What you want can be different from what you need

Call me old fashioned, call me un-punk or dis-indie-franchised, but every time I hear a new band that is achieving genius in their own little room in the world of music, I want everyone to hear, love and accept them for the genius that they are. Is it because I want to share this beauty and enlightenment, this joy that I get from listening to them? Is it because I like rooting for success for the ones that deserve it? Or is it just the plain fact that 80% of mainstream music sucks a big fat dick. And lately, popular music has been choking on that dick and puking on your lap. Call me old fashioned again, but I’m not into getting puked on. However, when it comes to bringing enlightenment to the public and cleaning up the vomit on their lap, there are a few difficulties. For starters, some people liked to be puked on and aren’t down with a nice hearty, sensual blow job. You know, maybe a little deep-throating and a swallow and smile at the end. The beautiful art of fellatio.

OK, enough with the dick-in-mouth metaphors. Some people couldn’t conceive beauty if their name was Mary and God himself impregnated them. Sucks for them. Then there’s the simple problem of taste (I could make another dick reference but I won’t). Some stuff isn’t for everyone. Please see: marijuana, homosexuality, religion, democracy, etc. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s hard to please everyone. Then there’s the simple fact that some bands don’t want to be discovered. Some bands, when there in the bigger room, might not know what to do and shit on themselves. The Strokes did it, ruining their cool pants with rancid new wave diarrhea. Nirvana started to, but then got to the toilet and Kurt flushed. I just wish bands got what the deserved. All this being said, go check out White Denim. They’re from Austin, one of the coolest music scenes of the moment. They play a mash-up of genres that’s difficult to describe. They’ve got a prog-funk-punk-soul thing going. Bottom line, they can play their instruments and have a lot of soul, two things often traded for “being cool”. Give them 5 listens, minimum. If you don’t “get it” in 5, try them one more time. I guarantee you’ll at least appreciate the musical genius even if they’re not for you.

Dear M.O.F., Thank you. Signed Daniel

No, it wasn’t the most exciting, shocking, or entertaining, but dammit, it was worth every single penny to see the most professional rock n roll concert I’ve ever attend. The venue, with its 150-year-old architecture and acoustics crisper than a fresh bag of Doritos, was the perfect showcase for 3 of music’s top song writers at the top of their game coming together like a giant indie rock Voltron called Monsters of Folk. For almost 3 hours these gentlemen, dressed in full suits, served up a 4 course meal of tasty tunes from their own separate catalogs and the M.O.F. album released earlier this year. The highlights consisted of sweet, buttery ballads marinated in each singer’s unique voice and lightly kissed with a zest au guitaire acoustic. Conor Oberst sounded silkier than ever, only returning to his wounded-and-angry boy hiss that we all fell in love with on his Bright Eyes renditions. M. Ward’s sexy Leonard Cohen minus a pack a day croon stole the show on his solo outings. But Jim James stole it right back with his long-lunged southern man-angel howls. The rest was the pure fun flare of three men who loved what they do and do what they love well. This was not a “show”, it was a “concert”. Thank you M.O.F. for putting on the best “concert” I’ve ever seen.

Wal-Mart continues it's complete domination of everything, including indie music

Wal-Mart is now endorsing indie bands, labeling them as the "next big thing". The French band Phoenix is the latest. I'm all for good bands becoming recognized and popular without changing for the label or the common people or "the man", but I'm tired of Wal-Mart having it's giant dollar-sign-shaped hand in EVERYTHING. Stick to what you know best: aging "classic rock" bands greatest hits albums, Nickelback, and maybe the next Kings of Leon album. Leave the rest alone.
To view the madness, click here

P.S. This ad (and possibly this blog) brought to you by AXE HAIR

so i'm a little late on this one....

The name of the band is Battles. Their album entitled Mirrored. Their sound: the soundtrack to the manufacturing and training of a futuristic army with one agenda, total world domination. This band will make even the slackest stoner put down the Pringles and pick up a purpose, even if that purpose is to find the best weed ever (or the tastiest can of Pringles). This is the music to move a generation...in a very methodical, robotic fashion towards greatness. It's almost entirely instrumental, which may turn some of you off, but dammit give it one listen. The few vocals that are here are distorted and hard to translate. The best are the Wizard of Oz soldier chant on helium on the second track "Atlas". Put on headphones and take a walk, or do some chores, and I guarantee you'll never feel lazy or lethargic again.

French kiss some french girls

Computers making music giving you a bad feeling in your insides? Does Autotune kinda make you throw up in your mouth a little every time you here it? Would you like to french kiss some French girls? Than let the Japanroids blow the harddrives of your modern music with their huge guitar noise rock jams. They are just a murderous drummer and a guitarist with an itchy distortion petal who play arty relentless noise punk rock about liking girls. But don't worry, they're not a buncha eyeliner wearing, snifflin emo losers, or whiney pop punk pussies. These guys love to get drunk and french kiss French girls

My only beef with Radiohead

Radiohead makes some of the most beautiful music of any modern rock band on the planet. Their intelligent interstellar musings are the soundtrack of every college student's lonely nights. My one complaint is that they don't rock out enough. "Bodysnatchers", the "hardest" song on their most recent In Rainbows, is Radiohead at their best: churning crunchy guitars that squeal and moan on Johnny Greenwood's command sending Thom Yorke's vocals running for their lives. This type of fury seems to be happening less and less in Radiohead's career and it saddens me so. Please guys, if you are out there listening....rock like it's 1995 again.

