic revelry. But if you’re still waffling about joining in on the monkeyshines, “Debbie” will settle you on one side of the love-it-or-hate-it line in the sand. The track steps along as a cheeky bit of disco-funk until a gloriously pretentious and out-of-place horn solo climaxes with Bird bleating in falsetto. You might cringe, you might smile, but you won’t not react. Just know that Architecture in Helsinki have enough energy to continue cranking out these adrenaline and saccharine cocktails until you do.
Taken from: tinymixtapes.com
Web: architectureinhelsinki.com
September 5th, 2007
Don’t look at pictures of The New Pornographers. If you do, you’ll think, “These guys look more likely to teach me about sedimentary limestone than write good songs.” But it would be your loss not to listen to them, as their fourth album is a staggering masterclass in indie-pop songwriting that will make your brain melt and send firecrackers around your heart. Like Arcade Fire, The Shins and The Decemberists, they’re a band that American rock blogs go loopy for, and not without reason. From the Raspberries-esque power-pop of ‘All The Old Showstoppers’ to acoustic gems like ‘Adventures In Solitude’, these are tunes Brian Wilson would have cleared room on ‘Pet Sounds’ for, each boasting spellbinding melodies and a harmonic complexity to die for. Did you really just read “a harmonic complexity to die for” in NME? Well, we did warn you they’d melt your brain.
Tim Jonze
Taken from: NME
Web: Thenewpornographers.com
September 2nd, 2007
The Central St Martins graduate with the Tamil Tiger parentage is poised to raise temperatures - and eyebrows - all over again. Maya Arulpragasam’s second is a head-spinning equatorial dash so completely cuckoo it makes any accusations of cultural tourism seem mightily churlish. She’s in Trinidad one minute, India via Angola the next, but always anchored by choleric basslines that are 100% London.
Rhythms are constructed from gunshots, dog barks and swarms of rattling snares, with producer Dave ‘Switch’ Taylor at his most fidgety behind the desk. New Order and Pixies are plundered for apocalyptic oomph on the stupefying “$20″ while “Mango Pickle Down River” brilliantly finds M.I.A. trading rhymes with aboriginal kids. She twangs the boundaries of taste both lyrically (”Take me on a genocide tour/Take me on a trip to Darfur”) and musically. But a knockout’s a knockout, however messy the bout.
Sam Richards
September 1st, 2007
