Somebody reshuffled Real Estate’s cards, and instead of turning over Woods or Beach Fossils, they cut deep into the middle of the deck and came up with Neil Young. This side project from bassist Alex Bleeker features most of the Real Estate crew, along with Julian Lynch on guitar, and sounds for all the world like an unsung Laurel Canyon band coming down with the last good buzz of the 70’s. Wistful and meandering with undercurrents of real power, it rolls down the highway like a Studebaker into the evening’s twilight. Cozy and easy going with tidal rhythms spiked by Lynch’s loose and ragged soloing, it’s classic rock for the “let’s rock the beach” set.
Eric La Grange is in too many bands for me to keep track of. I know about Eric & The Happy Thoughts and The Romance Novels, and….okay, three. I guess he has three bands. But I am here today to tell you about The Cave Weddings and this one perfect single—exquisite, impeccable guitar pop in the mold of countless 60’s summer bands. Bring Your Love (tart and tight like The Archies, only without sucking) kicks off like a racehorse with a driving, perfectly chosen guitar line and drums galloping like a hormone rush. Let’s Drive is as jangly and rollicking as Buddy Holly’s jalopy. It’s all there: tambourine rhythms, sparkling, clearly drawn melodies, harmonized “ba-ba-ba’s”, and occasional bouts of frothy, frenetic, shredding guitar. I wanna lick it and see what it tastes like.
One of Slumberland’s best noisepop releases. The band has swept up the shrapnel from their debut into bristling piles of jagged, brightly colored confetti. Their shoegaze excesses have been condensed into blasts of garage punk mauling 60’s mod rock. You can see the genesis of the Aisler’s Set, but it’s a much, much louder, fuzzed-out version of what’s to come. When they’re going full tilt, they have a way of pummeling through a song with delirious abandon, which just digs the hooks in deeper. You may not notice them the first time, but soon you won’t be able to get Hey Allison, All This Time for Nothing, and Self Starter out of your head. It hurtles by in just under half an hour, so I’ve appended the songs from their 1620 single as a bonus.
The first couple of times I listened to this, I was sure some part of it had been recorded on the wrong speed. The vocals are so damnably cute and coy—a winking come-on from a couple of Ronettes obsessed teenage garage punks hiding switchblades in the pockets of their leather jackets. But now it all falls together. All the great 60's girl-group pop was about love and obsession, so it makes sense that Schatzi and Hazeltine have built their own musical shrine to the sultry sound of tuff-girls and the menacing vulnerability of teen love. You can feel the sway of her hips in the swagger of her voice. They're lipstick killers—gang debs demanding kisses in exchange for the pleasure of their songs.
The hand-made, low-budget wall of sound is exceptionally well crafted and layered, much more so than you'd expect for a couple of songs that were probably dreamed up and tossed off in one exuberant afternoon. It's a total blast. Plus hand-claps! Glockenspiel! That moist, swollen-lipped, tiger-kitteny growl they stole from Ronnie Specter for the "oh-oh bay-a-buh's"! Crush worthy.
Getting back to my nostalgic lamentations for the 90s1, I’d like to mourn the passing of feminism and pro-choice activism as a mainstream phenomenon2. I got spoiled, coming of age at a time when women had taken their rightful place on the stage (partially by force, mostly by being more awesome than everyone else) and feminist and pro-choice concerns were front and center in the culture. It seemed that we had finally broken through; that there would be no turning back the clock. I realize that I was still living in an insulated “alternative” bubble, and that large portions of America didn’t share my convictions3, but it was thrilling to see the challenge being made (besides, who was going to mess with Kim Gordon, PJ Harvey, Kathleen Hannah, Kim Deal, or any of the numerous other women kicking ass across the country?). We had L7’s Rock 4 Choice4 and Riot Grrl, and even the boys were in tune—I seem to remember Eddie Vedder scrawling “choice” on his arms when Pearl Jam played SNL, and Curt Kobain made a habit of puncturing traditional male rock-star machismo by getting photographed wearing a lot of cardigans while holding cats (things usually coded as female) and appearing in his pajamas on the cover of Out Magazine.
