Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
stream full album ° seen/heard ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
stream full album ° seen/heard ° buy
"S.W.A.T. Teams Are Pretty Cool" (Screaming Females/Vivian Girls, Court Tavern (New Brunswick NJ), 1-04-09)
(pics from this show from thepiratehat's Flickr)
Screaming Females - Boyfriend (mp3)(buy What If Someone Is Watching Their T.V.?)
So, some things to get excited about: I finally hauled off to see Screaming Females (myspace), of whom I've spoken before, whose What If Someone Is Watching Their T.V.? is one of those really good underheard albums, a great grower that a concerned cult will keep clutched to their chests. I picked up the band's first, 2006's Baby Teeth, which has some quality stuff, but is mostly important because in the gap between Album One and Album Two you can hear a band figuring out not only what it can do (Marissa Paternoster could always shred, may have been born doing just that), but what it wants to do. I learned that Album Three, Power Move, is coming out in April on Don Giovanni.
Screaming Females - Baby Jesus (mp3)(buy Baby Teeth)
"Screaming Females" is an appealingly blunt name, and "Boyfriend" - the screamiest, most direct punk song on T.V. - is still my best-favorite of theirs. But there's enough misdirection in their craft that even some of their obvious strengths - their tunefulness, for instance - come off as surprising. How very feminine.
"Jesus" is the final track on Baby Teeth, and - though for all I know it was the first thing they ever recorded - it sort of hints about what they'd go on and get great at: That chorus, holy fuck, it could be this soaring thing, the sort that could weather reprises ad infinitum. But it's verbally punched at and kept wanting-more short. Naturally melodic, they use attack and arrangement to de-emphasize the melody; sometimes that's as easy as having Paternoster warble the tune under her jacked-up guitar riffs and fills. T.V. is noisier and, in a lot of ways, sparer than Teeth, which can make a lot of it sound very simple. Some of what they do is seeing how little they can get away with, some of what they do is seeing how much they can get away with, some of what they do is just getting away - but they make everything feel like it belongs right where it lands. Most songs, maybe every song, features a guitar solo. And that's a positive, because it's often something left-field unexpected, frantic runs or staid bluesy stuff or NOISE or something simple and light and pretty, and always, always brief. The band follows all sorts of urges but never lets them go on long enough to lose focus; that way, they feel like ideas, not indulgences.
(Even easier to overlook, the writing is good. Along with rousing repetitive chants like "You are always talking and you never stop!" ("Theme Song") and "I will tear the heads of this culture, make my presence known!" ("Pedro"), choice lines range from simple smarts ("See all these dinosaurs? They want to rule the world." ("Dinosaurs")) to messy poetry ("Like a showgirl in a fugue of childbirth" ("Starve the Beat")).)
(((((etc);)),)).).
Screaming Females - Starve the Beat (Live)(mp3)
Screaming Females - The Real Mothers (Live)(mp3)
Paternoster's hard to see, impossible to take your eyes off. The obvious focus of the trio (she's the only one screaming, and the only female, in the band; though one of the biggest things between records is that the bass and drums started to learn what they didn't need to do, they didn't need to just plod along like a lame jam band rhythm section, kudos, boys), she wears a very warm-looking bright red neck-to-knees dress, she's wee, maybe five feet tall, keeps a bowlcut that covers all but the bulb of her nose and her jawline. This band usually does its thing in basements and the like (this gig was originally a loft party, relocated after the threat of police action), the Court Tavern has one of those half-step stages, you feel awfully lucky when you can catch a glimpse. Not that she's demonstrative. She howls sometimes, sure, you can hear that. But most of the time she's commandingly deadpan, plenty impressive just standing stiff pounding out heavy metal power chords, little girl big sound. While tuning she's actively dismissive of between-song patter; people start yelling out requests, she answers with a nonstop "blah blah blah blah blah" until someone yells "Rock Lobster!" and she says, still emotionlessly, "yeah okay." (Offstage she seems sweet and even smiles.) She doesn't need to Rock Star Overact, you just want to see what she does with that guitar.
This set was way too short; either they, or I, only started really getting into it about halfway through and then it was half-over already. Plus they only featured one song each from their previous records, and neither of those was "Boyfriend." Which means (a) I should have started seeing them a long time ago and (b) I will have to see them again soon.
That shouldn't be hard. They're playing somewhere on mystical Staten Islande tonight in a Pop Tarts line-up, then a bunch of other local things including legit stages at Maxwell's (tix) and a trio of East Coast opening slots for Throwing Muses that stops at MHoW (tix). Throwing Muses, Screaming Females, cause, effect, ha, ha. You should go, and you should buy their records, and you should join me in craving their next one.
