I’d call Emm Gryner the Canadian Tori Amos, except that Amos’s covers almost universally terrify me. Sure, it’s nice to have her there so you can actually understand the lyrics to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for a change, but her affectless approach to Eminem’s “’97 Bonnie and Clyde” or The Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays” leaves me expecting her head to spin around and start vomiting cherries. Anyway, Gryner does a better job with Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” than with this. But you asked for indie, so indie you get.
[ed: Ozzy is cool with us, and we love the cover – stay tuned!]
Three fun facts about Emm Gryner: She toured with David Bowie (backup vocals and keyboards), including playing Glastonbury. She started her own record label, Dead Daisy, and signed In-Flight Safety. She was on the Mayor’s Honour List [pdf] of her hometown, Sarnia, in 2004.
[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]
While the life of this blog has been fairly brief, it has not escaped my attention that both my love of pop music and my fundamental geekiness shine through. Here, therefore, is the new KT Tunstall video, which brilliantly combines them both (together with anorak-clad obsessive fandom, which, um, I’m not going to admit to, okay?)
Threesome is a new feature on this blog. As its name suggests, it’s a trio of songs that are related by a common theme (okay, wait, I know that’s not what its name suggests to most of you…). Today’s theme is language, and this post features songs about the Oxford comma, the word ‘underwhelmed’ (which is, in fact, in the OED), and some general linguistic playfulness from UW-Madison via The Box Social.
I’ll freely admit to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and their manifestation in my ticket purchasing habits are only further enabled by Tourfilter and my proximity to music venues in Central Square, Cambridge, like TT the Bear’s Place and the Middle East. But I seem to have taken them to their logical extreme when I went to buy Sloan tickets for their June 18th show – check out the numbers in the upper-right corners.
Okay, so ‘local’ is stretching it a bit. Bishop Allen are named after the street in Central Square where the founding members lived while at school in Cambridge (and which is half a block from zed equals zee mission control). As seems to be the case for many musical Cantabrigians, the hipster ‘hood down I-95 beckoned, and Bishop Allen relocated to make their quirky, charming indie-pop in Brooklyn. The song below, “Click Click Click Click”, is a wonderfully infectious soundtrack to these late spring/early summer days. Check them out at the Middle East tomorrow (Thursday, May 15); more tourdates here.
[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]
How to listen to the new I Am Kloot album, I Am Kloot Play Moolah Rouge:
Wait for a rainy afternoon, so the sky is grey and the drops are pattering against your windows.
Pour yourself a glass of whisky.
Put the CD (or your iPod, or the vinyl, or whatever) on your stereo. Ideally, listen to it on a pair of headphones (not white earbuds; proper headphones that look like earmuffs from the Gernsback continuum).
Lie on the floor of your living room.
Let John Bramwell’s voice wash over you.
Repeat.
Failing that, just listen to I Am Kloot any way you can.
More inducement: From The Independent’s review of I Am Kloot’s April concert in London: “I Am Kloot, formed 10 years ago, offer a little more grit than [The Decemberists], and in their endearing frontman and presiding spirit Johnny Bramwell they boast a songwriter of seemingly effortless grace.”
Yet another example of “literate, geeky bands with overeducated lead singers.” Vampire Weekend isn’t the sort of sound I normally like, but any band that writes a song that starts off “Who gives a fuck about the Oxford comma?” is okay in my book. I have an idea for a project in which I develop a CD of music for each stage and process of a typical audit process [ed: Scott’s day job] that comes entirely out of my blasting “Oxford Comma” into my headphones for most of a week while I dealt with our copyeditors back in February.
So I wanted to include Vampire Weekend on this, but wasn’t aware of any covers that they had done. Fortunately, they made it comparatively easy to find by contributing to a tribute to OK Computer. Radiohead, like Vampire Weekend, is a band that, based on how I generally think of my musical preferences, I shouldn’t (and initially didn’t) like. Given their joint residence in the “music I don’t understand why I like” zone, a Vampire Weekend cover of Radiohead just seems right. Add to that the fact that the original comes from the closing credits to a film that, for all its flaws as Shakespearean theatre, still managed to be a solid cover movie, as it were, and I think this fits in very nicely.
