I haven't even been able to go back to finish my thoughts on the steaming pile of crap known as the new Kings of Leon video. I just don't feel like dwelling on the negative when something has gone so irredeemably wrong. So, I am going to put out a few notes on music I actually do like right now.
The release receiving the heaviest current rotation is easily, and has been for awhile, Wavves King of the Beach.
I will get into more detail in the upcoming article Wavves vs No Age, Episode 2: Attack of the Drone.
Suffice it to say, though, that "Linus Spacehead", "Post Acid" and the title track are my current guess as to what was in Marcellus Wallace's briefcase.
I will admit to being behind the curve with the band San Francisco band Girls. It wasn't even that I wasn't aware of them. Honestly, it was that their outrageously homoerotic(?, you'd have to ask someone else if it is erotic, I guess) video for the song "Lust for Life" turned me off so badly I didn't even hear the music. Say what you will, it was just my reaction. It put me off to the point I stopped listening and effectively wrote the band off for months. That is, until "Lust for Life" crept back into my brain through my sub-conscious and I found myself singing along in the car.
After a still reluctant download, I have come to the conclusion that the music is irresistible and for the most part cleansed the video's smiling allusions to male on male oral sex from my mind. "Lust for Life" is nearly perfect, and it really had to be. You don't borrow the name of an Iggy Pop/David Bowie classic, use another dude's hard-on as a microphone in your video and expect to take over the world unless you can write a fine tune. Even the semi-cute naked girl in the bathtub lip syncing a few lines can't balance out the horror...
But enough about the video, all it really did was save this gem for me, like a forgotten final Christmas present. From the subtle "la da dadadeda da da" refrain, to lines like "I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of a wine, I wish I had a beach house, we could make a big fire every night", the song drips with a nostalgia never tasted. It taps into a universal feeling that something, anything, else would surely be better because where you are now is royally F'ed.
Like lead singer Christopher Owens says, "Maybe if I'd had a father, maybe then I would turned out right, instead I'm just crazy, totally mad, yeah I'm just crazy and fucked in the head."
But the melody almost wills you to sing lines like that with at least a wry smile. Even if you are singing into another man's penis.
Below is the edited version:
I jumped all over "the Rat" by The Walkmen in 2004 but somehow they faded, not out of mind but out of heavy rotation at least. "Stranded", from the new album Lisbon, may end up being the song that pulls The Walkmen off my bench and transforms them from bench-warmers, behind the more fun The Hold Steady, the more immediate The National and more accessible bands like The Stills and Deer Tick, into full time playlist starters.
Driven by horns, "Stranded" sounds like what it is, a boozy funeral song for a relationship that has passed away and relationships and lives deteriorating in front of the our eyes. Or maybe"Stranded" is a song for a wake...either way it is a slowburn that is dynamic in its restraint and, like its narrator, dramatic in the empty, open spaces of what isn't said.
It is almost like the story has been told often enough that everyone involved, as well as the listener, can fill in the blanks. The sum here is more than its parts and The Walkmen are a band worth revisiting.
I've loved Japandroids since the first note. Their brand of noisy 2 man smash and yell, 100 word a minute melodic fuzz out is right up my alley. So the between-album single, "Younger Us", would have been a welcome morsel to tide me over even if it wasn't a time machine.
This 3 and half minute blast of sprinting guitar and diving symbols captures a time just-past so perfectly in one couplet that they never need to try again.
When they sing" Remember that night, You were already in bed, said fuck it, and got up to drink with me instead....Give me younger us," I, for one, remember perfectly.
Finally, on to one that escaped me: I have never been a full card carrying member of the Ted Leo fan club. I like a few tunes, I don't change the channel when he comes on, but the politics always fatigued me and the songs didn't always hold up to repeated listens.
"Timorous Me" crept up on me though. Lyrically sharp, emotive and catchy as hell, not mention damn hard to sing along with, "Timorous Me" from the 2001 sophomore effort from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists finds Leo at his best, capturing his inner Thin Lizzy complete with chorused guitars near the end. Nearly a decade old it sounds brand new and Ted Leo must have known he got it right. The last 30 seconds of the song sound like he set his guitar down, shut off the lights and admired his still whining amp before he strolled out of the studio. The musical equivalent of a walk off home run.
Coming Soon:
Wavves Vs No Age, Episode 2: Attack of the Drone
and...
Ruminations on a Reatard: Jay Reatard, One year after his death
Fading but Fantastic:
the Morning Benders: Cold War and Waiting for a War
Best Coast: Summer Mood
Dead Weather: Gasoline
Avi Buffalo: What's it in for
Kid Cudi, Best Coast and Rostam from Vampire Weekend: All Summer
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