Posted By Kucki on 9. März 2010
Ich habe mir überlegt, dass ich in nächster Zeit selber Bewertungen zu den geposteten Tracks bzw. Bands abgeben werde…
Zudem ermöglicht ein neues Plugin, das ich mit diesem Artikel auch eigentlich nur kurz testen möchte, die Bewertung der Leser. Bin mal gespannt ob jemand mitmachen wird.
Posted By admin on 8. März 2010
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have risen to fame in the past year, and deservedly so. I’ve been watching them ever since they landed on my doorstep in snowy Iceland in 2008 and I helped arrange a one-off gig for a crowd of measly 30 or so people. I remember one reporter not bothering with writing about them ’cause he didn’t know them himself, and a radio host snorting that they should change their name. Since then the only way has been up, and now people ask me “where the hell was I when they played here?!”
When frontman Kip Berman was asked about doing a post about a particular song of theirs, “Hey Paul” from their self-titled debut album was the prime contender for first place. Read on and discover another oddly named band and the handful of people who loved them in their prime. Listen to “Hey Paul” while you’re at it, and look for the bonus song down below.
“Hey Paul” was one of the earliest tracks we ever wrote. It was an homage to my friend from Portland, Paul Burkhart, who was the singer and songwriter of one of my favorite rock and roll bands ever, Cocaine Unicorn. You can snicker at the name I suppose, but they were awesome– like the very earliest Primal Scream and a bit of Velvet Underground, Flamin Groovies and loads of California-ness. The also looked and acted REALLY COOL and had a guy named Dasa with tattooed knuckles that loved fighting and played tambourine. Yes. The only contemporary band that kinda reminds me of them in all their deranged glory is Girls or the poppier side of Brian Jonestown Massacre, in which drummer Ryan Sumner (R.I.P. TOO TALL) was and bassist Collin Hegna still is a member.
Anyway, I really admired Paul as a songwriter, so almost all the lines in “Hey Paul” are either Cocaine Unicorn lyrics or references. It makes me sad to see people who are genuinely talented like Paul never really get their music heard. The band never even got a chance to record a proper LP, instead having two slightly rough sounding self-recorded cd-r EP’s as the only lasting legacy of a band that should have had a beautiful record with some velvet-unicorn-rainbow art that I could listen to late at night with my friends when we come back from that 1:55 beer run, right before the Plaid Pantry stops selling. Sigh. But I know I got to see something truly special– and though there’s only a handful of us that were there and remember (Zaza’s Danny Taylor can vouch for me here), that mythical and unnaturally white creature will always gallop triumphantly in our memories, stampeding our hearts and impaling our mind.
Here are the lyrics to the song:
You say you’ve been waiting, waiting for someone,
Waiting for some song, waiting since you were born
For a moment when everything’s alright,
And everything’s all white, but I just can’t wait anymore
Hey Paul where have you gone? I wanna come along
Hey Paul what went so wrong? What went so wrong?
Have you gone away or been left behind,
You know that I don’t mind, you know that you’re my kind,
‘cuz when i hear churchbells or when I see fireflies,
You know that I don’t lie, one of these days you’ll belong
MP3: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Hey Paul
Bonus MP3: Cocaine Unicorn – Tiny Phone
Cocaine Unicorn on Myspace (fixed link) | Pains official page
Previous “Story behind the song” posts:
All Girl Summer Fun Band
Tiny Microphone
Posted By admin on 27. Februar 2010
I guess there are two ways a shoegaze band can go these days. Mix it up with electronica as the likes of M83, Perfect Blue, Ulrich Schnauss etc have done to great effect or party like it’s 1988 encompassing the sounds of the era and the scene that celebrated itself.
Whirl, on the evidence of these two tracks, have chosen the latter route and they sound like a mix of Lush/Slowdive on Leave and My Bloody Valentine, complete with Colm Ó Cíosóig style drumming, on Meaningless.
Of course, whilst being totally unoriginal, that is not a bad thing when all things have been done and said but when the artwork too mimics the same era you have to wonder where the band are going to go with this. That said there are definite grounds for hope here and once the band free themselves from the constraints of their influences they could, and should, flourish.
There is an interview with Nick from the band here.
