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The Strange Boys
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Live
Music
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Rough Trade
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ESM Rating: 10/10 |
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Listen if you like: The Band, Wilco,
Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, These United States, alt-country, blues, jazz, garage
rock, R&B… basically any Southern-influenced music that’s pleasant,
adventurous, and heartfelt all at once.
First impression: Jaunty, piano-heavy
garage rock that’s heavy on creativity, fun, innovative songwriting, and
precise if slightly unkempt musicianship — and, thankfully, light on the lo-fi
gobbledy gook that’s punctuated past The
Strange Boys releases. Head-nodding vocal harmonies, groove-worthy country
riffs, a punk sensibility filtered through classic chops, 20th-century
revivalism meets 21st-century imagination… about as perfect as a young band can
get, especially given their scuzz-punk roots. “Saddest” and “Over The River And
Through The Woulds” both sound like long-lost The Band masterpieces, “Omnia
Boa” chugs along on a CCR crunch, “My Life Beats Me” is dissonant and melodious
all at once, and “YTEFGWYS” is sadness turned into joyful revelry. Suffice to
say that Live Music is damn near
flawless.
The nitty-gritty: Lead singer Ryan
Sambol’s curiously intriguing vocals call to mind The Band’s Rick Danko,
Floating Action’s Seth Kauffman, These United States’ Jesse Elliott, and the
king of quirky pipes himself, Bob Dylan. But there’s something about The Strange Boys that’s at times
derivative yet also equally singular, like that band you can’t put your finger
on because they sound familiar but also like nothing you’ve ever heard before.
Harmonicas and barroom piano from Ryan Sambol, subtle bass beauty from his
brother Phillip, beautifully placed backing guitars from Greg Enlow and drums
from Mike La Frenchi… this is good-time music with emotional flair. If you’ve
come up on The Strange Boys’ past
work, you might be mystified, but if you’re a new convert like me, you now understand
what the hubbub was all about. And just in case you were wondering, it’s Live Music (rhymes with “give”), not
“live music” (rhymes with “hive”).
Other recommended tracks: “Walking Two
By Two” and “Douch” (loopy, dusty country rock), “You And Me” (lounge
jazz-meets-Dixieland), “Mama Shelter” (The Stones and The Beatles taking a Down
South road trip), “Right Before” and “YTEFGWYS” (sadness turned into uplifting revelry),
“Opus” (instrumental closer that leaves the door open for further The Strange Boys magnificence).
East Coast tour dates? Two shows in New
York on November 18th and 19th; stay tuned to www.Facebook.com/TheStrangeBoys for more, because you don’t want to miss these Texas gents when they come to
your town.
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| Mr. Gnome |
Madness
In Miniature
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| El Marko
Records |
| ESM Rating: 9/10 |
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Listen if you like: Soaring
psychedelia, space-age hard rock, Celebration, Warpaint, Flaming Lips, Queens
Of The Stone Age
First impressions: Two things about Mr. Gnome: A) their name might be the
most misleading in all of music — I was expecting dingy hard rock from a
bunch of MushroomHead/Slipknot rejects. Instead, I got hypnotic, revelatory
psychedelic indie rock that careened from soaring to crashing to explosive to
lilting to thrashing. And B) they hail from Cleveland, which to my mildly
informed mind hasn’t produced much good music in the last few years. All hail
the avant-garde musical rebirth of formerly crumbling industrial American cities!
The nitty-gritty: Lead singer/guitarist
Nicole Barille’s dreamy vocals and heavy-duty riffs provide the perfect
push-pull to Sam Meister’s keyboard attacks and Queens Of The Stone Age-esque drum
fills. The QOTSA connection is fitting, as the album was recorded at Josh
Homme’s Pink Duck Studios in LA. The record swoops and dives like only the most
meticulously arranged packages do — even though it only clocks in at 40
minutes, this thing was clearly curated with a cohesive final product in mind,
short interludes, seamless segues, epic statements, and all. Check out album
centerpiece “House Of Circles” for the full Madness
In Miniature experience distilled into six minutes.
Other recommended tracks: Nearly ever
damn one on Madness In Miniature: “Ate
The Sun” (perfect opening statement), “Bit Of Tongue” (Feist meets Them Crooked
Vultures), “Wolf Girls” (fantastical art-punk), “Outsiders” (zippy rockabilly meets
gauzy space psych), “Winter” and “Watch The City Sail Away” (as precious and
ethereal as Mr. Gnome gets), and “We
Sing Electric” and “Capsize” (throbbing, bludgeon-your-face rock).
East Coast tour dates? Illinois,
Indiana, and Ohio in November; Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and back to Ohio in December; find out more
at www.MrGnome.com.
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| Rob Jay |
Millionaire
Before 30
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| Self-released |
| ESM Rating: 8/10 |
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Listen if you like: Early Outkast, The
Geto Boys, real hip-hop with jazzy, soulful beats and a Dirty South twist
First impressions: Not what I expected,
considering Rob Jay’s Houston roots.