Unfortunately, we finished out the decade with a president who largely backed off on his pro-choice promises, with both NOW and NARAL asking the street-level movements to tone down the demonstrations for fear of alienating an administration they thought was tenuously still on their side. By the turn of the millennium, fully in the sway of “finding common ground” with anti-choicers5, abortion rights had been chipped away to such an extent that it was more difficult to obtain one than it had been under Reagan and Bush6. And now we’ve arrived at the point where a Republican Congress can shamelessly introduce a bill that would not only prohibit abortion coverage through private insurance, but that attempts to define rape out of existence for the majority of women who have been sexually assaulted. They’ve since backed down and removed the “forcible rape” language (proving that street-level feminist activism still has power, and is needed more than ever), but they’re still going ahead with the bill. If you live in the U.S., write to your representative, and if you’d like to do something more directly positive, donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, which helps fight these measures and helps pay for women who can’t afford abortions on their own.
I was thinking of all this when I recently revisited an album that had been a favorite of mine back in ’95, but had fallen off my radar in the ensuing years. Susan Voelz is probably best known for playing violin in Poi Dog Pondering (and has contributed to albums by John Mellencamp, Alejandro Escovedo, and Ronnie Lane). Much of Poi’s work is characterized by the use of relentless optimism as a weapon against the inevitability of death, but Susan’s solo work finds her examining more ambiguous territory. Recorded after surviving a horrific car crash, she starts to question the ability to connect or take action within this brief existence, asking, "When we die, will we think this was anything?".
That emotionally abstract, quizzical tone flows through the album. The instrumental Mystic River Bridge refers to a real-life suicide while Susan wonders if the jumper chose the location for its name. The poppy Happy can be read as a manifesto for allowing yourself to be who you are (“Just for an hour I'm going to be happy/Just for a day I'm going to let dumb things happen/I don't care how I look 'cause I look good-enough/I don't care what I think 'cause I'm not thinkin' much”) and as a caustic take on happiness as a goal instead of a state of being (“I don't wanna feel bad/So I stop feelin' anything”). Later on, William, about a man hospitalized for manic happiness, expands the idea further. In the liner notes, Voelz writes of Step Off the Roof, “There was a news story of protesters blocking entrance to a clinic, forcing girls to climb a ladder to enter through a second floor window. What if she skipped the procedure and turned and induced her abortion by jumping off the roof onto the protesters below?”.
She can be solemn, but none of it feels depressing or dour. It’s actually breathtakingly beautiful—somewhat like Mazzy Star’s languid sensualtiy crossed with Andrew Bird’s spritely, tight-rope dancing virtuosity. Dreamy—like so many things back then tended to be. The arrangement and production for such a small album are spectacular. Seductive, swooning melodies (rich and velvety with deep purple hues) are cloaked in mesmerizing, atmospheric guitar drones that swarm around the more distinct core of Susan’s breezy voice and the bright solar flare of her violin. She has a way of pinning a hook to your eardrum (especially in Taka Looka Round and Step Off the Roof) and the rare ability to sing about discrete, concrete things in a tender, personal way while at the same time holding them just far enough out of reach to analyze it like a butterfly impaled on a needle.
1. I have a theory (which is mine), which is that “The 90s” actually comprised a period from about 1988 (the year of the first Pixies’ album) to about 1994 (around the time Curt Kobain killed himself. Not that Curt “owned” the 90’s or that his death caused its downfall or anything, but it’s as good a date as any, and my memory of the period is of things going downhill fast after that). At least, this was the in-between time period for the cultural highlights of my in-between generation. Yes, other stuff (soul-deadening effluvia) happened in the 90s “the decade”—boy bands, nu-metal, rap-rock—but those things didn’t belong to “The 90s”.
2. No, I’m not saying that feminism is dead, just that the media has wholly fallen for the backlash.
3. In fact, a lot of activism was in response to the wave of home-grown, Christian terrorism directed at abortion clinics in the late 80s and early 90s.
4. Doing some research online4a, I notice that Gillian Anderson emceed in 2001. *nerdgasm*
4a. I also see that Stone Temple Pilots once played Rock 4 Choice, despite having recorded Sex Type Thing, which was totally rape-y. I know Scott Wieland later claimed it was an anti-rape song, but I find it nearly impossible to get over the first person perspective and the fact that there’s nothing in the song to undercut his point of view. There’s probably a whole other post that could be done just on the subject of male bands writing what they think of as anti-rape songs that identify with the rapist instead of the victim. Just off the top of my head, there’s NIN’s Big Man with a Gun, and Nirvana’s Polly and, of course, Rape Me. Polly at least, puts the creepiness of the narrator front and center (whereas Sex Type Thing just makes STP sound creepy), and could be read (if you were thinking of writing a term paper on it) as alluding to the inability to have true sexual equality in a patriarchal society. Rape Me, on the other hand, with its cop from the Teen Spirit riff, just seemed to be Curt going off on his hatred of fame and what mass media did to his art, which is pretty trivializing of actual rape victims.