*
Their self-released albums are not on Amazon. (If you search Amazon for "Screaming Females," the top choices are a collection of music from UK composers, a poster of JFK, and a book on female ejaculation.) You will have to buy direct at a show or at the band's online store. Not online at all: A live CD-R EP that might be called Live Music or might be called I have this really adorable dog named Roxanne She is better than your dog.
*
If you crave a primer/sampler, here's their EPK on YT. Ignore the DIY pride, roll your eyes at the horrid hipster "historian," enjoy the meat. I want to hear that Jackson 5 cover!!!
*
Paternoster also makes art and other music.
*
Dudes, if there's one single thing in this whole changehzcum-nohaterz-luv-hugs-understanding world that you can still fucking make fun of, it's people who choose to spend blocks of their spare time in chain restaurants.
The crowd was real cold for headliners Vivian Girls (myspace), which is odd because (a) this was something of a homecoming, two-thirds of the Brooklyn band used to live in New Brunswick, where they had projects like Four Way Milkshake and The Pot and the Kettle (bassist Kickball Katy gave a shout out to another defunct local act called We're Not Virgins, filled the subsequent silence with an "Anyone?"). And (b), they were better than I'd expected.
The women in the Girls have been subject to some commotion re: their inability to manage their image, something they might not have thought they had to do. A golden Pitchfork BNM ticket (I bore them no animosity when I predicted that, it was just predictable; it was a nice surprise that it came from Amy, and funny because, after she left the act off her Henry Darger-inspired post, I forwarded her their myspace page. So all this is, like, totally my fault.) brought the Todd P-stable act predictable backlash and dumb message board misogyny re: their looks. They gave an interview which gave some the impression they were snotty, and worse, took it back as just a joke (some of it clearly was, some of it didn't seem to be), and even worse, deleted the post where they took it back, etc.
The cut of this jib was that, grrr, a group of modest skill dared to declare preferences (basically, the VGs mocked people who gathered willingly at TGIFridays and said they preferred songcraft to indulgent technical wizardry); a dipshit abuse cycle wherein folks declared others' preferences unpreferential ensued. A massive display of un-specialness, all ‘round. Luckily all that was on the Internet, and no one with any functioning brain cells pays attention to anything that's on the Internet.
They're sort of annoying in person, or at least they were on stage this Sunday night, making catty comments comparing themselves to cartoons in the garish wall mural behind the stage ("That one's definitely you because she doesn't have any boobs ha ha," etc.). A FoB in the front row constantly distracted the room by engaging the band with dumb mememe in-jokes, an anonymous stranger kept perplexing them by yelling out what might have been Henry Darger references.
Vivian Girls - Where Do You Run To?(mp3)(buy)
All was fine when the three of them shut up and played. They bury their vocals in reverb, often there's little more than competence, sometimes the material's too modest. There was a weird instrument switch-off at the end to little effect (though the bassist clearly enjoys playing the drums). But lead singer Cassie Ramone cocks her head and swoons into the material - that's where your girl group comparisons are coming from, the earnestness - and when the vocal harmonies echo around you they swallow you up. It's just some girls in some band, and very occasionally, that's just enough to make the tiniest bit of magic.
*
ATTENTION: The 2008 Hype Machine Zeitgeist is out and up and running. And boy did Anthony & Co. run: It's gorgeous and navigable AND, through a partnership with Imeem, they've got FULL ALBUM STREAMS of ALL TOP FIFTY ALBUMS. That's besides links to each of the 774 participating bloggers' individual Top 10 lists, and links to buy records (which is something you should do, you should buy records).
As always, the more interesting stuff isn't at the top, but the Hype folks are (in the process of) providing links to both the raw and ranked data. So you can see, like I have, that one single person put Local H's Twelve Angry Months on their list this year. And of course, they ranked it #1.
Fun fact: Of the top fifty, four whole records are from black artists or predominantly black groups. Way to go, bloggers, change has come! (Erykah Badu was #62.) I'll do a side-by-side if I'm still alive when Pazz n' Jop comes out. But don't wait for that: Go play.
*
Keep Everybody Warm Dept.: The Prairie Cartel (myspace), the dancier Local H/Caviar side-project, has scheduled its first two live NYC shows since a one-off at CMJ 2007: Thursday, 1/29, opening for KUDU at The Studio at Webster Hall; Friday, 1/30, at The Annex, line-up TBA.
*
A trio of Emmy-t-G live-at-the-Beeb mp3s. No screaming. (via)
*
The most popular entry on the world's latest most popular OMGAwwwwwwBlog. I can't wait to launch my new project, cutethingsbeingputtosleep.blogspot.com.