Have you ever seen something this awesome in your life? A band in their prime during the year I was born. Adrian Belew, David Byrne and a host of musicians kicking ass.
This is music.
EDIT: The embedding of this video has been disallowed. If you click on it though, it’ll take you straight to You Tube to watch. Minor hiccup.
From the great white north (fine, it’s just Ontario) comes one of my all-time favorite bands, The Most Serene Republic. They’ve got a new album coming out on July 14th called …And The Ever Expanding Universe and I am excited. I’ve seen this band a couple of times and both shows have been outstanding dance festivals and this white boy does not dance. Trust me.
They’ve got two full length records, though their first album (Underwater Cinematographer) is considered more of a rough draft by the band, whereas Population is a fully finished opus. In between they released the rarely discussed but completely overlooked EP Phages, which is highly regarded by this blogger.
But to the point Keep reading →
I was surfing around some of the myspace pages of my favorite bands last night, most notably the Black Angels. I wanted to see if they had any news regarding their current whereabouts. It sounds like they’re holed up in a studio working on their next record. But I digress.
One of the band members had posted the video for Pink Floyd’s Green is the Colour and to be honest I had never heard the song before. I hadn’t dabbled in too much Floyd before Meddle and frankly that’s my bad. Some of this stuff is their finest work and I should be slapped with a bag of piss for not taking the time to listen to it. Keep reading →
This is possibly the very beginning of psychedelic rock right here. Imagine hearing this for the first time as a child of the 60s. It must have been an enlightening experience to go from sunny, happy, boy-band pop to this. For fuck’s sake they’re playing with an electric jug. You can see the guy blowing into a jug. Yes.
Roky Erickson is the singer and harmonica-owning frontman and you can tell he’s got one hell of a voice. He could have been great too except he went batshit crazy and disappeared f0r about 30 years. But we’ll always have their tunes and we have them to thank for inspiring band like The Black Angels, Spacemen 3 and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Enjoy!
I think I’m starting to like these short reviews. Instead of writing four long paragraphs and thinking of ten different ways to say an album is really good, I’m just going to ask you to take my word for it and listen for yourself. So let’s spread some love – abridged style.
Pink Mountaintops are the other band (maybe there are others still, who knows) of Black Mountain front man Stephen McBean. So this Vancouverian (Vancouverite? Vancouverer?) has two bands that are excellent while Chad Kroeger still has zero.
Pink Mountaintops have done it again, that is to say made a great record. They have three, in case you’re keeping score. They’re basically the hippier side of Black Mountain and have a sixties feel to their sound as opposed to BM’s seventies stoner rock. They’ve got some seriously excellent tracks on this record. The standouts for me are Axis: Thrones of Love and Vampire. There’s a host of talented female vocalists on here as well, including the sister of Black Mountain’s Amber Webber. Not surprisingly, she’s also got a great voice.
Bonus time: someone created a video for the song Vampire and I happen to think it’s pretty excellent. The song itself makes me think of Forgetting Sarah Marshall but I suppose there are a lot of people out there that think of Twilight. Which is sad. Don’t ask me why because you already know.
Pick up this fantastic album at 
Visit their official site right here.
Best of all, they’re playing at the Empty Bottle on June 10th. See you there.
Lately, I’ve had an intense obsession with The Who. You see, The Who were fucking incredible. While Tommy and Who’s Next might be their most famous albums, my personal favorite is Quadrophenia. I’m obsessed with this album. I don’t need to tell you what it’s about because chances are, if you’re reading this blog, this album was conceived before your parents got drunk and conceived you.
I’ve been a fan of American Analog Set for awhile now and their indefinite hiatus in 2005 (though there is a reunion planned for SXSW this year) meant I probably wouldn’t get to hear anything new from this very distinctive band ever again. Luckily for me, they just released Hard to Find: Singles and Unreleased 2000-2005 a couple of weeks ago.
I hadn’t listened to AmAnSet for a while as I was busy discovering other things. It’s one of those bands that I can always go back to. Like an old friend, it’s always going to be there waiting for me to hit play again. It won’t get angry if I’ve been gone for awhile. I went out for milk – it just took a little longer than I expected.
My favorite all time song by these guys is The Green Green Grass, and I’m lucky enough to have three separate and equally awesome versions to listen to. Keep reading →
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
It was a few months ago that a friend of mine asked if I was listening to a band called The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. I laughed in his face. Sorry Greg, but I did. Could a band with a name like that be taken seriously? Obviously they take themselves seriously enough to go ahead with it. And so I scoffed and scoffed and blew their house down. I had no interest in listening to band with such a silly moniker. Keep reading →
Last night, as I have been doing a lot recently, I was surfing youtube looking for ancient Pearl Jam videos. As much as I love Pearl Jam in all of their eras, I am fascinated by their live performances in and around the Ten era. Part of it is because Dave Abbruzzese was an awesome drummer and brought a ton of energy to their shows, but most of it is being able to see a young Eddie Vedder do insane things. Unfortunately I was 11 years old when Ten came out – so I wasn’t really going to many shows. The only way I get to enjoy those moments is through the magic of youtube and the wonderful people who recorded and posted Pearl Jam’s earliest exploits. Keep reading →
So there I was, making the thirty minute drive home from Easter dinner at my parents’ house. I had the ol’ iPod on shuffle when a song came on that reminded me of a great show I once saw. That song would be The Octopus Project’s The Adjustor, which I hadn’t heard in a while. That band, which I saw open up for The Appleseed Cast, puts on a hell of a live show. Then of course there are the myriad bands that put on an awful show. I’ll list just a few here tonight and come back to this feature as often as I can. You know – milk it for content. Off we go. Keep reading →
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