What Girls from the Midwest Are All About

This time last year I was all about 2007.  New Local H!  The debut from local artknockers Apes & Androids (myspace)!  2007 was totally gonna rock!

So... Let's hear it for 2008?

The A&A boys have a title, finally - Blood Moon - and a new track, and let's...

Apes & Androids - Golden Prize (mp3)

...oookay, then.  A bit like Wayland Flowers stuck his hand up Beck's ass and started snapping his fingers.  But in a good way?  This doesn't qualify as aggressively weird, anymore.  Harp and timpani and Muppet howls and cheek pops and a lot of Princing around, sure, why not.  Sometimes it's good to blur the line between Visionary and Goofball, amazing and amusing.  One man's ecstasy is another's frustration.  And so on.  Not what I was expecting, and there's always good and bad that comes with that. 

I shouldn't have any expectations!  I've never seen them live!  (My showgoing schedule has gotten erratic at best, as has their showputtingon schedule.)  I don't know their names - I prefer to think of them as a collection of shiny dudes - and I've heard exactly five of their songs.  But three of those are good'uns.

Mummenshanz meets Busby Berkeley meets a bunch of your friends in sleeping bags.  "Radio" has an awesome fuzzy bassline, very ably shifts from electro-clap New Wave to big beat psychedelia.  Band's best when they're working a full sound because they're great with contrasts.  They're ace on the vocal harmonies and have at least one impressive falsetto going on in there.  And they're rhythmically provocative without ever getting mathily overconcerned.  On.  Point.

2006 feels five years ago, and waybackwhen I'd wearied of dancey-dancey New Waveness.  (Never takes much.)  It would have been easy enough to forget "Radio" as a strong entry in an overrun genre had it not been for the persistent buzz over the band's live act and their awesome, awesome follow-up. 

"Hot Kathy" was a fat slice of synthed-up glam, rock you could sink your doomchoppers-doomchoppers into.  Again, contrasts:  Its punchy, arch verses soothe into that lush "Am I this lonely?" bridge; the retrofuture keyboard solo gives way to a tribal beat.  When they mix it all together and add those Ooooos - cribbed from some Aladdin Sane track I can never seem to find - you wake your friends and call your neighbors and gather everyone together for the oncoming, ongoing apocalorgasm.

(Video from Gothamist's Movable Hype, last year.  Yes, they were joined by a traditional Korean rhythm ensemble; the band's also brought out zombie dancers and cheerleaders.)

That song is huge.  Don't care how tall your platform boots are, ain't never gonna look the fucker in the eye.  The song's so awesome it makes you want to write songs about how awesome it is.  That song's so awesome it was banned in Vermont(*).  I love me a good hundred-fifty-second ditty, but the last part of "Hot Kathy" could go on for a solid six months and I'd wouldn't bitch once.

I'm all for a Glam revival as long as I don't have to dress for it.  Because under the wigs and the glitter is sexy, silly, simple Rock and Roll.  Which brings us to "Golden Daze," which is a lot of bits and pieces held together more by momentum than anything else, which feels like it's designed to get you from track A to track C.  Still sexy and silly, sure - I laugh at that little "Yeah!" every single time; Apes & Androids doesn't seem much interested in simple.  Just don't overthink everything, guys.  Ambitious fun is still fun, and contrasts are cool, but you don't want to clash.

(*) Not actually banned in Vermont.  Not yet, at least.

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(Local H, since I care, also has an album title.  12 Angry Months will be in a store near you sometime before the we exhaust world's supply of drinkable water.  Maybe.)

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From Art-Glam to Garage Glam.  Submitted for your inevitable disapproval:

Semi Precious Weapons - Magnetic Baby (mp3) (download album)

Semi Precious Weapons - Time Zones (mp3) (download album)

Semi Precious Weapons come with red flags aplenty, and they wave them in your face.  Their myspace page links to Hot Topic.  They're Perez-approved ("Not my cup of tea!" sez one unlikely comment).  The power chordage will have the monkeys over at the P-fuck pissing their mouths.  The band's from Greenpoint and everyone knows that they should be from Bushwick, now, sheesh.

Weapons (and that missing hyphen makes me feel so dirty - I usually carry a spare, just in case) lives, dies on the back of frontman Justin Tranter.  And bitches he's gonna let you know it.  The man goes splat all over his lyrics, for good and ill, and if you can get past his proud obnoxiousness it's awful tough to take your ears off him.  Tranter's been around for a few years, has a couple records that (from what samples I've heard) hew towards breathy, confessional piano ballads.  He wears custom-made outfits and black-eye makeup that implies those little emo kids don't know the meaning of the word pain.

