Monday, May 23, 2011

Graveyard Country Music

Last night I was watching Wifey's Glass Mind Theater show, and I got to meet two of the guys in Red Sammy, a country-blues-folk band with some pretty serious soul. As it turns out, Adam Trice had heard Rock n' Roll Archaeology, my radio show, the previous Saturday, and gave me a free advance copy of their about-to-be-released CD, A Cheaper Kind of Love Song. Watch this space for a review later this week.

Oh, and the title of this post? That's their catchphrase. I like it a lot.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The New Raveonettes Sounds Awful...

...and I haven't heard a note.

the revealingly titled Raven in the Grave is rife with the somber, gossamer 4AD mannerisms of yore. The dreamy longings of “Forget That You’re Young” decisively call up the specter of Cocteau Twins, while “Apparitions,” with menacing gallop and funereal atmospherics, has Clan of Xymox’s mournful markings all over it.

The Raveonettes need their Surf Riffs. It's what makes them interesting. Poor fools, they peaked with their first EP.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Talking Back to Punk Rock #13

"So who's stopping you? You know where the garage is."

-The Ramones, "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue"

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Rating My CD's: Fancy

32. The Kinks -- Face to Face


I hate listening to the radio. At best, Tesla's Marconi's century-old invention exudes tedious middlebrow talkiness; at worst, the complete absence of thought. And that's only the actual content: radio commercials are a whole other way to get under my skin. If I ever meet the bastards behind the Cars for Kids ad, I will not be held responsible for my actions.

But back in 2000 I didn't have much of a choice. I was driving a 1988 Lincoln Mark VII whose reliability taught me to curse auto mechanics in the saltiest of terms. I had lost my first job and was alternating between temping and collecting unemployment. Disposable income was not part of my life experience, so new car stereos and new CD fodder for mix tapes weren't either.

So after wearying of almost all the commercial stations in the Delaware Valley, my housemate hipped me to the local University of Pennsylvania station. Although the pledge/membership ads were fully as dull as any other desperate attempt to part me from my cash, at least they played songs not pile-drived into my head ad infinitum. And one afternoon in the late spring to early summer, I heard the first Kinks song that made me give a damn about them:

The Major Lazer Video

To be blunt, I lacked the courage to respond with Andrew Earle's tart invective. The experience pole-axed me, and I still can't express my reaction in anything like critical terms.


No, I'm not going to link it. You know how to use the Internet.

Thursday, May 05, 2011

New Beastie Boys Album

To Buy or Not to Buy? Honestly, To the Five Boroughs kind of soured me on everything since Ill Communications.

Here's Pitchfork:

Looking at their arc from a purely musical perspective, you could divide their career in half at the midpoint of that decade-- at some point between 1994's Ill Communication and 1998's Hello Nasty. Their first four full-lengths came in less than eight years, and during this stretch, they were hungry and on the move, restlessly searching for new avenues of music expression. They're just now getting to their third proper album (fourth, if you want to count 2007's instrumental LP The Mix Up) in the 17 years since.

I think that's just about right. Hello Nasty is good, but not great, and they've only gotten older since. Every critic's desperate attempt to plump them up as "Beastie Men" or "engaged post-wiseasses," has failed to cover up the fact that they've lost their spark and are basically decaying into a Beastie Boys cover band.

But hey, I could be wrong.