Posted By admin on 24. Februar 2010
The full-length follow-up to Ys is no less ambitious, but this 3xLP set also has some of the most inviting and accessible songs of Newsom’s career. While songs here evoke moments of Ys and Milk-Eyed and Newsom’s harp is still the dominant musical focus, it’s striking how much Have One on Me feels like its own thing. Not a progression, exactly, more of a deepening. The highlights are spread out evenly, and Newsom couldn’t have sequenced the record any better. The best songs here feel more like conversations rather than artworks to be hung on the wall and admired from several paces away. Newsom seems to sing from somewhere deep inside of them, and her earthy presence has a way of drawing you in, bringing you closer to her music than you’ve been before.
Posted By admin on 24. Februar 2010
The German producer Hendrik Weber’s follow-up to This Bliss is big and dense with the kind of detail that rewards close attention. Weber is unlike most minimal techno producers in that he doesn’t look to locate one groove and ride it for the course of a track. His songs open up, unfurl, and regularly change course. With Black Noise he develops this to incorporate a wide range of sounds– field recordings, atonal noise, and stray percussion all populate the album. Each track is its own micro sound world with enough rich detail to draw you back for deeper investigation.
Posted By admin on 17. Februar 2010
Today seems to be the day long lost videos resurface! This one is by The Trudy for their single Oh! from a few years back which they claim they found down the back of the sofa. The band headline our free show at Rota next month which we co-host with Oddbox Records. Details here.
Posted By admin on 17. Februar 2010
Local Natives have a familiar sound– rustic vocals, harmonies, clattering percussion– but songwriting skill and youthful energy mark their striking debut. Advance singles “Airplanes” and “Sun Hands” recalled elements of Dodos or the Fleet Foxes, but the best comparison perhaps is that they’re sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear– right down to naming an album after the location in which it was recorded. Yet whereas Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House is a cozy, isolated New England seaside shack, Local Natives’ Gorilla Manor is a squalid Orange County party pad. While we tend to bow at novelty and innovation, Gorilla Manor proves to be a refreshing reminder of the pleasures of synthesis.
Posted By Kucki on 10. Februar 2010
Am Montag dem 8.2.2010 hatte ich das Vergnügen in meiner Heimatstadt Aachen Friska Viljor live zu erleben! Und “erleben” trifft es dabei ganz gut! Es war ein sehr schöner Abend und die 5 Jungs aus Stockholm hatten gute Laune und tolle Songs mitgebracht. 2 Zugaben gab’s für das begeisterte Publikum im vollen Musikbunker! Größtenteils Lieder vom ersten Album wurden gespielt, was mir sehr zu Gute kam, da ich die anderen zugegebenermaßen nicht so gut kenne.
Dazu muss ich mal wieder etwas allgemeines loswerden…bei mir, vielleicht auch bei anderen…genießt ein Zweitwerk komischerweise nie sooo große Aufmerksamkeit. Die Reviews sind meistens nur mittelmäßig, weil der Hype ums erste Album das zweite unspektakulär erscheinen lässt. Grundsätzlich sollte man sich natürlich nie auf Kritiken verlassen, erst recht nicht wenn man eine Band schon kennt und ihre Musik gerne hört!
Die Kritiken für Friska Viljor waren eigtl. nie schlecht, und ich habe das erste Album immer gerne gehört, dennoch haben mich die Folgewerke nicht so sehr interessiert.
WARUM??? Es ist bei mir glaube ich die unzubewältigende Masse an Musik, wobei zudem auch noch jede zweite Band die neue Superband sein soll…Man hört und hört und sucht und sucht und saugt und saugt, und doch hört man irgendwie nichts mehr richtig!
Ich bin immer zu sehr auf der Suche nach der Band, die mein Leben verändert, und die wenn möglich nicht mehr als 50 Leute weltweit kennen sollten. Um davon etwas Abstand zu gewinnen beschränke ich mich in letzter Zeit auch mehr auf das was ich schon habe und kenne, und intensiviere das Hören der Alben lieber. Ich lade kaum noch runter, sondern kaufe mir Platten…was natürlich den Input viel kleiner und ausgewählter macht!
Ich werde versuchen in nächster Zeit hier wieder mehr und persönlicher zu bloggen…
Und noch eine andere Sache: Ich kenne viele Leute in Aachen, zumindest vom Sehn her. Einerseits durch die Uni und andererseits durch die Videoinsel, die Videothek in der ich arbeite…aber auf dem Konzert habe ich niemanden erkannt. Wo sind die ganzen Leute sonst so in Aachen? Ich ziehe heute mal mein Friska Shirt zur Arbeit an, vielleicht sagt ja jemand was: ” Hey, warst du auch auf dem Konzert? Endlich jemand mit Geschmack!…”
Bis bald
