Counting Souveniers w/ a Boy From School

Calling - London, Norfolk, Nottingham, Manchester. Fuck it, Leeds, Aberdeen, Glasgow. Newcastle.


This is elec-tron-ic.
This is the UK.
This is Trainspotting, this is Irvine Welsh.
This is eighties musical undergound allusions in all 'em novels, hittin' the twenty-fist centry.
This is MDMA.
This is pensive flashing lights and lyrics about getting swallowed.
This is fucking elec-tron-ic.

Hot Chip and the Junior Boys: they swallowed me like a flame into water only days apart, till I found myself going: "UK, elec-tron-ic, eh?" Yes, the Junior Boys are Hamilton natives, and they are hitting three whole landmarks in their own nation before touring with Hot Chip to damn near every farm plot across the UK. I imagine the set will go something like this:

1) Eccentric and Cognizant Frivolity (10 pm-2 am): HOT CHIP
2) Fervently Detached Comedown (2-6 am): The JUNIOR BOYS

The Junior Boys played last Monday at the indie death match of Broken City, where all Calgary's suburban kids routinely try to escape the austerity of the city's booming void. As a visitor, I think the show gave me enough strength to combat the lingering despair of mall sickness, suburbia and big business in one stone's throw. "Empty stalls in shopping malls that we'll never see again" is my resonating mantra as I deal with the culture shock of the Lonesome Crowded West:

Junior Boys - Count Souveniers [MySpace]
Hot Chip - And I Was a Boy From School [MySpace]

-Tara

Oh yes, Sweden ends here. I skipped countries. I stopped minding the gap and fell in. Here's to not prophesizing the extent of my music fascinations ever again.

My Morning Racket

hi you! how was your day!
mine was great...i had a my morning jacket day, all day!
you should too

step 1: eat breakfast
step 2:buy "okonokos" (the new cd foolio!)
step 3: listen to it for 2 hours!
step 4: re-listen to the highilights
step 5: spend the rest of the day trying to find all !90! (hard to find) covers! these include ...boob dylan...and elvis! and pet shop boys! and even eryka badhu!

note: i didnt do step 5...but i did find this


alright goodbye!

Svee-den! (Part II: Detektivbyrån)

So I realize it took me awhile to get here, but Sweden, if not Scandinavia, possesses unanimous patience.

Detektivbyrån

This song came to me by enchanting the likes of my kitchen, looming on the top of the couch and picking up signals like the answer to the room's dead space. We all stood mesmerized at an equal distance, for not even he who burned the mix knew what the song was per my inquiry. But the detektiv got to the bottom of it and delivered the information to me in time. The answer was (and is)

E18 - Detektivbyran

This is for those who wish the synthesizer could camouflage itself into being a little more traditional. This is for those who wish their life had more accordion, (despite the Ukrainian fellow that played your Baba's funeral and the preceeded to preach to you about the importance of post-secondary education.)

This is not Beirut, though that is an often reoccurring allusion to anything that sounds European, making us all look like naive indie kids who have never left the geography of our own bedrooms. Isn't Beirut the capital of Lebanon? Does Beirut really sound Lebanese? Shouldn't Mr. Condon have chosen a capital a little more...Skopje?

It's all tangible:

here at the official webpage, alongside pretty digital wallpaper and cartoon's busking; or in the world of MySpace, without visual glamour + 3 extra tracks

To the ruins at the top of a cliff basking in Scottish broome, probably somewhere in Lebanon.

-Tara

Svee-den! (Part I: Kirurg)

Yes, my goodness. This little Scandinavian country sure seems to have some kind of musical force that needs to be reckoned with. Stockholm Syndrome, Yo La: I'm finally starting to understand it.

In fact, this abundance makes me want to start a little chain of posts called: The Sweden Sessions. Not to say that this will necessarily continue, but to begin with a most recent discovery as of late:

Kirurg

These lads are from Stholm, and their basement tech-vision is like a well splattered paint experiment. 'Party Machine' bulldozes with a slew of high school dance convictions that could cut through the rhetoric of a pep rally. The rainbow synths are in accord with all the ironic proclamations, all in the name of hyper-pubescent kids perculating into turbo-prophets in the land of adolescence.

Everyone is celebrating at the punch bowl:

"the rabbits are so cute,
and the rabbits are so sweet,
oh yes the rabbits are so cute,
they are so sweet,
they are so cute, they
the rabbits are so cute,
the rabbits are cute
[synthetic giggle; giggle]"

I feel this could be a cult infatuation, a la AiH. Just listen.