Harvard Square’s Mayfair was delayed to this Sunday, May 11th, because of the nasty weather in Cambridge last weekend. So you didn’t miss your chance to see Hallelujah the Hills or Girls Guns and Glory (4 pm and 3 pm, respectively, on the main stage). Lots more music (Action Verbs gets the z=z ‘best name’ prize) as well as dance, film, kids’ stuff, and other goodies. Full details, including set times, here.
The Teenagers are three Parisiens who write danceable synthpop, overlaid with spoken and sung lyrics that are irreverent (and controversial). Interested in checking them out for yourself? I have a pair of spots on the guestlist for their Boston show at the Paradise, this Thursday, May 8th. If you’re interested, send me an e-mail at debcha [at] gmail [dot] com. Please put ‘Teenagers’ in the subject line and include your full name and town in the e-mail, and get it to me by 9 am EDT on Thursday morning. I’ll pick one lucky winner (+1) then, and send an e-mail out shortly thereafter. Note that it’s an 18+ show, so at least some actual teenagers can attend.
A few weeks ago, WMBR had a column in The Tech that included a list of the ‘Top 5 Beards in Indie Rock.’ The top spot was held by perpetually clean-shaven Stephen Malkmus, in honour of the Jicks’ sold-out show at the Paradise on April 3rd. While I totally agree with their inclusion of Sam Beam (of Iron and Wine) and Devendra Banhart, and Doug Martsch of Built to Spill definitely deserves an honourable mention, I’m going to suggest a different top 3:
But the number one spot, unquestionably, goes collectively to Ladyhawk, pictured above. They are currently on tour, which means you’ll have a chance to check out the beardage in person.
John Darnielle (yes, again) upbraids Roland and Yamaha for not providing gear for the live version of Model 500, Juan Atkins’s band:
You need to get right, Roland and Yamaha. You need to get right. Juan Atkins is in this band. Without guys like Juan Atkins figuring out how to work your machines and making great sounds with them, they’d be useless crates. You don’t actually think people made tracks like this just by reading your impenetrable manuals, right?
There are so many things that ought to be wrong with this song. Peter Schilling wrote a conspicuously 80s new wave song that wasn’t so much a cover as an, I don’t know, elaborate retelling of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”. In the U.S., at least, he was a one-hit wonder with this song. And, let’s face it, “Space Oddity” is a musically interesting Bowie song, but the lyrics don’t have enough of a story to really merit retelling them with different words. It’s not a good songwriting technique.
I Hate Kate seems like more of a Creed/Korn-esque pseudo-punk band than indie rock. Checking on some of their original songs would support that assessment, but the consensus seems to be that this makes their genre “alternative rock I don’t care for,” not “other than alternative rock.” Regardless, not my cup of tea. But apparently, poorly-written new wave synth-pop + screechy-voiced “goes to eleven” frat boys = something that evens out reasonably well in the middle. It’s the new math.
[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]
John Darnielle (of the Mountain Goats, in case you haven’tbeenpayingattention) made a guest appearance at the Weakerthans concert in Carrboro, NC a few weeks ago. He and John K Samson sang “Anchorless,” originally recorded by Samson’s previous band, Propagandhi.
Probably a good thing I wasn’t there – the critical mass of singer-songwriter goodness might have led to a runaway chain reaction of musical joy in my brain, and a resultant explosion of my head.
New Brunswick, NJ-based Spiraling seems custom-designed to appeal to me, given that their music inhabits the intersection of love, indie music, and deep geekiness (like some otherbands that come to mind). Their sound isn’t very easy to place temporally – I hear echoes of 70s Queen, 80s synthpop, 90s emo and 21st century postpunk. Despite that, the album hangs together as a consistent whole – it’s a melodic mixture of guitars, piano and synthesizers, capped off with bittersweet and yes, geeky, lyrics – “Modern life is much too hard/with no jet packs or flying cars./This is not the future we were promised.” “I won’t forget the breaking of your heart/All I have to do is step into the time machine/And stop before it starts.” Check them out (even if you’re not a geek like me).
