Understatement of the Century

More in side project news...
Another band who you'll all know about are the Arctic Monkeys.
I'm not even going to bother explaining who they are. Go and look on Pitchfork, or Wikipedia, or... you know, anything on the internet ever. That's if you don't know. And you do, so disregard the last sentence.

They are arguably one of the greatest bands in the history of mankind. In my opinion. And I'm not a teenage girl. But I am prone to hyperbolic statements. I just love them.



Anyway, Alex Turner, vocalist from the.... you know, them.... has a side project now, with Miles Kane from the Rascals. I don't know who the Rascals are, but I plan to find out.

The band is called "The Last Shadow Puppets", and I'd like to digress for just a moment if I may, because I think that's a stupid band name. I have no idea why they chose to call themselves that... what do they care of the plight of the shadow puppets? I had no idea that they were in so much trouble. Shouldn't there be a foundation or a charity organisation dedeicated to... I think I've laboured the point enough already, don't you?

They have an Album out on April 14th called "The Age of the Understatement", which you should all go out and buy if you value yourselves as human beings. The title track will be released as a single a few days before or something. It's been getting heavy airplay already on triple j.

I'm going to go out on a very, very narrow and dangerously bendy limb here and say that I think this is going to be the greatest god-damn album of the year.

Here's the aforementioned title track, in glorious youtube form.

Edit: Turns out it wasn't as great as I'd hoped. Sucks to be me. Anyway, that video represents the best of the duo, and you should definitely watch it over and over again to cover up the fact that I was WRONG. *sniff*....

Battles: The Sick

I had recently the distinct privelege of attending this year's Big Day Out festival at Flemington racecourse in Melbourne.

God, it was dusty. Like, obscenely so. When I got on the tram to head back to where the party myself and the party I was traveling with were staying, literally all of our belongings were caked in dirt. And the stench of tobacco. And other stuff.

But it was worth getting dirty, because we all had the BEST DAY EVER. We saw Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Josh Pyke, Arcade Fire, Regurgitator, the Hilltop Hoods, Midnight Juggernauts and RAGE AGAINST THE FREAKING MACHINE. Apparently I ruined the experience of the latter show because I got scared of the crowd. Yep. As well as that, we had T-shirts, a picnic of sorts while Augie March were playing, and my friend even met the guy from the Chaser that plays piano and offends everybody.

As for the music: Rage cut sick, playing every song we wanted them to (well, almost- they didn't do their MC5 cover, "Kick Out the Jams". Small Complaint), and making everybody in melbourne become an idiot. Regurgitator were a total 90s throwback, too, playing ! (that's the name of the song, remember?) and Polyester Girl, giving us due cause to dance like fools. Arcade Fire were suitably emotional, and loud- and they played every song of theirs that I love dearly (all of them are good, of course), including Neighborhood #1, Haiti and No Cars Go.

We left the 'Fire early, as planned, to see if we could catch a band that we had almost no pre-conceptions of. That band was Battles.

For those of you who don't know, Battles are a New York based group of musicians who all have a background in other TOTALLY WICKED SICK alternative bands- the drummer, John Stanier, was a founding member of mathrockers Helmet and is a member of one of Mike Patton's twelve billion projects Tomahawk. Guitarist Dave Konopka was in the trippy-as instrumental mathrock band Lynx, other guitarist and sound manipulator dude Ian Williams was in the similarly trippy Don Caballero, and other other other guitarist and lead vocalist (I use the term loosely- you'll see why in a sec) guy Tyondai Braxton is a solo artist whose music is so odd it defies description. They united in 2003 to make strange, thriftily titled releases (see EP C, B EP) before dropping the awesome Mirrored last year to critical freaking acclaim.

Battles have to be seen and heard to be believed. So.... here's what they look and sound like:

The experience at Big Day Out was comparable, with a smaller crowd and fewer Japanese people. It was really, really amazingly cool..... though some crowd surfing dickheads ALMOST ruined it for some, as they caused security to spray us ALL more than was necessary with their cool-down hoses. We all got wet, and a poor lady standing next to me who was trying to light a cigarette (poor? and also, I hope it was just a cigarette) had a difficult time doing so. But DAMN was it good. I don't even think that youtube video can do it justice. I hope they come back to Australia at some point, just so you can all see what I'm talking about.

They were the highlight of my day musically, and I urge you all to go out and buy Mirrored which is one hell of an awesome trip. You can get it on iTunes, and I strongly recommend you do. Now. Don't ask questions.

Raconteurs to Crank another one out... finally!!!

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.

Bedlam

I love the Mars Volta.

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.