..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.
....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..
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.
Just so you know, I just upgraded my MP3 Player with a new 8GB microcard--that's an extra 6GBs of stuffage that should mix things up even more...
Anyway...this week it's the half sister of one of my first really intense musical crushes, Kristen Hersh and her present project, 50 Foot Wave.
I first became aware of Ms. Hersh through her first project, The Throwing Muses...and I became aware of The Throwing Muses solely because I wanted to do evil, evil things to Tanya Donnelly. Incidentally, this is the one musical crush that had the weirdest arc of all. Back in the day, the Muses were an incredibly accessible group of people; when they toured, they hung with the civilians and didn't get all creepy-weird if you approached them and said hello. This led to one night at Maxwell's in Hoboken where my friend at the time Lorne and I endeavored to score an interview with someone from the band. Not only did we succeed in netting about forty minutes with Dave Narcizio and a few minutes with Kristin, I actually got to stand in front of Tanya, profess my adoration and got a laugh, a hug and a few minutes of genuine warmth.
(Which led to me getting interviews with Tanya both when she fronted Belly and when she struck off on her own, including one in the very cramped storage room of Maxwell's where our knees were touching; an answering machine message she gleefully did with me, chanting 'do it! do it!' when I asked people to leave their message; and always a few moments of conversation whenever I saw her after that....but those are stories for another day)
There are a handful of musicians I met when I was running Sticky Carpet Digest and writing articles for other fanzines and magazines who seemed genuinely interested in connecting with me as more than an opportunity for publicity. The Throwing Muses were prime amongst them.
And I get the sense that Hersh has never lost that desire to connect with people directly I saw in her and her bandmates that one night in Hoboken, which might explain why so much of 50 Foot Wave's backcatalog is available for free here...although given the massive amount of stuff she's giving to you, I encourage you to give her a little something back by visiting her website.
50 Foot Wave is definitely a shout back to that earliest version of the Muses, where Kristin and Tanya were exploring the crossroads where punk and folk met. It's a harsher sound than both the later Muses albums and Hersh's own solo work, with lots of fast guitar strumming and hard drumming--apparently the group was designed as a power trio--all designed to couch Hersh's ambivalently sinister lyrics in a dissonant context. It's funny how this latest project of hers, done after she has managed to keep her bipolar disorder under control, is the best musical expression of her bipolarism since those first few EP's put out by the Muses.
And the lyrics to this song represent what kept me a Throwing Muses fan past my lust for Ms. Donnelly. Hersh is really, really good at writing these little portraits that are like rorschach tests for the listeners. In this song, which begins with her waking up to find a lavender stain on her lover's mouth, what does that stain mean--is it evidence of adultery? The aftereffect of strenuous lovemaking? Hersh isn't telling, seemingly throwing contradictory phrases about whores and freedom at us to muddy the waters. But that's her game, and has always been so; to obsfucate what she's really saying because she knows deep down inside that what we think she's saying is much more interesting that what she is telling us.
Apparently, Kristin Hersh is a busy woman these days. In addition to 50 Foot Wave, she's continuing to write essays, is working on new songs for a solo project....and has reunited with Dave Narcizio to create a massive new, listener-funded Throwing Muses album that is rumored to have 38 (!) songs on it. Try to keep up with her at her website; the link is above.
And here's a video from a live performance....
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By the way---for those of you who missed out, I guested last weekend on Maurice Bursztynski's excellent podcast Love That Album. This biweekly podcast sees Maurice, usually with a guest host, discuss and dissect one album that one or both of them like on a song-by-song basis. The episode I was on tackled one of my favorite musicians, Ben Folds, and put forth the idea that his album Songs For Silverman is the first proactive breakup album, seeing as how it was released before the break-up actually happened. Plus we talk about the cult of Fiona Apple, the general sadness of Art Aleakis, 're-recording' albums, and more. Check out the episode on his website...and while you're there, check out his other episodes because all of them are fun and a half, and come highly recommended.
This is yet another new development in The History of Marketing Music--a track from an album of remixes. Because, of course, if you wanted the tracks the first time out, you obviously are willing to get them again, remixed by special guest DJs. Of course, if you're giving your music away....
She Makes War is the stage alter-ego of one Laura Kidd. I imagine she's British--the biography on her website is very light on actual, you know, biography--and calls the music she makes 'grungy, dystopian gloom punk.' You wouldn't know by listening to this track, which seems bright and airy, very techno and given an extra lift by Kidd's vocals. Kidd's got one of these voices that would not have seemed out of place in the early 80's dance community, and placing her in the middle of a good beat, some soaring synth and good ambient atmospherics and she seems anything but gloomy no matter what it is she's singing about (from what I can tell--the site does not contain any lyrics--the song is about that old standard, The One That Got Away The Singer Wants Back). This is good, solid techno-pop, which is fine for what it is.
This is another one of the songs in this year's cycle you can have for free. It's part of Disarm Remixed, a remix album that takes her latest album and filters it through several DJ's and producers. If you want to hear these versions, go to bandcamp and download the whole album for free.
Here is the video for the original version....it's a little slower, and a little darker, eschewing the synths in favor of a guitar heavy arrangement and an emphasis on echo-chambery effects on the vocals but a lot of what I found engaging--including her voice--still endures.
Hey! It's a song I don't think I've ever heard before!
If you recall from last week, I mentioned that I love those free online samplers you can download from record companies as zip files to sample their wares. Well, record companies aren't the only ones--thanks to the wild-frontier-ness that still exists on this internet, many band will offer EPs and even whole albums up to net surfers for free; the band gets their music exposed and hopefully a paying customer for their next project, whereas lil' ol' us gets something for free--and stuff for free, as I'll always tell you, is the best stuff of all. Hell, we're now at a point where big name acts will give you free tracks and the like; I belong to the Coldplay mailing list, and not that long ago was treated to a special live EP the band released to their list members as a thank you for spending money on them during these trying times.
Which brings us to our song for the day, I can tell you it's not one I would have sought out if it wasn't for the free EP offer...but that's not necessarily a bad thing. 3rdness is a mainly electronic band, with an emphasis on repetitive synth loops and the rhythm carrying the song to its conclusion--we are talking about a song that maybe has about two dozen words in its lyrics, tops, most of them the chant 'This is on the other song.' But it's not without a certain hypnotic charms. If you like this sort of thing, you'd really enjoy it.
It seems that 3rdness is Noam Schatz of The Mobius Band, and the track is from his solo EP Red Chanterelles. The album is still available for free here.