5. There is none. When one side believes women have the right to make their own decisions about their health, their lives, and their bodies—and the other side thinks of women as less human than a clump of cells, as people who deserve to be punished for their sexuality, and who have no interest in the needs of children once they’re born—I can’t imagine what we could possibly have in common. There is no compromise to be made on women’s rights. You either believe they have them or they don’t, and the anti-choice crowd is not going to stop until they’ve overturned Roe v. Wade. And after they’ve accomplished that, they’re going after Griswold v. Connecticut, so stock up on birth control now.
6. There’s an excellent article on the history of Rock 4 Choice, its place in the 90s alternative culture, and the withering of mainstream feminist activism here.
I still wonder why everyone stopped wearing Doc Martens.
The ghosts of dead teenagers sing to me while I am dancing.
Speaking of nostalgia, I was a total classic rock snob in high school. If the band hadn’t existed prior to 1970, I wasn’t interested. There were occasional cracks—an REM tape inherited from a friend, an abiding love for The Cars (who I still think were highly underrated, despite being popular)—but for the most part, I listened to The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Simon & Garfunkel, and Buddy Holly. I considered dance music the bane of my existence. Groove Is In the Heart was wildly popular during my senior year, and I wanted to stab it in its shiny, happy face. As a teenager with insufferable hippie pretensions, there was nothing I hated more than mindless happiness. I reveled in miserabilism and wanted my music to do the same. If it wasn’t whiny, depressive navel-gazing then it wasn’t about anything, maannnn. So fuck you guys coping through communal ritual and physical ecstasy, because I’m going to my room where I am a rock, I am an island. (I’m reminded of Robyn Hitchcock’s line that “It’s the privilege of youth and beauty to hate themselves”).
Thankfully, Fuchsia introduced me to all sorts of 80’s alternative, goth, and college rock, and eventually the power of a good beat was more than I could resist. It was a revelation—I could dance and be depressed! Now, of course, all the best dance music carries sadness in its heart, even at its most escapist. My Favorite understood this dichotomy perfectly and crafted an elegiac love letter to those intense days when it felt like everything in the world could break your heart, but you still really wanted to dance and get laid. So now I’m nostalgic for a band creating meta nostalgia for a scene that I had no interest in when I was actually living through it.
Michael Grace lives in a scintillating twilight world of gray New Order melodies and Andrea Vaughn has the sort of cool, clear, schoolgirl voice you used to find on Sarah Records releases. They understood the comfort of being sad, but they also found the humor in it. Their lyrics are positively littered with throwaway couplets of bitter wit: Loneliness is pornography to them but to us it is an art. They won’t read your biography , these men, they will only break your heart…Your darkness is brighter than all the lights in the disco tonight…The streets were crawling with vampires, because after your shelf life expires you’re not a kid, you’re a monster…I spent five years in the infirmary but he never sent me letters. He only sent me dirty polaroids…I wear her dreams like a badge, pinned upon the wrong uniform...
The standout is the devastating Homeless Club Kids (especially the Future Bible Heroes remix on the second disc). Over a beautifully melancholy melody, Andrea eulogizes the lost kids trying to escape the daytime world through a new type of family on the dancefloor. The kids see themselves as “indivisible”, but Vaughn can see their eventual doom (whether through actual death or the eventual death of all youthful dreams). Like a less jaded version of Pulp’s Sorted for E’s and Wizz, Homeless Club Kids can’t help but wonder: Are you a shimmering, transcendent beast moving as one organism, or just a bunch of awkward kids in a warehouse basement? Well, both probably, just as Vaughn both mourns their loss while wishing she were one of them. As the song fades out, she’s walking home with their voices still in her ears, “and they’ll be sad and young forever, and I cry until I throw up.”
A very early demo tape from everyone’s favourite purposefully dorky, sincerely sarcastic, Christian Marxists. Also includes some tracks from a BBC session.
