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Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) on Fresh Air

Monday, January 8th, 2007

Terry Gross interviewed Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand today on NPR’s Fresh Air. He recently put out a book called Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand, which compiles the columns he wrote for The Guardian about the different places the band ate at around the world and his gastronomic insights.

I’m not a big Franz Ferdinand fan but thought it was a fantastic interview. Kapranos is very personable and articulate. He talked about the various jobs he’d had in restaurants prior to forming the band, read some passages from his book, and told anecdotes about some of foods the band had partaken in during their travels. He talked equally as much about how the band formed and the song writing process. And of course Terry asked great questions and managed their conversation expertly.

You can listen to the interview here.

Posted in Random | No Comments »

Disturbed – “Land of Confusion”

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

Sure, I’m an indie-rock snob. I’ll readily admit that. But have you listened to any commercial radio rock or so-called alternative/modern rock stations lately? They’re horrible. It doesn’t matter where you live since the Clear Channel near monopoly has spread their insipid, homogenized playlists across the airwaves nationwide. Maybe I’m just getting to be an old fogey but I swear the songs are interchangeable. Most sound like Nirvana or Metallica. Or they actually are songs by Nirvana and Metallica! They all seem to have the same super compressed production values too, compounded by the FM broadcast. I tell ya, when I was a kid, radio was… probably just as sucky. I simply didn’t know any better. Now I do and can rant about it.

Anyway, I usually listen to NPR, the excellent Georgia State college station WRAS, or my mp3 player in the car. One day this past week I didn’t have my mp3 player and nothing was grabbing me on my two choice stations. So I flipped around on the right of the dial and caught a familiar sounding song. It took me a verse to confirm that it was a lame cover of an even lamer song but I couldn’t place the original artist. It was driving me crazy! I did know it was a song I’d never owned. The opposite has happened to me a lot. It’s a pretty funny feeling to hear something and think, “I have this! Wonder who it is?” Music overload.

Turns out it was a band called Disturbed who covered “Land of Confusion” by Genesis on their ‘05 album, Ten Thousand Fists. As in Phil Collins. Of all the zillions of songs to choose from these guys actually picked a song by ol’ Phil. On purpose. Without irony. I don’t care how nasty their downtuned guitar crunch sounds or if the singer growls through the verses, it still sucks!

Are these guys big? I’ve never heard of them but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I lead a purposely sheltered life. And I’m sure if a typical Disturbed fan went through my music collection there wouldn’t be a whole that registered. Still, I consider myself lucky to have gone this long without hearing it.

But I suppose the lyrics are just as relevant today, if not more so, than when Phil originally wrote them. I mean, think of global warming, the War on Terror, and Britteny dumping K-Fed as you mull this truism: “There’s too many men / Too many people / Making too many problems / And not much love to go round.” And how can you not be moved by his rallying cry? “This is the world we live in / And these are the hands we’re given / Use them and let’s start trying / To make it a place worth living in.” Ow! My eyes are starting to hurt from rolling them so hard.

It’s truly a crappy song and whoever these Disturbed fellows are deserve to be laughed at for their poor choice in covers. They even kept the “Whoa-oh-oh” part in! Somehow I doubt that anyone who has “Land of Confusion” on their ipod or whatever has it tagged as Comedy, but let me go ahead and make that suggestion. Imagine the headbanging moshers at a Disturbed show during this song and I don’t think you’ll argue.

Posted in 2005, Singles | 5 Comments »

Yet Another Best Of ‘06 List

Monday, January 1st, 2007

You’re probably listed out but I’ll go ahead and give my favorites from ‘06 anyway. David posted his here last week and James in all of the excitement surrounding the birth of his daughter – congratulations! – forgot which of his blogs was about music. (I’m kidding. You can find his list here.) Surprisingly we have no overlapping artists. I haven’t even heard most of the albums those guys have down! Here’s my top ten in alphabetical order:

Belle and Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
Centro-Matic – Fort Recovery
Elf Power – Back to the Web
Head Like a Kite - Random Portraits of the Home Movie
Islands – Return to the Sea
The Minders - It’s a Bright Guilty World
The Minus 5 - The Gun Album
Snowden – Anti-Anti
Starflyer 59 – My Island
Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3 - …tick …tick …tick

Posted in 2006, Album, Lists | No Comments »

The Submarine Races / The Submarine Races

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

The Submarine Races’ self-titled debut came out in June and I had hoped it would make its way to eMusic. In The Red Records, a fine punk/garage label, hadn’t sent anything to eMusic in a long time but finally a few weeks ago this one showed up. I was especially happy because it was at the top of the list for my few and far between brick and mortar purchases.

I’m glad my patience paid off because I would have been disappointed had I bought the physical disc. Not that The Submarine Races is a bad album. It’s very listenable and there are a couple of great songs. It just doesn’t live up to my mental hype. Lead Racer Ian Adams used to be in The Ponys and I was crazy about the tracks he contributed to that band, in particular the sublime “Fall Inn” on Laced With Romance. There are a few moments that equal that gem but generally speaking it’s an average album of artsy garage pop-rock.