The Texas metropolis is more known for chopped and screwed Dirty South
iterations, but Millionaire Before 30 is
old-school hip-hop at its finest: innovative jazz and soul-heavy samples from
producer Ammbush, a nonstop sugary flow from Rob Jay, and “Love Sex Drug Sex,” which flips the tired hip-hop ballad
script by sampling one of the best Prince songs of all time, “Darling Nikki.” However,
it’s tough to imagine Jay actually
becoming a Millionaire Before 30,
since he’s so graciously giving the EP away for free at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DM731XVG
The nitty-gritty: “My Past Life” muses
on Rob Jay’s dreamed-up previous
incarnation as a 1960s Harlem resident, talking Vietnam, narcotics, the Black
Panthers, and racial tension with the insight of a man who truly lived it. Jay’s lackadaisical lyrical delivery is
definitely the highlight on Millionaire
Before 30, although the bubbly underwater beat on “Just Talk Bout” caught
my ear as well, laying the perfect groundwork for relevant lines like “I just
sold my car to pay my publicist/Investin’ in myself I gotta save the best
feelin’/Even when I was broke I raised the debt ceiling.”
Other recommended tracks: “Goin’ Far”
(slow-building, horn-heavy hip-hop brilliance), “Hip-Hop Lifer” (quick ‘n’ easy
mission statement), “Wise Men” (spot-on hurricane references), “The Life”
(insistent indie rock sample), “MB30” (understated yet magical).
East Coast tour dates? None as of now;
stay tuned to www.RobJay.com for updates.
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| The Beets |
Let
The Poison Out
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| Hardly Art |
| ESM Rating: 7/10 |
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Listen if you like: The Moldy Peaches,
Adam Green, Jeffrey Lewis, playful lo-fi folk
First impressions: Awesome cartoon
drawings on the cover, CD insert, and interior of The Beets’ Let The Poison Out immediately convey the fact that this band is having nothing but fun. And
they might be one of the most accessible acts in New York history: firstly,
they make a big deal out of their Queens roots, eschewing the Brooklyn scene
down the road; secondly, they print the actual phone numbers of each member
inside the album; and thirdly, they make no effort to hide their sloppiness,
maintaining brevity (only one song over three minutes), nonsensical hilarity
(“You Don’t Want Kids To Be Dead” and “I Think I Might Have Built A Horse”), and
an early punk spirit that’s evident in attitude (“I Don’t Know”) and sound
(“Friends Of Friends”).
The nitty-gritty: Juan Wauters’ voice
isn’t as creaky and vulnerable as everybody makes it out to be; instead, it
just sounds like a young musician belting his heart out on “Now I Live,” which
borrows its melody from Roy Orbison’s classic “You Got It,” and “Doing As I
Do,” which culls a bit of The Beatles’ group melodies. Meanwhile, the minor-key
“Let Clock Work” is understated yet beautiful, summing up The Beets’ M.O.: basic acoustic guitars from Wauters, basic
bass lines from Jose Garcia, basic drumming from Chie Mori, who also lends
female harmonics to the mix on songs like “Wipe It Off,” and the insane artwork
of Matthew Volz, which is worth the price of admission alone.
Other recommended songs: “Preso Voy”
(early Devendra Banhart), “Wipe It Off” (for the guy-girl harmonies and sweet
flute riff), “Without You” (anti-folk mixed with downcast pop and punk-rock
basics), “Walking To My House” (bluesy explorations).
East Coast tour dates? New York,
Pennsylvania, DC, North Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan in
late October and November; visit www.Facebook.com/LosBeets for more info.
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| Banner Pilot |
Heart
Beats Pacific
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| Fat Wreck
Chords |
| ESM Rating: 7/10 |
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Listen if you like: Jawbreaker,
Alkaline Trio, No Idea Records, classic, straight-ahead punk
First impressions: These Minneapolis
punks killed it with their last album, Collapser,
and press for Heart Beats Pacific describes
this new one as “Collapser on
steroids.” Banner Pilot even said,
“Whenever a band starts a new album, they have a choice to take a step
backwards… Or take a step forwards. We chose to take a step backwards. That gave
us more room to jump two steps forward.” In many musical circles, that kind of
statement would mean a major drop-off in credibility, but in the punk rock
world, it’s just what fans want to hear.
The nitty-gritty: And classic punk
anthems like “Red Line” and “Western Terminal” will surely make them happy.
There’s enough melodic pop outings like “Forty Degrees” and “Eraser” to make
the kids happy, and enough gritty, epic tunes like “Spanish Reds” and “Expat”
that show Banner Pilot making
incremental changes in their instrumentation. Shoot, they even bust out a
grand piano for one breakdown — and album closer “Division Street” clocks
in at over five minutes while wrapping and warping through multiple time
changes, solos, and codas. “New things, but we don’t abandon or ignore our old
sound,” as the band said. And that’s what good ol’ punk rock is all about.
Other recommended songs: “Isolani”
(classic ‘90s punk with soul, grit, and passion), “Calling Station” (moody,
Jawbreaker-esque thrasher), and “Intervention” (the kind of emotional hit that
you can cry, jam, or brood over).
East Coast tour dates? Two shows in
Gainesville, FL, this weekend for The Fest 10; find out more at www.BannerPilot.net.
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