The First of the Funeral

It starts like sunshine through your window on the nicest day of the year. A cool breeze of piano keys and guitar chords rustles your hair as you open your eyes to the lyrics. You get up and put on a 5 year old pair of jeans you your favorite t-shirt and walk down to the coffee shop. Then you walk back home, get into your Japanese-made car and drive. Where? You don't know. Do you care? No. Anything and everything will happen today. It's a day that religious peoples would call a revelation. It's a day where you might leave and never come back. "Neighborhood #1" by the Arcade Fire is this day every time I hear it. Funeral, the album it appears on, is a religious experience and this is the first hallelujah.

The black Radiohead?

TV on the Radio is this generation’s Radiohead. Yeah, that’s right. You heard me. I’ll say it again so it will have a chance to rest upon your mortal ears and soak into your soul to be processed, and then thrown back at me like Linda Blair throws pea soup. You may argue TVOTR are from the U.S. and therefore not quite as cool, classy, and intelligent as their rotten-toothed counterparts. To that I say ladies and gentlemen, TVOTR are cooler because they are black. Yeah, that’s right. You heard me. You better get used to this sorta thing if you’re gonna read these rants again. Oh, and not only are they black, they look borderline homeless. Maybe they were a few homeless friends, singing important soul songs on some dirty street of some major city when a chubby, computer nerd with tattoos walks by and asks them if they want to start what will be the defining band of the early 2000s.
Radiohead is the type of band that is in an undefined category of rock; a place where sounds seem to be pulled out of thin air and contorted until they become part a melody. They are expanding the balloon of music around them to the busting point, and their songs will be covered by kids starting generation defining bands for decades to come. TVOTR are doing the same as we speak. True, they have yet to write a concept album (see OK Computer), or an electronic album (see Kid A), but they are throwing music in all new directions and placing the bar almost too high to even do pull-ups on. They are experiment without sacrificing melody, they use electronics without selling their souls. They will be around as long as indie rock is.

a spoon full of whiskey makes the sex go down

Jack White’s newest supergroup, The Dead Weather, would like to personally thank whiskey, cigarettes, and the devil for aiding them in the fight to keep rock n roll dirty and sexy. They will never be the White Stripes when it comes to innovation and the saving of rock music as we know it (remember the late nineties, early 2000?), but they are sludge factory of sex, smoke, and sweat that restores my faith in rock. White returns to the drums, his first instrument, stating that it is easier to produce songs when you control the rhythm and backbone of every song. Allison Mosshart of The Kills provides the sultry lead vocals, while White spits dueling backing from behind the kit. Mosshart seems liberated as White’s mistress of darkness than in her day job with the Kills. Dean Fertita is White’s guitar and organ puppet, laying down those distorted-with-dirt licks that we’ve all come to love from the Stripes. The guitars, not quite as stripped and simple as the Stripes, grind and moan with White’s seventies rock beats. Live, Mosshart resembles a better looking Mick Jagger, failing and dancing about almost preaching the faith of filth to the audience. Jack White can’t help himself; coming up to the forefront to rip the closing track “Will There Be Enough Water?” The answer: no there will never be enough water to put out White’s guitar inferno. Ladies, they will wet your panties, and gentlemen, they will pitch your tent. So put on their new album Horehound and grab a partner “by the hair, and hang [them] up from the heavens”.

Tired of Michael Jackson?

Yeah, we all are. But just in case you thought you've heard every Jackson cover/remix/tribute, you probably haven't heard Discovery's rendition of "I Want You Back". It's hardly recognizable in all of it's electronic bliss. Oh and by the way, you may have never heard of Discovery, but you may have heard of Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot and his good friend Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend. Jack White couldn't even put together an indie supergroup like this one...or could he?

The Best? Maybe

Arguments over the interwebs have already started about what will be the best album indie album of ’09. Will it be Dirty Projectors random art-soul on Bitte Orca, or Animal Collective’s gorgeous psychedelic landscape called Merriweather Post Pavilion? Maybe another near perfect installment from America’s Radiohead, Wilco, or Grizzly Bear’s wondrous take on noire Brian Wilson? My pick for the debate isn’t necessarily the best, but it does have my vote for the saddest album of the year. Deer Tick’s Born on Flag Day is everything country used to—and should be: fuck, man, my life sucks, and I think about it too much so let’s crack open a beer, (you can hear that refreshing crack-fizz of a cold, cheap can on the final track, Strung) and spend a “sleepless night, painless and drugged”. You can almost smell the cheap beer and whiskey on the John Joseph McCauley III’s campfire crackle voice as he sings bittersweet sorrows into your ears while dirt plumes off the instruments with every guitar twang. The drum beats are as empty and hollow as McCauley’s hope. This will be the soundtrack to every guy getting dumped at the end of the summer by his girl who’s leaving town. It will be playing at the end of every late-night cookout, when all but three dudes are left, sitting around drinking bud out of cans and talking about how they’re not getting laid tonight.