Saturday, September 29, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Nine: NYCUFOs by NYCUFOs

..because Omaha UFO's doesn't have the same ring to it...
I want to say up front that I know absolutely nothing--and I mean nothing--about this band, save that their album, Newer Stations, was available (and still is available) for free on bandcamp and that they're a quartet. The picture to the left is the only one I could find of them. I have to assume they're from my hometown, but I guess even that supposition is based on potentially spurious assumptions (i.e. if they were from Green Bay, they'd be Green Bay UFOs).


Given the lack of information, I have to go on the song itself. And the song itself is a strange Frankenstein's monster of influences. I can get snatches of The Jesus and Mary Chain, a variety of early 80's pop bands, some Velvet Underground, and The Replacements in there.

...actually, I get a lot of The Replacements, especially in the vocals and the guitar riffs. Someone must have really listened closely to Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson in their youth, because Joe Haller and Chris Auger are obviously striving to imitate (or 'hommage') the band. What separates them from their heroes is the hazy distortion that they obviously borrowed from the J&M Chain. This doesn't separate them completely from the 'Mats influence, however, as what ultimately results sounds like a Replacements cover band playing their songs through seriously blown speakers.

The song itself is in the tradition of the 'band theme song. Oddly enough, when I sussed this out I got a whiff of another possible influence--They Might Be Giants, who wrote a theme song for The Replacements that remains one of my favorite songs of theirs early in their career. Half advertising (the chorus' last line exhorts us to 'Go and See The NYC UFOs') and half tv show jingle, the song does have a strange charm to it. And it also makes me wonder, given that they haven't produced anything new since the release of this album in 2010, what happened to them. After all, there is some promise amidst this influence soup, and there is always the possibility these four would slough off the obvious imitations and find their true nature down the line.

Here is a link to get Newer Stations.
 
....and since this song has no video, here's a live performance of 'Hi, We're The Replacements,' the They Might Be Giants song I was talking about, at a Barnes and Nobles..



Friday, September 14, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Eight: Cloud Nine by Pairs

They may like to refer to themselves as a bitch and a dickhead...
but man, these cats can play!
And today...Chinese Punk Rock!

No, really. I first became aware of this band when I downloaded a collection of rock bands from Shanghai from bandcamp. On the bandcamp page was a link to Summer Sweat, a full album by the group and hey, it was free, so I downloaded it as well.

This is the first track on that album, and...yeah, it's pretty much a Mission Statement. I have to be honest; while Pairs does sing in English, I can't understand half of what is going on here. Guitatist 'f's' highly distorted guitar rifts burst through the speakers as if she's actively and gleefully trying to blow them while drummer/vocalist xiao zhong alternates between screaming and growling his lyrics. This creates an undeniable energy--while I can't figure out the lyrics entirely (words seem to pop up to the surface from this bed of noise, and the phrase beginning with 'I'll be the best Johnny Rotten in the ground' seems to be the chorus), there is a definitive propulsion to it. You keep listening, even when xiao takes a few moments to start moaning as if in pain.

I'm not 100% sure if this is the kinda of thing I'd want to hear all the time, and I'm not sure if it's this track is the best entry point to this band; there are other tracks on this album that are less distorted and more melodic that might serve to ease a newcomer into their exuberant style. But it sure is fun in its anarchistic, crazy way. If you want to try them out for yourself, check out their discography on bandcamp.
 
Here is the band performing the song live.
 
 


Thursday, September 6, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Seven: Dangerous Boys by Paul Westerberg

He's looking at you, kid...
I find it really odd that I've been doing this for four years, and never once has one of my favorite bands ever come up...namely, the greatness that is The Replacements. And it still hasn't come up, although its leader just has.

There is something so primaly wonderful about The Replacements, a band where the fun was just as equally wondering if the night you went to see them was the night they'd finally implode, or the night they'd be too drunk to play, or if they'd just be a cover band for shits and giggles. I loved how they moved from straight on punks to power poppers in the mode of Paul's hero Alex Chilton to actual Top 40 troubadours before finally falling apart...and yet the chameleon-esque transformations continued, as Paul went through his 'ZuZu's Petals' phase of writing AOR sludge with now-wife Laurie Lindeen, then became a little bit of a Nu-Folkie before his most recent period of being a sort of rock-n-roll recluse, going about his life in quiet obscurity only to surprise us every once in a while with an EP of new songs at a ridiculously low price or a brief reunion with his Replacement bandmates for a pair of new tracks on Rhino's anthology of the band.
 
This song comes from one of those EPs, PW and The Ghost Glove Cat Wing Joy Boys, and I have to say that I like this weird period of his life. These later songs have taken on a strange sort of 'happy accident' quality to them, primarily because of the space between these missives from Paul (Something I discussed with Maurice Bursztynski in relation to Fiona Apple). And I'm fascinated by how his career has almost come full circle. This is recognizably the same guy who played on Tim and Pleased To Meet Me (even though I was aware of The Replacements because of my love of the greatest anthem of my college years, 'Bastards of The Young,' Pleased was my favorite 'Mats album because of the one-two punch of 'Alex Chilton' and 'IOU', the later with its seemingly endless break in the middle, as if the entire band was holding its breath underwater)--that guitar riff is unmistakably--but it's a strangely different kind of song.
 
I'm not sure if this song should be taken at the surface level, as a song about a woman who likes to bring 'dangerous boys' to her bed because she gains some power over them until she meet the one boy who 'breaks like a wave/waif.' Or, and I suspect this might be the true interpretation, it might be an elaborate metaphorical song about his relationship with his wife. After all, if we assume the 'boy who breaks like a wave/waif' (there's an argument for both interpretations on the Westerberg message boards) is Paul himself, then the fact that the boy is not put back together like all the others before him who shared this woman's bed can be looked at as representing Paul's musical transformation into something different from what he was with The Replacements. This song may very well be, in some weird and twisted, Westerbergian way, a love letter to his wife attributing his growth as an artist to her.
 
Regardless, it's a great lil' track, and I am probably not alone in waiting for the day when Paul comes out of his home to release another bunch of tracks....which might not be so far off, as there are reports on his official website that he and Tommy Stinson are collaborating on a song for a series of limited edition seven inch singles to benefit Slim Dunlap, a project that will reach fruition this fall.
 
Since there's no video for this song, here's one for the single off his last album, Suicide Gratification, which was directed by one of my faves, and notorious geek culture whipping boy Zack Snyder...