Wednesday 11 March 2009

A couple of bands for Spring

After another fantastic podcast provided by All Songs Considered, once again featuring former Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein, I've discovered a couple of fantastic new bands. The show was about the upcoming SXSW (South by Southwest) music festival in Austin, Texas, an annual music and film festival, one of the largest of its kind in the United States. The official website of this year's event is here.

The first band is a group of nine from Albany, New York. They're called Sgt Dunbar & the Hobo Banned. One of the tracks of their MySpace-page has a genius title: "A March Through Charles Mingus' Garbage Pile"

Sgt Dunbar & the Hobo Banned - Weight



This is a band called Explode Into Colors, a self declared Dub/Punk trio from Portland, Oregon.



Finally from the acts I discovered on All Songs Considered yesterday, The Entrance Band from California. This sounds like it came straight from the Sixties.

The Entrance Band - Grim Reaper Blues



In other news (though also mentioned in the podcast, but I knew this before), one of my favourite singers, Mirah, has released a new record called "(a)spera". She came out with a collection of previously unreleased songs last year ("The Old Days Feeling") but this is new material. The newly layouted Pitchfork reviewed it yesterday and uses the phrase "deftly placed vocal harmonies that recall early Cat Power". Because this is the way its going to be from now on: there is a clear distinction between the early and the current Cat Power, one that might be almost impossible to bridge.

Cursive, a band I discovered because they were on the same lable as Bright Eyes (Saddle Creek) back in 2003 but who have actually been active since 1995, released a new record called "Mama, I'm Swollen". It's a follow-up to their 2006 album "Happy Hollow" which I enjoyed, although the angry criticism of religious dogmatism wasn't quite a match to The Thermals geniusly unsettling portrait of a fictional religious fascist state on "The Body, The Blood, The Machine". I enjoyed the record when I first listened to it but it doesn't quite live up to previous ones, especially "Domestica" and their masterpiece "The Ugly Organ". My favourite song is "Mama, I'm Satan" - with the lines "The world was built on ego, was built on slaves, was built on a tickle between our legs / come on you big strong men, you wouldn't have it any other way".

And, to round it up, an accidental discovery: Jeffrey Lewis' Quick Biography of Barack Obama.



1 comment:

? said...

I am in love with your taste of music. Thanks for the links.