Album of the Day 3/12/11
Every day, our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Saturday’s album is #689:
Shonen Knife – Brand New Knife
Shonen Knife don’t sing about choco bars or ripping the heads off Barbie dolls on this one. To be counterintuitive, we picked one of their most accessible albums, where Naoko’s guitar is multitracked and beefed up and Atsuko’s drumming is still skittish but better than anything she’d done before. By 1997, the lo-fi Japanese all-girl punk band had become an institution with a devoted cult following who didn’t care whether they’d ever actually get proficient on their instruments. In the meantime, that’s exactly what they did: for anyone who wants to claim them as kitsch relics of the 80s or 90s, eat shit and die. The classic here is the Black Sabbath parody (or homage – it could be both) Buddha’s Face. A close second is Fruits and Vegetables, a topic close to our hearts. There’s also the irresistibly catchy Wonder Wine (the Japanese version of Night Train?); the surreal E.S.P.; the amusement park tale Loop-Di-Loop; the ridiculously catchy but completely inscrutable Explosion and One Week. Here’s a random torrent.
Top Ten Songs of the Week 9/21/09
We’ve been doing this every Tuesday – to cut down on the workload here while we attend to some infrastructure things, we meant to suspend the feature for awhile. Before we do, here’s this week’s top ten. As always, you’ll see this week’s #1 song on our 100 Best Songs of 2009 list at the end of December, along with maybe some of the rest of these too. This is strictly for fun – it’s Lucid Culture’s tribute to Kasey Kasem and a way to spread the word about some of the great music out there that’s too edgy for the corporate media and their imitators in the blogosphere. Every link here will take you to each individual song.
1. Bobby Vacant & the Weary – Never Looking Back
So far this is the best single song we’ve heard this year, a defiant look back on a checkered past. Suits us just fine. From the new cd.
2. The Joel Plaskett Emergency – Drunk Teenagers
We’re late in picking up on this snide classic by the Canadian powerpop rocker. He’s at Union Hall on 10/15.
3. Karine Poghosyan with the Kokolo String Ensemble – Haydn F Maj. Piano Concerto
The fiery pianist with an equally inspired chamber orchestra behind her.
4. Sarah Lov – Tell Me How
“It is all I ever feel, like nothing good is ever real,” she laments over a catchy Aimee Mann-esque midtempo anthem. She’s at Union Hall on 10/16 at 8.
5. Izzy and the Kesstronics – Hanging Death Waves
Izzy from Uncle Fucker on guitar plus a sax and rhythm section playing weird funny surf/garage/roots stuff. They’re at Beauty Bar in Bushwick on 9/27 at 9ish.
6. String Driven Thing – Suicide
Every now and then we run across a classic like this. This is from a reunion concert by the 70s art-rock cult favorites sometime in the 90s, a bitter, somewhat brutal graveside scene for a dead rocker:
The T in contract
The I in empire
The M in muzak
The E in Ex-Lax
The S in suicide
7. Erin Hill – Girl Inventor
Classical harpist who sounds absolutely nothing like Joanna Newsom playing psychedelic pop. More like Kate Bush actually.
8. The MK Groove Orchestra – MCP
Woozy, inventive groove-driven big band jazz. They’re at Spikehill on 9/26 at 10.
9. Kulu Kulu Garden – Taking the Tray Away
Danceable Japanese noise-rock with a real screamer on vocals, cool stuff.
10. Don’t Give Small Money Chance Brass Band – It Is Raining
Brooklyn big band playing horn music from Ghana! Pretty wild.
CD Review: Shonen Knife – Super Group
To twist an already twisted album title even further, every Shonen Knife has a blog who loves them. Seriously – how can you not love Shonen Knife? Since 1980 the all-girl Japanese band’s blissfully catchy lo-fi punk-pop has been a fixture of college radio playlists and party mixes around the world. They even toured with that annoying, doomed grunge band who started the fad, and blew that band off the stage night after night. This new album, just out on Good Charamel, finds the band as fun as ever. Say what you want about their wobbly tempos (on this record, they’re actually pretty good), the fact that after all these years, nobody in the band has been able to master the English language, or that guitarist/bandleader Naoko’s chops have always been just barely sufficient to play what she writes. But she’s a walking encyclopedia of rock. There doesn’t seem to be a style she can’t lovingly appropriate and make her own, especially when she’s making fun of it. Punk pop, janglerock, psychedelia, metal, country, you name it, she puts her own devious spin on it. This new edition of the band features Naoko and drummer Etsuko joined by touring bassist Ritsuko who is now a full-fledged member of this Super Group.
As usual, the lyrics aren’t the easiest to understand, with characteristically Satie-esque song titles and even stranger subject matter. The title track is a characteristically sunny punk-pop number, Ritsuko nicking a familiar Bruce Foxton bassline – they’re all excited because their favorite band’s coming to town! The second cut has a garage punk feel: the Slug in the title has escaped his plastic bag. “Oh my goodness!” A Sabbath parody, the third track isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as the classic Buddha’s Face (from the Brand New Knife album), but it’s still great. What’s most striking is how sincere and smart Naoko’s solo is – until she decides to make it hilarious.
Deer Biscuits aren’t something you step on – they’re what you feed to the deer at the park. This one’s a country song, but through the prism of the Beatles (think Act Naturally), stiff and completely tongue-in-cheek – it is impossible to hear this song and keep a straight face. Other songs return to the garage rock vibe, evoke the Smiths and then revisit the band’s trademark punk-pop. And their cover of Jet by Wings beats the original hands-down, right down to Naoko’s perfect replication of Jimmy McCullough’s silly solo. When the band sings “I thought the major was a lady suffer-a-gette,” it’s obvious that they don’t know what that means any more than the guy who wrote it. The best cut on the album is actually the bonus track at the end, Evil Birds, a strikingly bracing, eerie psych-pop number. The whole thing is a party in a box, and a great present for someone who thinks they know a lot about music – they’ll know more after they hear this.
Upcoming New York dates are at Santos Party House on Oct 16 and Brooklyn Bowl on Nov 17. Here’s the rest of the tour schedule:
10.17.2009 –
Ithaca, NY
10.18.2009 –
Toronto, ON
10.19.2009 –
Detroit, MI
10.20.2009 –
Chicago, IL
10.21.2009 –
Minneapolis, MN
10.23.2009 –
Missoula, MT
10.24.2009 –
Seattle, WA
10.25.2009 –
Vancouver, BC
10.26.2009 –
Bellingham, WA
10.27.2009 –
Portland, OR
10.29.2009 –
San Francisco, CA
10.30.2009 –
San Jose, CA
10.31.2009 –
Visalia, CA
11.01.2009 –
Oakland, CA
11.02.2009 –
Los Angeles, CA
11.03.2009 –
San Diego, CA
11.04.2009 –
Tucson, AZ
11.06.2009 –
San Antonio, TX
11.07.2009 –
Austin, TX
11.08.2009 –
Houston, TX
11.10.2009 –
Baton Rouge, LA
11.11.2009 –
Memphis, TN
11.12.2009 –
Atlanta, GA
11.13.2009 –
Richmond, VA
11.14.2009 –
Hoboken, NJ
11.15.2009 –
Allston, MA
11.16.2009 – 8:00 pm
Philadelphia, PA
11.17.2009 –
Brooklyn, NY
11.18.2009 –
Buffalo, NY
Lucid Culture 