This band isn't emo, though.  The modest reach of the music assures that.  While Tranter's wailing within an angry inch of his life, his group's playing simple-stupid blues-based rock-roll.  Ballads - like "Time Zones," above, which God help me I sort of love - are now arena-sized, lighter-bait.

Sometimes too simple-stupid; if you're looking to intellectualize your listening experience then you're bound to find this stuff dull.  It's not supposed to be brain surgery.  But it doesn't have to feel like dental surgery, either.  (There's a great scene in one of the "reality shorts"/EPK bits (exec produced Barbara Kopple, of all people) where (former?) guitarist "Chest Rockwell" (!) is fucking around with a dissonant riff.  When Tranter tells him to play something "realistic," he says, "Whatever.  Fine.  Let's just do the same safe shit we always do."  To which the singer says:  "Yeah, please.")  "Magnetic Baby" has that great lyrical hook - "I been magnetic since I was a baby!" - but the chorus is sort of a disappointing fist-pumper.  There's a lot of half-great stuff.

They're not awful.  They're not, say, Louis XIV.

Tranter likes songs about self-destructive women and how fabulous he is.  Mostly mundane, lyrically, but the disc serves up the occasional quotable nosh ("I can't pay the rent but I'm fucking gorgeous... I gave up food because the shit's expensive" ("Semi Precious Weapons"), "Sometimes I cry because it makes my eyes look bluer/Sometimes I bleed because red is a good color for me" ("Rock and Roll Never Looked So Beautiful")) and the odd bit of effective, undersold street poetry ("She's the date rape queen/She's always passing out/We're not sure if she's drugged/That's just what she does" (from the Stonesy "That's Kunt" (Tranter's set on promoting the use of one of the last ixnay words in America as a positive exclamation)).

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I don't really <3 them.  It sort of <2 them.  But it's been a long holiday weekend and I don't want to think too much and that's just what this shit's for.  They've got more sass than smarts, but they've got sass in spades.  If you let them, they'll satisfy your rock jones for a bit.

They're giving their new record, the Tony Visconti-produced We Love You, away for free.  FREE!  Here.  It's one of the more sensible free-music marketing schemes, hoping that glam-rock fans will buy the band's lip gloss and jewelry and whatnot.

SPW's currently playing the last few dates of a Midwest tour. Next NYC show is listed on their myspace as being at Rebel on 12/7, but Rebel's site has other plans. 

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I didn't need all that extra cred, anyway.

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Thanksgiving involved food and family and Foghat.  I'd never played Guitar Hero before, wasn't very good at it.  Shred?  Butcher!  The game still gave me a pass, though.  "You Rock!" it told me.  Guitar Hero's much like teh blogs, then:  It'll love you lots even when you suck.  (Come Christmas, I'm sure Guitar Hero will totally ignore me.)

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Twenty-seven seconds left in the fourth quarter, your team's down by five, it's fourth and goal and you have the ball on your opponent's one yard line.  So what do you do, Gus Frerotte?  What do you do?

You fumble the snap!  Of course!  Just how we drew it up in practice.

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Rhino just released a 4CD set focusing on UK indie and shoegaze music from the '80s and '90s. I've little interest, but it's fun watching folks do the Brit Box Bitch.  AllMusicGuide's blog (who knew?) has followed the guide's low (for them) **1/2 review with a week's worth of whining (1-2-3-4... get tags, children).  And Soundbites has posted two-and-a-half CDs' worth of supplementary should've-beens.  He also points out that I Am Fuel, You Are Friends is giving away a copy of the thing that seems to leave everyone dissatisfied.

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"I love blood." - Morningwood's Chantal Claret, Age 9, ON OPRAH.  Kudos, Music Snobbery.

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The end of the year is coming and people are listmaking and whatnot.  Undecided on whether the Bloggregate will happen, here.  Decision coming soon.

Stereogum's doing their Reader's Choice bit; if you're a reader, you've probably already chosen.  I went over there and read some - to, like, eligify myself and shit - and chose (1. Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline.  2.  Miranda Lambert - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.  3.  M.I.A. - Kala... though I'm not really sure that's how any final list would go).

And holy bloomin' onion I nominated Kevin Barnes for Ms. Indie Rock.

I didn't vote for Best Music Video, mostly because I don't watch them.  But afterwards I realized I should have, if I could have, voted for La Blogotheque's whole Takeaway Concert Series (if you've got the funny accent it's all "Les Concerts à emporter" n'shit).  "Arcade Fire in an Elevator" felt like a stunt - a great stunt! - but a lot of the appeal of their one-take wanderings is just the taking of music to the out-of-doors.

Here's Annie Clark - inside and out - showing us why she'd make the worst roommate in all the world:

tags: apes and androids  semi precious weapons  st vincent  

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