'Party Machine' on MySpace

-Tara

CHET

"I want to hear you for the first time, a-ga-ea-ea-ea-ea-in!"


I woke up at 2:14 am this morning to a bombastic aural trumpet display resonating from the baseball field across the street from my house. Then, it poured while I slept.

Season change - a little flick of mother nature's wrist. With Victoria at the peak of the only region in Canada where winter is a mere myth, the acute fluctuations that define her rainy season/dry season duality have begun to roll the dice. The air has begun curdling to the foreboding density that permeates her winter rains, blowing its spout in little ferocious showers. And with this comes nostalgia.

"I want to hear you for the first time, again."

Last winter, in the depth of my forlorn circumstances, I found Chet. And now, after a confusing and terribly ambiguous haitus, rumours indicate (hail the concert poster) they're stewing again for the first time since spring.

Chet: Lucky Bar, 08/22/06.

Chet is like the nocturnal creature that urks only at night; but instead only swirls in the humid rains. Kau'ai , their latest record, throws its bipolar tendencies of benevolence and desolation back and forth like mirrors starring each other in the eye. It is candied in cello and climbs all of its ladders with the frantically poignant caress of Ryan Beattie's voice.

On [MmmMmmmMySpace] you can listen to:

Pillow Talk in the Flames (off: Kau'ai)
The Shepard (off: the yet to be released record that will slay us for our impatience).

It's like the thought of swimming while my hand rests flat on the top of a pool of water. May these hot flash weather cycles reminiscent of transversing a car wash continue until the rains hail imminently and we all drown with Chet.

-Tara

Magnolia Electric Co: Live! (or dead)

Oh yes, the bus-ferry-bus-show-loitering-bus-ferry-bus 24 hour whirlwind excursion that seems to grab me by the neck and throw me across the water every time certain bands say they're playing Vancouver.

Yesterday, this connect-the-dots public transit commute was in the name of Magnolia Electric Co: the current multi-member manifestation of Jason Molina. Already misled once by an 'unofficial' Vancouver date posted back in March, I was convinced that on this July 30th, the show would be mine.

Unless of course, unless - Richard's started flooding from some sort of mainfloor plumbing issue that caused it to forfeit itself as a venue right after The Silver Sun Pick-Ups opened (may I credit the fucking math of this drummer). That is to say before Ladyhawk, and yes, before: Magnolia Electric Co. Conclusively, in this very off-the-map kind of case, our date was dead.

In my raging discouragement, I passed off attending the Six Organs of Admittance show nearby, and instead went to drink coffee (replay) at Denny's. When the show was 'over', I rendezvoused with a friend back at the beloved venue. We then waded in our shoes all the way to East Van, and I reconciled while we sat on the porch smoking beedies.

Humph.

As the dust settles, I still have the heart to disclose this: Magnolia's guitarist, Jason Groth, has been keeping a most interesting online journal of their tour, fully armed with revitalizing premonitions of touring and travelling in general. It is posted on the blog Marathon Packs, and I suggest starting right in Omaha, all the way until...tomorrow's post on the Vancouver show.

As for my hand in promoting Secretly Canadian:

The new Jason Molina album Let Go, Let Go, Let Go is to be released August 22, and you can stream the first single Get Out, Get Out, Get Out here. If Honey, Watch Your Ass (from 2003's Pyramid Electric Co) glued itself onto your skin in all its accusations, then Jason's tactics of placing an abyss between every sound will take you again. It is worth being mentioned however, that you're never getting out of this black hole.

Also, the new Magnolia Electric Co. album Fading Trails is due out September 12. Judging by the single Lonesome Valley, it has all the scraping heartfelt crutches of the mid-west that were lost in the overproduced What Comes After the Blues (2005). Take your wagon and shove it.

-Tara

Bowston, its bowston

Oh this is nice...bikes i enjoy...they got vocals in the sewer coming out of a fuzzy stereo...and mr.sing screams with a little more yelp than dude from the walkmen...i give it a listen...listen to
"Beginners" all the way through please oui oui

ps: i think this is just about 5 month old news but this is written on an island...think about it!

Faces on Film! Myspace Account!

--jeff the house

Bondage Fairies avoid Pink Eye

"Stockholm sucked one day in '06 (and then turned out not to)":

[postulating a day in the life of the Bondage Fairies]

Staying home from school at their parents discretion, two young lads were sent to the basement to avoid Pink Eye while their parents drank tea and shared stories of hypochondria. After 39 Nintendo sessions of Mario/Luigi/POW, the boys decided to record a song that ferociously explored their grasp of power chord progressions discovered during their new affection for 'musical instruments'.