Bodhi Oser’s Band ID: The Ultimate Book of Band Logos is a handsome compendium of well, band logos. Beginning with what is perhaps the ultimate music icon, the Rolling Stones lips, this chunky coffee-table book presents hundreds and hundreds of logos, arranged by genre (there is a band index, so you can look for your favourites). Given Oser’s background, it comes as no surprise that punk and metal (in the ‘heavy’ and ‘extra heavy’ varieties, a nice typographer’s joke) are particularly well represented, including short essays on both the Dead Kennedys and the Black Flag logos. There are also a number of other essays and interviews with designers of influential logos. The main appeal of this book lies squarely in the intersection between music nerd and graphic design geek (guilty as charged…) but the emotional resonance of the images will speak to anyone who’s ever worn a button or a patch, put a sticker on their binder or carved a logo into a desk. This book might be closing a chapter of graphic design history, though – with the rise of YouTube and MP3s, it’s not clear that logos will ever be integral to band identities again.
Some friends of mine at Zero G Sounds (based here in Our Fair City) recently released a label compilation, Stuff. It’s a great sampler, but one track in particular, “Demonetics” by The Kooky Scientologist (aka The Kooky Scientist), makes my head explode – something about that hooky electro bass makes me really happy. I decided that I needed to have it as a ringtone, and fortunately Eddie O and company were kind enough to release it under a Creative Commons license. In the last week or so of excitedly handing my phone to my friends and asking them to call me so they could hear “Demonetics”, I discovered that not everyone knows how easy it is to create a ringtone.
The simplest way is to just use iTunes – you set the section of the song you want to use as your ringtone (usually 30-45 seconds), change the MP3 encoder to save it in mono and with a reduced sampling rate (so it’s smaller), and export it to a new file. If you go this route, don’t forget to change the settings back! [tutorial]
The fancier way is to download Audacity, which will not only let you create the ringtone, but also tweak the way it sounds, like setting it to fade up at the start of the ‘ring’. [tutorial]
You do need to have a way of getting the MP3 to your phone, usually Bluetooth or a cable. Lifehacker’s tutorial also includes some nice tips on how to choose a song to use as a ringtone.
Listen to “Demonetics” in all its bassy goodness: myspace [stream], beatport [buy]
I have it on good authority from my other purveyor of indie rock opinions that Self is “made of industrial-grade awesome”. This being their only song I’ve heard, I can’t really offer insight into that conclusion, except to say that, were that so, you’d think I’d have an easier time finding their album for purchase somewhere other than Amazon for ridiculous import prices. Additionally, I’m not aware of any facilities for processing and refining high quality awesome. Maybe overseas in an industrializing country with lower environmental standards.
Like so many impressionable geeks, I was introduced to They Might Be Giants by older, cooler friends at a young age (in my case, sophomore year of high school). And, after years of addiction, obsession, withdrawal, and relapse, I’ve reached a point where of course I buy a tribute album to them. This song is the highlight.
[Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge, MA; April 21, 2008]
I heart Dan Bejar. Backed by an able four-piece (plus his own guitar), he put on a relatively brief but typically intense show at the Middle East last night. Much as I liked Trouble in Dreams, I really enjoy the way Bejar’s voice sounds when it is freed of the studio – his albums are so carefully produced that it’s more than usually appealing to hear the sonic variations of the live performance. While I was a little sad not to hear some of my faves from Destroyer’s Rubies (such as “European Oils”), it was a good show overall.
I mentioned in a previous post that getting into techno is a little overwhelming. One of the reasons why is the large number of genres and subgenres. Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music(check your speaker volume before clicking) is an excellent place to go to codify the bits of music and the artists that you’ve heard or heard of. It’s a taxonomy of electronic music of all sorts, with an opening tutorial and brief descriptions of the different styles. It’s written in a highly opinionated, pull-no-punches style whose primary redeeming feature is that it balances acrimony with enthusiasm: here’s a sample:
Motherfucking electro! Kraftwerk invented it in 1971. Hip hop hijacked it in 1981. Everyone forgot it by 1991. And then everyone started releasing “Hey! Remember Kraftwerk?” albums in 2001. Goes to show how much things run full circle. All electronic music everywhere pretty much owe [sic] its existence to Kraftwerk. Right next to James Brown and The Beatles, they are the most influential musicians of all time. It also doesn’t hurt that robots are so totally wicked fucking awesome.
But the real reason to put up with the annoying Flash and non-Edward-Tufte-approved design is for the audio samples of songs from the different genres. If you’ve ever wanted to know the difference between minimal and microhouse, between Ibiza- and Goa-style trance, or between jungle and drum’n’bass (or if you just want to know what those genres are), this is the site. Sit yourself down in front of a computer with decent speakers, give yourself a bit of time, and mess around.
zed equals zee 