1. All Men Are The Same 2. When Will I Be Released 3. Skatsburg 4. Swansea 5. Singapore 6. It's History 7. Time Spent Thinking 8. The Day I Called It A Day 9. Taxi to Singapore 10. Caravan Of Love (live) 11. He Ain't Heavy (live) 12. Heaven Help Us All (live)
I quite often describe bands as being the equivalent of some hypothetical cross-breeding of their influences. It’s rarely true and can unfairly diminish the singularly unique elements they’ve created. So without discounting the fact that Elf Power really are something wholly more and better than the sum of their antecedents, I think it’s fairly possible to draw an accurate, if inverted, phylogenetic map of their sound.
Really, it’s only because of how secure they are in their own identity that they can be so successful when revisiting the songs of their heroes. It’s why Nothing’s Going to Happen1 is one of their best albums, and possibly the best representation of what they do, despite being made up entirely of covers. The Flaming Lips, Brian Eno, R.E.M., T. Rex, Wire, Sonic Youth, Jesus and Mary Chain, Roky Erickson, Robyn Hitchcock, The Buzzcocks, The Byrds, Hüsker Dü, and The Misfits all find some expression in Elf Power’s perfectly balanced mixture. Maybe it’s because their own songs—filtered and soaked in so many different elements—can function like a simultaneous mixtape that it’s so easy to like the band. They’re clueing you in to where they’ve come from and what they’ve loved along the way like your older sister sending you back all the cool bands she discovered in college.
This album was only available at their Back to the Web tour, and collects pretty much everything they’d done that never made it onto an album, or was only available as part of some other compilation you didn’t have. As an obsessive collector, I have to commend and thank them for really doing this type of album right. I want it all, and they’ve put it on here. Demos, more covers, a few live tracks, a remix, and a number of songs that just never saw the light of day. And they’re all really, really good. Historical Ant Wars rules. Back to the Web was a bit of a return to their old sound after a few albums that had found them stepping away from their early dive-bombing buzz, but Treasures From the Trash Heap is an even better encapsulation of the early days (although it covers every period). Like R.E.M.’s similar Dead Letter Office, it’s like getting to rummage around in your favorite band’s junk drawer. Without the pressure to create a coherent album, everything just reverts to being its own weird type of fun.
1. Temporary Arm (country version) 2. Face in the Sand (demo) 3. Feel a Whole Lot Better (Byrds cover) 4. Dandy in the Underworld (T.Rex cover) 5. Another Face (demo) 6. Hole in My Shoe (demo) 7. All the Same 8. Rise High Giant Fly 9. Historical Ant Wars 10. Empty Pictures (demo) 11. Princess Knows (Olivia Tremor Control cover) 12. Invisible Men (demo) 13. Dark Circles 14. Underneath the Bunker (R.E.M. cover) 15. Arrow Flies Close (live at Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto) 16. Blackbirds 17. Invisible Men (techno version) 18. Run Through the Forest 19. I Know I 20. Spiders 21. It's Not Cold 22. Reuters (Wire cover, live at Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto) 23. Honey (Spacemen 3 cover, live at the Landfill, Athens, GA) 24. The Slider (T.Rex cover)
1. Actually, A Dream In Sound and Creatures are the pinnacle of their work, but Nothing’s Going To Happen seems to hit right in the middle of what they’re usually aiming for.
If it weren’t for the references to the Spice Girls and Tamagotchi, and the fact that they claimed to be a Helen Love cover band, you could easily believe that this long lost bit of casio-powered pop had danced its way out of the band’s bedroom back when twee was going all electro. Even the name is an obvious nod to the scene’s choice of outerwear.
As it is, they showed up out of nowhere in 1996, released two singles and promptly disappeared. No one’s entirely sure who was in the band (There’s some speculation it involved Helen Love members in an even goofier mood, or a spoof perpetrated by the Reading UK band Cuckooland. Another bio claims they were from the Isle of Wight, so who knows). Whoever they were, they left some adorably twee disco tunes full of chirpy, sparkling keyboards, punk guitar, and heavenly vocals.
To give you some idea of how cartoonishly fun they were, I’ve half convinced myself that Andrew WK stole the thrashing keyboard/ guitar intro and rousing horn section from the chorus of Cybersex.
1. A Dream Come True 2. Ernie Ball 3. He’s So Frisky 4. New Look Baby 5. The Locomotion 6. Theme From Dolly Mixture
Germs of Youth records has put out a limited vinyl reissue of Dolly Mixture's Demonstration Tapes, hand stamped and signed by the band. They're only making 300, so hurry.
From back when references to “the collective” meant Elephant 6, not Animal.