The result was an overly astute jaunt in basement-nu-wave, spearheaded by a rambunctious approach to their Nintendo. The kids proceeded to make killer insect masks out of their headgears and rename themselves "Elvis Creep" and "Deus Deceptor", vowing never to call long division their favourite hobby again.

Yes, my story was only a hypothetical vision! But the Bondage Fairies song Pink-Eye Paranoia really exists, and you can hear it here:

Bondage Fairies My Space

***Notice the spaceship bullet samples lacing the track like hair lice, and try to visualize the Nintendo cartridges filing in and out of the game system before it hurdles through another 'reset'. Now, that's music.

Bondage Fairies Website
(Buy: Things You Didn't Know When You Hired Me at Amazon)

-Tara

Adam green is clever!

I like Adam green alot! i think hes funny...i have three of his cds! thats a lot of cds! my dad likes him aswell, he thinks hes clever...that made me like adam green more because my dad is clever and that makes him right...he declared his love after adam said

"On a country road I swerved to the side,
Trying to avoid...a country bumpkin "

Everytime i listen to adam i try and get people to listen carefully to what hes saying, he plays tricks on the mind! sometimes i think hes gonna rhyme and he dosnt!

" she woke up in the highway,
with arrows pointing at her face.
later that day in gym class,
she ate a mouth full of anthrax,
go to sleep"


THATS ONE OF MY FAVORITE!

He always talks about drugs and jews and canoes...i know hes jewish and i wouldnt be suprised if he does lots of drugs...PsYcHaDeLic! canoe

"when they told me that her body was found.
an astronaut drowned in the long island sound
i tripped down the stairs in my basketball shoes.
and paddled down stream in my father's canoe"

Adam knows his melodies!

Heres some samples of some quotes from his upcoming cd "JACKET FULL OF DANGER"

"bye didladie never gonna chew the outline of a pie...pie that i owe, and i owe and god knows i hold em to you so"

"I like drugs
I like to hold them for a friend
And ev'rything's gone and
My finger is longer
I never want to come down again"


this little write up was hard for my brain cause every song has great word combos...his newer cd's arent as obviously funny, i think his jokes are just getting better and more complex! so loosen up your brain and give him a listen if you havnt yet!

heres a fabolous video off his last compact disc:

Adam Green - Carolina (video)

- -- Jeff the house

Imminent Downfall in the Musical Economy

Hypothesis: The (next) Stock Market Crash is a resultant of Power, Corruption and Lies.

Observations:

• Geography (2006), the only full-length album by The Stock Market Crash, appears to have almost the same cover as the second New Order album, Power, Corruption and Lies (1983). The noteable difference is that in the 23 year span between them, the aperture setting on the photo lens increased.
• Shortly after Ian Curtis fell victim to his self-perpetuated black abyss, the remaining members of Joy Division started New Order. Also, shortly after John Bonham drowned in his surrounding moat of everclear, Led Zeppelin disbanded. Both of these resolutions came in relatively close proximity to the turn of the eighties decade, which in comparison to the decades surrounding it; was musically vain.
• New Order released an array of albums, and in '02 they released a compilation album entitled International, proving from the artwork that the most worthy thing they had to say for themselves after 20 years was that their floral cover art got digital.
• The Stock Market Crash appears to be usurping from their list of inspirations, a residue of Morrissey and Bono that is collecting in a sink drain.
• It has been awhile since The Killers made it.
  

Conclusion:

New Order made a fatal decision to their previously reputable musical stature by existing at all. The Stock Market Crash, who alludes to New Order in their cover art and mentions them in their inspirations, also smoke cigarettes in their press photos outfitted with oversized sunglasses and jean jackets, walking like they are going somewhere. To counteract the media-blitz when they break the charts in a few months:

"With the banality of She Wants Revenge, they blend together a stadium-sized vacuum motored by the face of their underground facade. Candidly disposing of the qualitative factors of Interpol and The Smiths to which they will undoubtedly be compared, they cauterwaul bombastically like the user-friendly rock of Coldplay and Athlete."

Stock Market Crash MySpace

Damn the things you accidentally step on.

-Tara

taratat

Read the sign! whats that say there... "raaa...raaatata...ratatatat...taratat??? NOOOO it be: RATATAT "CLASSICS" 08/15/06!...can you not see that? top left corner behind the big blade of grass...geez louise...
So remember!
Oh yeah and the music, from what i have heard through my ears...well this one sounds like an old weezer cover/crickets! ratatated up! it all works for me as long as no ones singing...

