Onanistic Recursion: Dana Vachon Uncovers the Dark Side of Rebecca Black

Vachon's tongue is so far in his cheek he's licking air. It's actually too good to block quote. Just read it.

The Strokes Battles Ad Hominem

Pitchfork gives the new Strokes record, Angles, a tepid 5.9 and a whole lot of "meh" in the review:

Throughout, the album is hobbled by disconnections-- between verse and chorus, lyrics and music, intent and execution. Casablancas' ambivalence about his own actions crops up often.

Whatevs. They like Battles, which sounds like crap spun through a cotton-candy machine.

Does Four Dates Make a Tour?

Modest Mouse thinks so:

• May 26 - Boise, ID - Knitting Factory
• May 27 - Missoula, MT - Big Sky Brewery
• May 28 - Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory
• May 29 - George, WA - Sasquatch Music Festival (SOLD OUT)

My guess is, they either need to warm up to be ready for the Sasquatch Festival, or they've got some new songs they want to play with. In either case, I feel like this tour would be worth seeing.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #12

"NOW you hear it? Didn't catch any of it while you were mumbling through 'Sex Boy'? Maybe you need to run into strange men more often."

- The Germs "Now I Hear the Laughter"

Gallows Humor

Andrew Earles seems to lament a band called Gallows receiving the most recent style "PRESENT AND FUTURE OF PUNK".

I don't blame him. The cover art of their debut album looks like someone put strychnine in Roger Dean's acid.

RIP Nate Dogg

No info as to cause, but he did have two strokes in 2007. Forty-One is too young to die of natural causes.

This song was ubiquitous in '94:

New Kills Song

I like the Kills, even if I don't listen to Midnight Boom as much as I used to (the mood, it comes and goes).

But "DNA" is a nice little song. Blues-punk chunkiness that hits straight and true.

The new album drops April 4th. "DNA" is available as a free download with a mailing list sign-up.

My Space vs. MySpace

A while ago, say 2005, I was the bassist of a band that did not exist. Which is to day, we practiced every Sunday for the better part of five months, and we plunked down for a rehearsal space, and I bought a 50-watt bass amp, but we never played a show and never had a name. Creative indifferences and all of that. Nobody's fault, and no ill will. A thousand garage bands meet the same fate every month, I'm sure.

Well the bandleader has a new crew, Tell You Monday, and they have a Facebook profile, and they're playing their first gig down in Southern Maryland this weekend. I won't be able to make it, but I wish them well. What's interesting to me is that this is the first encounter I recall of a band hawking on Facebook instead of the inevitable MySpace. That's the one function MySpace has managed to hold onto, isn't it? Does every band still have a MySpace as a matter of course?

I mean, check out Yuck, the hip young gunslingers fresh out of Cosmopolistan, which Under the Radar hails as having "managed to craft a surprisingly accomplished album for a band that's only a little more than a year old." They've got a MySpace. And a year-old "tour" going (when does "playing gigs" become "touring"?). And a self-produced record out on Fat Possum.

What does this mean? I don't know. Other than I think Tell Me Monday needs a MySpace. And, you know, luck.

Wye Not?

The actual Wye Oak was the state tree of Maryland. It was 96 feet tall, spread 119 feet into the air, and its trunk measured 31 feet 10 inches in diameter. At the time of its destruction in a thunderstorm in 2002, it was 460 years old.

So there's a little hometown pride in me when discussing Wye Oak, the band. Not only are they from Maryland, they're from Batlimore. And they're a duo, a reverse White Stripes. Sure, they're folk-rock-dream pop, which normally induces boredom headaches, but after I got the free Starbucks download of R.E.M.'s new single (which isn't bad at all), I'm in a more charitable mood. Also, one of their songs is free on iTunes right now.

I think the song is "Holy, Holy," which ChartAttack singles out for praise in an otherwise disappointed review of their new album (which has a pretty bad name: Civilian). If I like, maybe I'll check out last year's EP (I love EP's) and make up my own mind.

UPDATE: I was right. The song was "Holy, Holy" and it is good. And Free.

Magnet Sucks

It is official.

Nothing if not a model of consistency, Buffalo Tom has been making the same decent-to-great music since 1992’s Let Me Come Over. Actually the Massachusetts trio’s third album, Let Me Come Over feels more like a debut, as it zeroed in brilliantly on the group’s strengths, namely the earnest, imagery-laden, acoustic-gone-electric songwriting of guitarist Bill Janovitz and bassist Chris Colbourn and the propulsive punk undercurrents supplied by drummer Tom Maginnis. Judging by the band’s latest, Skins (Scrawny), it’s a formula that still has legs. Skins is the group’s eighth album and second since reuniting after a 10-year (sort-of) break, and its world-weary lilt and been-there/done-that themes make it the perfect grown-up companion piece to Let Me Come Over’s reluctant coming-of-age angst. It may be the best thing the band has done since that LP. Buffalo Tom will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.

So how'd you like to read that five times on a web site's main page? Which is what happens every time they let people guest-edit the mag: the same by-line advertisment appears over and over again (because Heaven Forbid we have to click on an anchor link to discover who in Hades Buffalo Tom is, if we happen to give a moldy crap).

This is what they've devolved to. No Over/Under since September. No Put Up Your Dukes for a year. No Where's the Street Team? since January 2009. I may have slagged these regulars before, but I like them much better than giving indie-bands and has-beens (anybody out there really hungry for the B-52's political outlook?) a platform upon which to wallow in their self-assurance.

Do these clowns actually have anything to say about music? Because right now they could achieve the same results by liking things on Facebook.

More Zeros = More Irony

Apparently Big Dog 4000000 should remind me of Ministry, among other things.

Unfortunately, all they bring to mind is an Irish Wolfhound and the word "bajillion".

Rating My CD's: I Got Struck By Lightning, and Now I Glow

29. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- Plastic Fang

It sometimes happens that I buy a record and can't stop listening to it, bowled over by its energy, punch, and hooks, and when I pull my head up out of it, no one else has paid any attention. It's kind of annoying, and it always makes me want to slap the collective cognoscenti up the side of their expensively coiffed heads and scream "Are You Retarded? How Did You Miss This Album?"

Now, in some sense, I've already done that with regard to Plastic Fang, the penultimate JSBX disc. So I probably don't need to go again into the fact that the trendhumping bastards who rin the indie music mags decided that Spencer & Co. were so five minutes ago when the White Stripes showed up, only to dust off their late-90's admiration and put it back on the shelf as soon as it was safe to do so.