So, if you weren’t really bored of hearing about Wavves, you’d probably be wondering what Nathan Williams was doing before all the hype, backlash, stage breakdowns and fights with Black Lips that followed. Well, he was playing in a pretty good “tropical psych-folk trio” called Fantastic Magic and he dressed like like he played in Devendra Banhart’s backing band. They played a bunch of shows, released a CD-R, a tape and a 7″, and then split up. So what happened to the other members of the group? Well, two of them, specifically Matthew and Sundar, became Heavy Hawaii. Read more »
OOH HEAVEN IS A BAND ON EARTH
Is it sad to want to spend eternity in a bar? I can’t help but imagine heaven to be a really cool joint where Lester Bangs, Karl Marx and Shakespeare shoot the shit on velvet stools over free beers poured by Ted Danson or Barbara Windsor. This may not be the most thrilling vision of Shangri-La, but it’s more exciting than angels in white robes sitting on fluffy clouds and spinning Joanna Newsome records. Read more »
Sea lions inspire the Sea Lions
Sea lions are awesome and not just for the fact that they are really good at dancing, have tusks and are killer surfers. These tusked Pinnipeds are also righteous music warriors who once tried to fuck up the Jonas Brothes and have inspired the kids of sea lion hotspot Oxnard, California to put down the guns and pick up the C86. Read more »
Weed Diamond sees the sun where there’s none
When I think of Denver, Colorado, I think of lumberjack shirts, the Rocky Mountains and John Denver (though he was born in Roswell). One thing I certainly didn’t expect was that it would inspire the kind of sunstroke sounds that have come from Denver resident Tim Perry under his fucking awful moniker Weed Diamond. It’s great that you smoke loads of dope and everything, but unless you’re Afro Man, you look like a dick telling everyone. Fortunately the music’s fucking great.
GERMAN MEASLES ARE SICK (OR ILL – WHATEVER LAME PUN YOU PREFER)
The bad thing about the endless versatility of viruses and diseases is all the unstoppable death that they spread. The good thing is that we’ve been given plenty of good band names by this microscopic death squad: the Germs, Anthrax, Aids Wolf, Cancer Bats, the Cramps, Pestilence, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Tuberculosis Boy. It’s inevitable that there’s a thousand bands called Swine Flu already (and equally inevitably that 500 of them are noise bands). That must make Avian Flu feel a little old-hat. Anyway, here is the next entry into this dubious pantheon: the German Measles. Read more »
LEARN TO LOVE DEN HAAN
If life wasn’t a boring mess of alarm clocks and paperwork, Den Haan would be huge. The best Scottish band alive today cover Gary Glitter on stage, drink only straight vodka, and have a name that means “the Cock”. Even above all of that though, they write incredibly catchy electronic disco that should destroy arenas. Unfortunately, most people are rubbish, they think La Roux is cutting edge, they’re going to vote a Tory government in “for a change” and they would probably be offended by the whole Gary Glitter thing. Read more »
EAT SKULL, NOT SHIT
Eat Skull are an absolutely awesome band from Portland. This year’s record, Wild and Inside, is a highly recommended purchase. It will be available from the Siltbreeze website, I presume. Open another window and listen to them on their MySpace while you read this interview. Read more »
White Car world
I don’t want to ruin your perception of me, but when it comes to research I’m not exactly Umberto Eco. What does that old Italian trollop know about art rock though? Nothing, that’s what. So when I was googling “White Car” I found a site called White Car World, which is exactly that, a blog devoted to pictures of white cars with accompanying press releases (if it’s a new model) or alternatively just a brief love note to that model in white. It’s basically a site for white car fetishists and is possibly the most boring blog I have read in my life. Read more »
The dawn of Dominant Legs
Dominant Legs is the project of Ryan William Lynch, with a little help from the alliterated Hannah Hunt. They make fragile pop songs that sound like Arthur Russell covering Aztec Camera’s back catalogue. Perhaps this is how Roddy Frame’s early recordings would have sounded if he’d grown up in San Francisco instead of East Kilbride. The music also shares a little of Ariel Pink’s misty eighties nostalgic spirit. See if you like it (you will, you fucking cynic) by listening to the track below. Read more »
Box Elders are a band named after a bug
Box Elders are named after the bugs that infested the house they grew up in. (“We had a snare drum with hundreds of dead box elder bugs in it. When you hit it you could hear them rattling around,” they say on their MySpace page.) Well the whole bug name thing worked for the Beatles, Buddy Holly and the Crickets and, of course, the Scorpions. While I’m not expecting them to play live in Red Square, Box Elders do share something with the first two acts in their awesomely catchy garage pop sounds, short snappy songs and 60s-sounding organ riffs (the latter of which especially dominates the track below – it pretty much skips the notion of a verse and just repeats a great chorus). Read more »