Ratatat - tacobel canon


love
Jeffthehouse

Eat a popsicle; master lick:melt ratio

The sun generally doesn't appear the colour of rubies, (evidently a greedy infatuation of musicians as of late), but rather a blazing yellow colour. The 'ruby-ness' comes out in the most supreme of circumstances, i.e (just one):

a) Building a sand castle in the late afternoon after a morning of ill-planning, plagued by extreme 'high-tide' risk.

The Ruby Suns themselves claim they sound like 'trees', but in New Zealand that's an understandable comparison.

Perhaps while I am sitting on my patio starring at the baseball field across the street, Birthday on Mars will help me find solace, instead of being plagued by the unintentional memorization of all citywide little league players; their names, numbers, and positions.

Ryan McPhun and the Ruby Suns - Birthday on Mars [MySpace]

And you can read all about 'em Auckland-ites (American passports) at Lil' Chief Records.

-Tara

The Evangelicals are So Gone

Are you there God? It's me, Athiest.

I react to certain things by flailing my arms and running in the opposite direction. Examples include "Newark, NJ", "Robert Bateman", "Monty Pytho-" *slap*, and band names enamored with religious connotations. However, if Christian bands are busy calling themselves Underoath, bands naming themselves Evangelicals may be filled with pseudo-apathetic pop witticisms.

I must remind myself not to be tricked. I have discovered from statistical investigations that we live in a world of irony, reminiscent of the continuum of a hampster wheel. With the assistance of their My Space slogan "Evangelicals arrive at 6/6/6", I was able to bi-pass my innate predjudice to their title. This is where the door flung open to dive into their sensory blooming(dale) energies.

The Evangelicals are the red balloon that drifts around in the sky forever without popping. While this indicates that they may be superhuman, I concede that if they morphed into cotton candy they would immediately seek the habitat of warm (chlorine) pool water, where they would gracefully disintegrate, embellished by a fury of alternating water currents.

Their most sincere revelation is somewhere between "Hello Jenn, I'm a Mess" and "Diving". Follow their spiritual guidance at [My Space] or where their heaven becomes earth at [Misra Records].

I too, am a mess.

-Tara

Girls with coats

One time i met a tall man who was obsessed with a medium girl...and she sang in a band...and she worked as a coat check girl...he owned 30 coats...and he checked them all in...every day...when i met him he was sweating and about 5 feet thick ... parkas and blazers! raincoats and windbrakers! zip downs and zip ups! flannels and dead animals! ... i think he must have been nervous cause he was heading to the coat check...i assumed thats why he was sweating..har har har...watch her sing a song --->

land of talk - sea foam (live at the knitting factory)

Nestle Inside my Cadbury Egg

The other day someone asked me to name ten candy bars as fast as I could(!) This taxing request to usurp time was followed with my abrupt and mute disregard. As high up the ladder as car games, compiling an 'it' list of confectionary branding is a horrible expenditure of time. Next time I hear someone talk about candy bars, I can only hope that it is in allusion to the little number out of Tampa Bay, Florida.

In Tampa, I picture popsicles melting before people get to them, the populous weary from the thickness of humidity. I picture the beaches far from the human equivalent of a bee colony, as the civilians surely douse in modest appreciation for being anything but Miami.

With some kind of extrordinary buoyancy, Candy Bars sit on the cusp between the surrealism of heat exhaustion and the tight slap of sunstroke. Trapsing like a caravan salivating for air, one of their limbs always manages to bask carefree in the sunlight.

Candy Bars - Violets

Buy it [New Granada Records] or ride it [My Space].

-Tara

AT LAST!

HOOOLY GUACAMOLE....i dont know how this snuck by me for the last five years or so...i can specifically remember searching the whole world wide web with my world wide web browser over and over and over and over in grade 10 computers...trying to find the tiniest little spec of a Built to Spill moving picture...i didnt care if it was a sequence of Doug Martsch blinking. So anyways... now that were in the future...and some dude invented you tube...well ....fuckit....just watch...its way more than i ever expected...i wanna cry:

Built to spill - car (video!)

-love-
Jeff the House

PS: Why does every summer consist of every moron with a lawn mower pulling out there Blind Melon "no rain" single ...ENOUGH O' DAT!

Pilgrims Swimming in the Lakes of Middle America

I never pictured the Mayflower sailing in with quite this much force. After wearing one of those silly white hats and holding a cornocopia completely mute for the duration of my Kindergarten's Thanksgiving play, I concluded that the pilgrims must have been rather bashful as they sailed in on the Mayflower. Between that staggering performance, our regular sing-a-longs about the 16th President (Abe), and the daily recitals of the Pledge of Alliegence, it is clear to me that I learned more about civil history in American kindergarten then I did about Canada during my entire Junior High and High School career in the Great White North.

Hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kid Dakota (states and states) also tells a story of the Pilgrim. What he seems to do is take their victorious moment in history away by stearing the helm of the Mayflower right into the rocks, the ceremonial drummer boy parading like a lemming off the decks. Toggling between nihilism "we're not transcendental, there's nothing beyond you, there's nothing to hope for" and radio propoganda "the west is a future, it's bright and metallic, the west is a promise, the west isn't over", until the track breaks like the crash of '29.

Listen to Pilgrim on the Kid Dakota My Space, then continue your exploration into the heart of middle America with the water of 10,000 Lakes.

-Tara

Slashed a Bean Bag Chair

Slashing a bean bag chair is something I could picture myself doing when I was nine, in and around the time I played a game called "Swim Like a Fish" in my neighbour's basement. In this game, the "fish" would "swim" blindfolded around the basement trying to tag the rather large bean bag carrying target that was the other "fish". Both "fish" would melodically repeat the game's title as a tracking device.

I never took out the machete in pursuit myself, but children of today are undeniably more aggressive than they were in the 90's. Let's keep this story under wraps.

As for Yo La Tengo' s new track Bean Bag Chair and the way it carries like a jovial musical parade, it's possible another benign and blistering Tengo sensation is approaching. The upcoming full-length I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (did I mention kids are getting more aggressive these days?) awaits us in September. But you already knew that.

You may not know: New Wave Hot Dogs ('87) and President Yo La Tengo ('89) exist together on one CD, a Matador re-issue that has evidently been floating around under my nose since sometime in '96. Everytime I listen to Yo La I am perplexed as to how I have made it this long without drowning amidst their entire discography. These two albums (in conjunction with Doolittle) may have saved my life from the synth pop of the late eighties if I wasn't still listening to Raffi. Oh Matador, remind me to get you something.

-Tara

I Cut Myself Loose

I have the power to shape myself into the caricature of a twisted snot nose by disclosing the creative insults I seem to conjure up about artists/people/peons on stage whom I don't tenderly absorb. Let's get started (artists/people/peons alluded to will remain nameless):

"You have to be (simaltaneously) unaligned, moody and abstract to redeem this experience at all. Here's to high probability!"

"Holy prolific rock cause! Do you really think that will win you votes in Florida? You're just a lumberjack statue from Omaha!"

But don't be fooled - Ladyhawk was a fine ride. That is outside of the drunken mastermind spilling beer all over the floor, providing a stickiness that disabled me from easily moving my feet. Yeah, audience!

For your at home exposure, Sad Eyes/Blue Eyes and The Dugout are on the Ladyhawk My Space, as previously posted. If that and a Pilsner doesn't get you rawr-ing to go (roadblocks included), buying the album and hearing My Old Jacknife will have you carrying around eight white letters in your backpack (ready for assembly) should you ever run into them.

There website is almost as flashy as their t-shirts. Check it.

-Tara

Hussy make me woozy

The other night i saw this boy (Hussain raving) play this guitar in this room and i got shivers...
he said ... "i cant remember this song, cause im really stoned right now" and then all the little girls laughed, they were his age and must have had big crushes on him...and i know if i were one of them id have a crush on him as well...ahhhh...there i did it, without mentioning Elliott Smith once....

LISTEN!

Whats This? Whats This?

Its going to be a fabulous night at yer ol' lucky bar tonight! the one chord song wont be there!
three other fabulous locally localish bands will...

links will do for now (this is the first day and i (we) dont know how to upload an mp3 yet!)

Band: Ladyhaaawk!

Sound like: A rockslide

From: somwhere in vancoukelowna

Why should you watch!?: hair growing on face

www.myspace.com/ladyhawk

Building Steam From a Grain of Salt (Again)

Many things start from swimming in monochromatic filth: wars, airplane trips, a first sip of wine on a day of ambiguous weather, making a blog at two o'clock in the afternoon while wearing a sarong and still sipping your first cup of coffee.

Innocently running around the blogosphere listening to mp3's, the tracks were screaming (oh great, something else that yells) at my nine hour musical deficit initatiated from sleep:
"Here kitty, kitty, kitty (cat)...look what I have inside this box!"

And so I decided (while marveling at the wonder of it all): if the bandwagon's red, I'll join in. Sure enough, it was a rich rouge (made in Indonesia), and that's a good enough reason to start one of these time-sucking, music mongering, emotionally persuasive, two-dimensional blocks of space. Mmmm.

Actually it was my roomate Jordan's idea.

-Tara