According to the 'kings of what is indie' Pitchfork - Wavves new album comes out tomorrow on itunes.
The album is streaming online at the moment, and sounds incredible!
Their first album was a huge hit, with its extremly lo-fi surf guitar pop songs. It's a really great listen - I actually remeber the first time I listend to it was while waiting at lauramat, terribly hung over, eating pineapple lumps and drinking cheap grape soda. It some sorta lame segway - that way the album sounds like - a dizzying poppy sugar high, mixed with part nausena, tiredness and boredom.
Nathan Williams the main man behind Waaves recently stated that he didn't want to make the same album twice. And he has clearly done that with a move away from the basement-style low-fi recordings, to something a bit more approacable. From first listen the band have definately been able to keep their solid core, without falling into the "Interpol Trap" of making albums with the same style on numerous occassions. Indeed the addition of member of Jay Retards (RIP) band have definately lifted the sound from the basement doddling of a solo project to a slighlty more expasive feel.
Green Eyes is one of many favourites so far - its simple opening riff and adorable opeing lines "Green Eyes i'll run away with you" "Green eyes cause i'm a fool" I tried running away i'm just not fast enough i'm just not fast enough - before launching into a huge sound bombardment with a driving guitar line - through the contrasting hook "my own friends hate my guts..but i don't give a shit". If you like guitar pop, YOU will love this...
Listen below - and keep an eye out for the album "King of the beach"
Life In One Chord
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
JAPANDROIDS!!!!
From one extreme to another - that Japandroids are definately one of the best of the last year. A two piece packed full of energy, huge, riffs and shouty vocals. Their songs usually concern soley the pursuit of youth - girls, fun and the consequences.
Wet Hair - is off their fanstatic debt album - Post Nothing. A song of lust, fun and noise - enjoy
Leonard Cohen - Dress Rehersal Rags
Simply put Cohen in unprecendented in terms of pure songwriting. A literal, rather than figurative muscial poet - his album "Songs of Love and Hate" is Cohen at this darkest. For shear rawness, and honesty this is my favourite Cohen song.
I've been listening to this album a lot recently - at Dress Rehersal Rags is my favourite cut. Its an incredibly dark and scathing songs, where Cohen uses he lyrical prowess to attack himself. Indeed as Cohen states in this incredible live redition he only sings its "were the landscape can support the dispair he projects into it"
As an expression of dispair, lyrically and soncially its unpredented. Cohen wraps up the feeling of depression, guilt and self loathing by asking himself first "where are you golden boy wheres your famous golden touch" and observing "a funeral in the mirror which is stopping at your face"
This only seems to emanspiate his feelings of depression and he harasses himself - "yes its comes to this, and wasn't it a long way down." Nothing is free from is scorne even his own artistic work - where using the metaphor of razors and shaving cream he describes his lathered face as making appear as "santa clause, whos got a gift, for anyone who gives him applause" and ponders the opportunity to "get a job". Hope is now lost "Once there was a path and a girl with chestnut hair".
The final verse is most telling after Cohens - carthsis of guilt, depression and despair - it seems like the narrator never in facts carries out his fanciul attempt to use the razor. Rather "and then the cameras pan, the stand in stunt man, the dress rehersal rag" where Cohen expresses guilt at his own thinking and self pity. A masterpiece of song writing and an incredible skilled and subtle expression of a very dark experince - or what Winston Churchill would call "his black dog"
I've been listening to this album a lot recently - at Dress Rehersal Rags is my favourite cut. Its an incredibly dark and scathing songs, where Cohen uses he lyrical prowess to attack himself. Indeed as Cohen states in this incredible live redition he only sings its "were the landscape can support the dispair he projects into it"
As an expression of dispair, lyrically and soncially its unpredented. Cohen wraps up the feeling of depression, guilt and self loathing by asking himself first "where are you golden boy wheres your famous golden touch" and observing "a funeral in the mirror which is stopping at your face"
This only seems to emanspiate his feelings of depression and he harasses himself - "yes its comes to this, and wasn't it a long way down." Nothing is free from is scorne even his own artistic work - where using the metaphor of razors and shaving cream he describes his lathered face as making appear as "santa clause, whos got a gift, for anyone who gives him applause" and ponders the opportunity to "get a job". Hope is now lost "Once there was a path and a girl with chestnut hair".
