All of you would know who the White Stripes are. I'm pretty much taking that as a given. I mean, have you been dead for the last 10 years or so?
Anyway, if you like the White Stripes, and you do, believe me, you'll love Jack White (frontman of the White Stripes... just in case...)'s side project, The Raconteurs. Or, as they're known in this country, "The Saboteurs", because there's already some sort of rubbish jazz band in Australia going by "The Raconteurs", who weren't willing to do the right thing and disband (:P) so that Jack and the boys could take their rightful name.
Anyhoo, their debut album "Broken Boy Soldiers" was released in 2006, and it rules so very much. Here's a live version of "Level" from that album:
The album's still around the traps at JB hifi and itunes and such....
Better news still is that their next album is due out in a little while... no details as yet on title, tracklist or release date, but their official website says that it'll be released "as soon as possible". Proof here: http://www.theraconteurs.com/ awesome.
Not in an ironic, "look at the prog-rockers, teehee" kind of way, and not because of their hair, or how many of them there are, or because I like At the Drive-in, or because they sound a little bit like Led Zeppelin but on crazy techno pills from the distant future, or because Omar Rodriguez Lopez is a musical genius (or absolute fruit loop, depending on your opinion of twenty minute guitar noodling and lyrics about spider webs, eyeballs, ham or some such nonsense), or because the lyrics speak to me (!). I love them because they're odd, and because their music's loud.
I say odd, but in terms of odd, they're not ODD odd. They're pop music odd, which means having big hair. And they've definitely gotten less weird, when you compare their most recent album, "The Bedlam in Goliath", with their last collection of what could be loosely termed songs, "Amputechture". Everything on this CD's much more poppy, especially the first five songs. The first single, "Wax Simulacra" is two and a half minutes long. Two and a half minutes!! They of "Cassandra Gemini" fame, which was so extremely long they had to split it into eight parts. "Wax Simulacra" is one of the best things about this CD, which is the first Volta album to have nothing over ten minutes on it.
The first five tracks are amongst the best that Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (too many hyphens!!!) have ever produced. "Goliath", which appears one of Omar's solo albums as a jazzy and inappropriately titled piece called "Rapid Fire Tollbooth", is a monster, with wah-wah licks lain over the top of funky distorted rhythm stabs. Yeah. I just said that. I don't know what the hell it means, but i wrote it. When "Goliath" finishes, though, everything seems to slow down. If the album was a concert by the group, it's as if the audience had all feinted, and the last eight songs on the album represent the band leaving the stage with their instruments still plugged in. Sick analogy. What I'm trying to get across is that by the start of "Tourniquet Man", at least by the Mars Volta standards, the album starts to suck in a big way.
Case in point: "Askepios". Terrible. It's a slowed-down car crash, with Cedric warbling like some... warbly thing... and they even use that noise that comes from a guitar amp when a mobile phone rings near it. Pointless, and totally weird for the sake of weird.
So, if you download this puppy from itunes, do yourself a favour. Delete the last hour or so from the album. You'll have one of the best EPs ever released, and then you can go on Mars Volta fan forums and speculate wildly until the next one comes out.
A video, ladies and gents, of my favourite song from the album, "Goliath": (they're not really playing it... Omar's playing a violin, for god's sake, and cedric rarely dresses as a leper unless he has to)
I can't believe jamjamjam.blogger.com was taken. I was heartbroken.
Anyway, this'll be my internet kingdom from now on. Heavy tariffs will be imposed on all Swedish granola, and don't expect duty free you thieving BASTARDS.
I'll be using this to post my views on various THINGS, and I'll paste herewith any news that you'll find interesting.
Hello, my name's (as above). I am a person, with a heart and feelings, and a face of pure silver. The most important question, though is "Does it funny?", and the answer is a firm maybe. What?