Things get off to a particularly rough start with a challenging instrumental noise fest called “Theme.” There’s nothing else like it on the album and it’s really a questionable choice to pull listeners in. The proceedings improve vastly from there, with Adams’ nasal desperation backed by driving bass lines, alternately wiry/chunky guitar, and workmanlike drums. The most memorable songs are the ones with killer choruses, including “Get Yourself Together” and “One Forward, Three Back.” The organ and call-and-response vocals on “Ghosts and Worms” are pretty nifty too.

I noticed a lot of the chord progressions have an oldies vibe to them which contrasts nicely with the otherwise post-punk leanings. This really gives the band a distinctive sound. Hopefully Ian Adams’ tenure with The Submarine Races will at least equal his stint with The Ponys and he’ll continue to build on this promising beginning.

Posted in 2006, Album, Review | 2 Comments »

Holly Golightly – Christmas Tree On Fire (single)

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

Ah, yes. This Tom Heinl cover is a nice gift from Holly Golightly just in time for the holidays. And what a song! Not like a wimpy little spark from a bad string of lights that slowly consumes tree and house. “Christmas Tree on Fire” is spontaneous combustion, with drums crackling like flames and Holly’s strong voice radiating playful but intense heat. It’s a country-fried scorcher and shows Holly in top form.

The b-side, “Hear My Call, Here,” is pleasant but nowhere near as exciting. Another cover, originally by the Staples Singers, it’s kind of plodding in its angelic, girl-group deliberateness. Seems like it might be a good song for curling up in front of the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa after clearing your driveway of a foot of snow. Or raking leaves if you’re in the South.

Surprisingly this is the only newly recorded material Holly has released this year. Not to worry though, there’s a new album to look forward to in March ‘07. In the meantime, grab this single from eMusic and mix it in with the holiday classics in your rotation.

Posted in 2006, Review, Singles | No Comments »

The New Sound Of Numbers – Liberty Seeds

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Maybe it only seems this way, but I swear every member of every Elephant Six associated band has another band that he or she leads. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. Hannah Jones, percussionist for The Circulatory System, provides another piece of evidence for this half-baked theory with the debut release by her latest project, The New Sound of Numbers.

Liberty Seeds is rife with layers of unusual and seemingly contradictory singsong monotone girl-group vocals. The harmonies are lush and striking but icy cold in their detachedness. I always imagine a roomful of Nico clones droning out these songs to a backdrop of kaleidoscope swirls and strobe lights.

Balancing pop with experimentalism, Liberty Seeds manages to be cohesive in its ebb and flow. Score that to their unique and fascinating vocal style. So for every “Frequency Transmission System,” which sounds like Le Tigre set to the herky-jerky rhythms of Old Time Relijin, there’s a mildly grating, tuneless psychedelic counterpart like “La.” But even with the occasional patience testing track, The New Sound of Numbers have contributed a memorable work to the E6 canon.

Mixtape tracks- Frequency Transmission System, Minimal Animal, You’ll Soon Be Singing
Freebies- None to download, sadly, but you can stream four songs from the album at the band’s MySpace page.

Posted in 2006, Album, Review | No Comments »

Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians Of The British Empire – Punk Rock At The British Legion Hall (single)

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

Well that didn’t take long. In my previous post (few and far between these days) I wrote up a little something about the final Buff Medways release. I speculated that it probably wouldn’t be too much of a wait before Billy put a new band together and cranked out some recorded goods. A scant two weeks later and there’s a new single from Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians Of The British Empire, a three piece that includes former Buff Medways drummer Wolf Howard and Buffets bassist Nurse Julie.

It’s probably no surprise that this band sounds pretty much like every other Childish project, but that’s just the way we like him. And this pair of songs is about as raw and inspired as anything he’s recorded. The scorching title track documents a generational conflict in which “punk” has become a fashionable commodity as opposed to an ethos. “I fought through a war for you / But what do you go and do? / Die your hair in bloody pink and orange / Stuck up in the air with a bowl of porridge.” While these thoughts may have been expressed by the fathers of punks thirty plus years ago, I think the war he refers to is the cultural rejection of Thatcherism. With chugging guitar rhythms that battle Wolf’s frenetic drumming, there’s a palpable tension that nicely mirrors the lyrics. “Joe Strummer’s Grave” is even more ferocious, with Billy churning out some borrowed Kinks riffs and spewing revulsion over this generation being lulled into a sense of complacency by mass media. “Everybody’s working on the cheap / Listening out for that cell phone beep,” sums up his sentiments nicely.

I liked The Buff Medways and thought they rocked out just fine but these two tracks seem to find Childish rejuvenated by working with a new lineup. If it’s any indication of what’s to come, we should definitely be looking forward to Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians Of The British Empire’s full length in March ‘07.

Posted in 2006, Review, Singles | 2 Comments »

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