Actually, The Great Lakes were on Kindercore, but this album does feature most of of Montreal and Elf Power in guest spots, and Robert Schneider of the Apples In Stereo produced it. In fact, of Montreal’s Jamey Huggins was an official member of both bands, and when I first encountered the two groups playing a double bill, nobody seemed all that concerned with which one they belonged to. At one point, this enormous hillbilly-looking guy (wearing nothing but overalls and a beard) wandered out of the crowd, climbed onto the stage and played a gorgeous French Horn solo. I assume he was friends with the band, but they were weird times.
Of Montreal had just put out The Gay Parade and were having a lot of fun onstage with wild costume changes and confetti, but the Great Lakes put on a more musically powerful set with great, blooming swirls of well orchestrated psychedelia. If you were into the Athens scene at the time, you know that this style was not exactly in short supply, but while the Great Lakes shared a common chemical makeup with the rest of the collective, they cooked the ingredients with a little more care. None of these songs spiral out into the directionless abstractions of Olivia Tremor Control, nor do they share the latent prog tendencies of the Apples, or of Montreal’s penchant for twee storytelling. A bit like The Essex Green crossed with The Zombies, their songs are buoyant affairs built on vivid layers of swaying melodies that float and drift like an early morning dream. Storming and Become the Ship have a nautical flair, and An Easy Life and Virgil recall the Beatle’s habit of incorporating British music hall elements in their psych-pop (it occurs to me nearly every song on here echoes the relaxed footfalls of that band’s Fixing a Hole or Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, which is a pace I have no problem keeping up with). Elsewhere, A Banana’s gentle synths sigh and flutter like a leaf tumbling through the cool fall air.
It’s a non-stop parade of elegant, sunny pop and retro joy, and although they never achieved the (relative) fame of their scene-mates, it’s still some of the best music the Elephant 6 had to offer.
Update 9/8/10: I've uploaded a new copy of the file and redirected the link. If any of you still have problems with it, let me know. Other than a skeletal entry on Tweenet, there's not a lot of information about these guys to be found. I'm pretty sure they were from Bristol, and a several of their singles were released by Tea Time Records, a label they started with one of my favorite lost bands, Mousefolk. Like a lot of 80s indie groups, they seemed to exist mostly on compilations, appearing on at least fifteen different tapes (including Airspace II, Are You Ready?, Corrupt Postman, and Something's Burning In Paradise). They have a 60's garage pop sound that can fall anywhere between the Kinksian Mrs. Jones to the walloping Call Me Anything. Groovy Little Town was probably their biggest "hit", and like most of their tunes it's a total earworm.
I love that they haven't even bothered to even change their set dressing between these two videos (probably couldn't afford to). Girl, I Want You Back
In honor of yesterday's victory for equality in California, here's the incomparable Hedwig and The Origin of Love.
I once spent an entire evening standing next to John Cameron Mitchell at a Breeder's concert thinking, "Hey that guy looks familiar. Do I know him from somewhere?", and then he climbed on stage and they tore through Angry Inch and I felt like a dork, especially since I missed the opportunity to ask him if he autographed body parts.
The Breeders, along with a slew of alternative icons1 contribute covers and tribute songs to this wonderful little compilation that benefited the Harvey Milk School for LGBTQ youth. And as much as I love the original Origin, I think Rufus Wainwright may have recorded the definitive version. Also, if I ever became president, I would put all my effort into reuniting Sleater-Kinney and possibly getting them to make Fred Schneider at least a semi-permanent member of the band.
OK, all my effort after ensuring that LGBTQ Americans had full equality under the law. The ruling striking down California's bigoted Prop 8 is a great and important victory, but unfortunately it's still only another small step towards truly egalitarian civil rights. The pro-hate crowd will continue to fight this until it ends up in the Supreme Court, where real justice is iffy at this point. You can help by joining with or donating to groups like The Courage Campaign, Freedom to Marry, the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
1. Frank Black, Robyn Hitchcock, The Polyphonic Spree, Spoon, Imperial Teen, TMBG, Cyndi Lauper (who absolutely tears the roof off on Midnight Radio), Yo La Tengo, Yoko Ono, etc.
I think there is an excellent chance of this being your new favorite band. Yes, they’re cute and amateurish, but cute and amateurish in a way that's actually totally awesome. These were the girls in high school that you always wanted to hang out with, but they already had so many secret handshakes and insider jokes and possibly their own language that you never managed to get that close to them, even though they really weren’t trying to exclude you. They would have been theater nerds if theater nerds weren’t so insufferable. They’re dramatic, but they know being dramatic is hilarious. And now they’re here to let you in on the joke.
