Fresh has a tendency to ruin a good thing. He’ll find a new band or artist he likes and say, “Fresh likes the fresh tunes!” But soon something nags at Fresh, there is something familiar, something unsettling about the new band. And then it pops into Fresh’s head that this new band sounds like that old band and that old band is so uncool he gets knocked down from uber hip to slightly hip just for thinking about that old band. Fresh will now illustrate his point.Please turn your attention to Joan As Police Woman. Fronted by Joan Wasser, former lover of Jeff Buckley and something of a violin virtuoso, JAPW is a fun little indie rock band that is doing things a little differently.There are a whole lot of fun things to pick out of JAPW’s debut Real Life. There’s a little David Bowie, a lot Cat Power and Portishead and even a smidgen of Al Green – all hip and acceptable artists to draw connections to. But there was something too familiar that bothered Fresh and when he finally landed upon the answer he was upset. JAPW also reminds him of Tori Amos. But if he didn’t think about that too much, the uber hip wouldn’t reject him and he could go on enjoying JAPW’s Real Life. Fresh says: “Don’t think about it, just enjoy it.”Web Site: HereOrder: Here Stuff To Sample: From Joan As Police Woman’s Real Life “Eternal Flame” and “I Defy”
June 2007 Archives
I’ve been doing this blog thing long enough that bands I talked about two years are now starting to release new material again. On the surface, this statement isn’t all that weird but when you get down to it, blogging in general only took off five years ago. And if you wanted to get into anthropomorphization, MP3 blogs would just be getting ready to go into kindergarten. These little tykes are full of rambunctious energy, curiosity and awe at the world. Their future is still wide open but we’re still wondering how they will turn out when they grow up? Will they be upstanding, hardworking citizens or will they be slackers? What if little Johnny MP3 Blog grows up to like show tunes and ABBA, collects dolls and moves to San Francisco? Will we, the blog parents, be accepting of our little blogs choice despite the fact that we hate ABBA? You just don’t know . . . you know? I guess the best we can hope for is that our little blogs get the chance to grow up nice and strong, not to be abandoned to the dark corners of the Internets like this one or this one or this one. Poor little orphaned bloggies. Anyway. Now that I’ve satisfied myself by exploring that slightly inane path of discourse, I’ll move on to my original point.Caribou first made an appearance on eLarceny a little over two years ago. Their first album, The Milk of Human Kindness, was an enjoyable romp through the realm of indie/noise/electronica and reminded me of the Beta Band (and that the Beta Band’s recent release at the time was not so good – they have since broken up).Caribou’s next album, Andorra, is much of the same, sans the noise. Andorra is full of electronia and indie surf rock guitars (that still reminds me of the Beta Band) but the whole experience goes down quite smooth. It’s not yet ambient but well beyond conventional notions of song structure. Andorra will be out in the U.S. of A. on August 21. But for those who don’t like to wait . . . Web Site: Here
Back in the day, before the Internets blossomed into the beautiful woman she is now, nerdy little dorksters would plug in their dail up modems (14.4K, bitches) and congregate on BBSes (electronic bulletin boards) to conduct flame wars, sit around in chat rooms and just be nerdy in general. They also used to play a game called Legend Of The Red Dragon (LORD). It was a quick, text based RPG game that had some sort of appeal I still cannot explain (you can learn more here). Anyway, in the game there was a “place” you could visit to solve riddles for assorted "prizes" (gems, gold, experience points). The puzzles went something like this: 76 T…….. O. P…..or32 O…. I. A Q….Did you solve them? Good job. Now I have one for you to solve:W…. S…… - I… T….Go here for your prize. It’s only a radio rip but it is the whole thing and it is better then waiting until June 19.