The final verse is most telling after Cohens - carthsis of guilt, depression and despair - it seems like the narrator never in facts carries out his fanciul attempt to use the razor. Rather "and then the cameras pan, the stand in stunt man, the dress rehersal rag" where Cohen expresses guilt at his own thinking and self pity. A masterpiece of song writing and an incredible skilled and subtle expression of a very dark experince - or what Winston Churchill would call "his black dog"
Saturday, June 19, 2010
It Begins
I like loud guitars that sound blurry.
The Straitjacket Fits were my first realy 'guitar' band per se that I really followed. It all began when I purchased their self-titled greatest hits for a xmas present for my sister. Subsequently after further listening I decided to gift the album to myself rather than my sister which started my obsession with the band - as well as further incidents of poor graturity.
More importantly -this song is a Flying Nun staple. One could label Carter as the 'Johnny Rotton' to Chris Knox as 'Iggy' in terms of the punk/Flying Nun scene of the eighties in NZ.
The song its splattered with highlights: Shayne Carters - sneering vocals, the chrisp Jesus and Mary Chain guitars and pulsating bass line all combine to form a unrelenting mix. The guitars are constanly chiming, assisting Cartner's sneers in the verses. No loud quiet loud approach, everything is kept LOUD LOUD. Lyrically Carters cyanism and agnst is typically in your face. Whether its in the beginning
"theres hawks on our shoulders more ciculing lower, we're letting them peck at the back of our necks, what more could we want?"
Or latter with when Carter spits out: "Plip plop, drip drop The tap drips on my heat rot...So much to tend to that nothings getting done"
and my favourite - some warped Leonard Cohen-esque commentary (whom the band also cover on the Hail LP) - "Pushing and jabbing, the mouths that are stabbing, The Lines of Lost lovers, What more could we want?"
Additionally the way song jams out to an ending really gives it an organic quality, despite the preceding verse chorus verse structure.
It's really a - 'says and means nothing - but actually says and expresses everything' sorta song and exists as a physical record of how bad ass Shanye Carter really is. As a critic for Melody Maker once said "Straitjacket Fits are the weirdest guitar band in the world, they are also the best!"
The Straitjacket Fits were my first realy 'guitar' band per se that I really followed. It all began when I purchased their self-titled greatest hits for a xmas present for my sister. Subsequently after further listening I decided to gift the album to myself rather than my sister which started my obsession with the band - as well as further incidents of poor graturity.
More importantly -this song is a Flying Nun staple. One could label Carter as the 'Johnny Rotton' to Chris Knox as 'Iggy' in terms of the punk/Flying Nun scene of the eighties in NZ.
The song its splattered with highlights: Shayne Carters - sneering vocals, the chrisp Jesus and Mary Chain guitars and pulsating bass line all combine to form a unrelenting mix. The guitars are constanly chiming, assisting Cartner's sneers in the verses. No loud quiet loud approach, everything is kept LOUD LOUD. Lyrically Carters cyanism and agnst is typically in your face. Whether its in the beginning
"theres hawks on our shoulders more ciculing lower, we're letting them peck at the back of our necks, what more could we want?"
Or latter with when Carter spits out: "Plip plop, drip drop The tap drips on my heat rot...So much to tend to that nothings getting done"
and my favourite - some warped Leonard Cohen-esque commentary (whom the band also cover on the Hail LP) - "Pushing and jabbing, the mouths that are stabbing, The Lines of Lost lovers, What more could we want?"
Additionally the way song jams out to an ending really gives it an organic quality, despite the preceding verse chorus verse structure.
It's really a - 'says and means nothing - but actually says and expresses everything' sorta song and exists as a physical record of how bad ass Shanye Carter really is. As a critic for Melody Maker once said "Straitjacket Fits are the weirdest guitar band in the world, they are also the best!"
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