Jes and Bri have known each other since they were wee lasses, and have been making music together since the eighth grade in Minneapolis. They actually started out as a semi-emo, Smashing Pumpkins inspired instrumental rock band, although in their current form you would think they spent their childhood listening to K Records and the Unicorns. All the songs are indeed about romance, conflict, or adventure and they are also quirky, ramshackle, and silly—and yet completely heartfelt.
Handpocket employs the always welcome, but underutilized glockenspiel (it’s the new cowbell!), and rhapsodizes about inviting your paramour to casually feel you up in public. Also, you will learn that both of the singers nearly died in childhood ice fishing accidents. It’s incredibly catchy, especially the way they sing PUTPUTPUTPUT Put your hand in my back pocket during the chorus.
Ghost Song explores the existential and physical problems of dating the non-corporeal, and sexily implores their see-through boyfriend to “put [his] ghostly tongue in my mouth and move it all around and around”. Don’t laugh, spectrophilia is a real condition and sounds like one of the most inconvenient sexual fetishes of all time.
Eisenhower is the Father thanks the prez for building the interstate highway system so that years later she could travel cross country with her crush, and even if they had an accident it wouldn't be so bad because maybe they'd end up sharing a hotel and see each other in their underwear.
Actually, I shouldn’t have said they were amateurish earlier. The first couple of times through you're too busy laughing at the last cheeky line to notice that the bass playing is wickedly propulsive and detailed, the drums are rocking, complex, and far more creative than you hear from most professional bands, and the organ can effortlessly switch from roller-rink funk to cartoonish glee depending on what's called for.
Jes and Bri work crazy well together (as BFFs would), trading lines, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes stepping all over each other, occasionally belting it out like an out-of-tune opera star. They have incredible chemistry, which is really what lets the band pull off what would otherwise be novelty songs in the hands of lesser mortals (It's practically impossible for a band to be funny but not gimmicky). They make it sound as simple as if they got the directions off the back of a soup can.
We saw Washed Out with Small Black a while back, and I snagged this little tour-only CD of demos and samples and experiments at the merch table. Having only heard Washed Out’s split 45 remix of a Small Black song (which is excellent, btw), I was a bit surprised that his solo portion of the show was mostly a techno/rave type thing. It sounded nothing like the sun-bleached, Balearic “chill-wave” that I’ve since encountered by him on record. His portion of the set with Small Black was amazing, though. I loved the self-titled EP they put out, but (like Le Loup, who we saw a couple of nights later) they’re so much better live. Their endlessly yelping, pogoing, joyous, upwardly spiraling indie-tribal dance jams reminded me a lot of Animal Collective’s energy back around Sung Tongs. Anyway, I wish this little album were longer and more fleshed out, but only because what’s there is so sunny and good natured. It’s dance music for people in hammocks.
This quite often ends up being the album I put on when I can't decide what I want to listen to. It's cool-people-hanging-out music.
Christine Billotte (Autoclave, Slant 6, Quix*o*tic), Kathi Wilcox (Bikini Kill, The Frumpies), and Steve Dore (Deep Lust) create blithe, laid-back pop that’s lean and seductive. Produced by Fugazi's Guy Picciotto, the group weaves an indie-garage-lullaby out of a casually complex dual-guitar interplay, and a propulsive backbeat that lets Christina’s gorgeous, smoky voice lead the way.
They’re by no means folk, but the songs have a Woody-Guthrie-punk quality to them in their own indie-populist way. I would like to have attended the grade school that sang Mama’s Gonna Bake Us a Cake alongside This Land Is Your Land. Despite (or perhaps because of) years in the trenches, they managed to appear with a unique, fully realized sound that none of their previous bands would prepare you for. While genre-hopping from leftist punk, to classic blues (the marvelous Bumblebee), to surf rock instrumentals, they manage to stiffen everything up, giving it a backbone and a little swagger as it marches along with their own distinctive stride.
Standard bloggy boilerplate disavowing any nefarious intent towards bands or artists whose music may be featured here. If you are a band or label who would like your music taken down, please leave a note in the comments, or email me at egnucledge@gmail.com, and it will be removed immediately. Please support the artists by going to their shows and buying their music whenever you can.
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