I spent the last two nights working on my sculpture project until 4 in the morning. I’ll get some photos and put them up on here sometime. Let me tell you, procrastination does not make one feel good. Especially one who lives on a gramp0meter. Let me describe to you what the grampometer is. It is when your body shuts down around 11:00pm, or in the first 15 minutes of a movie, regardless of your intent. Needless to say I used some tactics like loud dance music and coffee (something I have been drinking a lot here at Pockleton) to get through the long nights. Overall, I think it was a great success.
Anyway, I just wanted to write about this band called Hellogoodbye. I know what you’re thinking, it’s pop-punk with keyboards and it is awful. Well, that is what I thought it was when I first heard them. Now if you know me or know me well enough to get to talking to me about pop-punk music you know that it stands for everything that I hate. The thing is, I heard them while I was getting a ride to Wal-Mart the other day and I heard a song with vocoded vocals and dance beats and I asked who I was riding with what it was. They said it was Hellogoodbye. I said “No way, when did they get good?” It turns out that they disguise that generic pop punk voice with a vocoder, sing about love, and bust out the dance beats; they are Daft Punk for the emo kids.
Granted not all of their songs are like that, and some really grate on me, but man I was so surprised when they had one or two good songs.
Here (In Your Arms) – Hellogoodbye (Youtube)
Ok, today I really shouldn’t be writing on this, I’ll make a pact to get out of here at 9, and back into the lab to work.
Anyway, I was procrastinating as usual and found a great post at
sonoroma.net. Apparently on tour right now, NIN collaborated with the great Peter Murphy of
Bauhaus, and did some songs from NIN and some from Bauhaus. It’s some great stuff.
So that’s really cool. I am excited.
To top it off, apparently the faint played 4 new songs in San Francisco. They were “The Geeks were Right”, “Metal Hawks”, “Fish in the Womb”, and “Seduced”. I read all this at
More than Milk, where they had a link to live version of the “
The Geeks were Right.”
More guitar oriented this time around, I am excited to hear new stuff from them!
2007 is a great year for music.
I really should be working on a project right now, but instead, I am on here writing again. 3 posts for 3 days. This is either healthy expression combined with professional enthusiasm or an addiction. I’m not ready to say what I think it is yet.
So the new Bloc Party album came out a little while ago. Honestly, I never liked Bloc Party that much, I remember arguing with people that their sound was a little all over the place (skittery, jumbled, mismatched) and that other bands that had been released around the same time (The Bravery) were a more focused and in and of themselves a complete package. That’s right, I like the Bravery more than Bloc Party. Mostly because of their sweet sweet keyboards, and that their front man really can’t sing and is always drunk. Anyway, back to Bloc Party, I do like “Banquet”, and I think one or two songs on the new disc might be enjoyable too.
Artist: Bloc Party
Title: A Weekend in the City
Kele Oleorke’s vocals sound like a timid king riding atop a crashing wave of instrumentation. That being said, the instrumentation is more lush and rich when compared to their first album but the quiet moderate tempo to brash jittery middle and crashing end formula is rarely abandoned at all throughout the entire CD. The outstanding singles are “The Prayer” (4) and “I Still Remember” (9), the former being a more tribal track that reminds me of TV on the Radio a little, and the latter, while being the best track on the album, has a few of the same notes from Wham’s “Last Christmas”, it jars me out of the song, but overall it’s a lighter more agile song that is a pleasant listen.
Video for “I Still Remember”
Buy “A Weekend in the City” by Bloc Party
So, I got up this morning and didn’t know what to do, or where I’d get the motivation to do it. So, what do I do? I sit at my computer. This is the default action that I perform when there is no alternate stimulus to draw me into something else. Anyway, where do I go on my computer? The music player and the internet. Then, listening to the new CD’s I have to review, I realized that writing up reviews would be a productive and acceptable endeavor. So without further stalling, here’s my first review for next week.
Artist: Andrew Bird
Title: Armchair Apocrypha
A consistently mellow mélange of violin, whistling, and minimal guitar. Unlike his previous album “Mysterious Production of Eggs”, there’s no magical singles that roar into existence with ethnic/indie flair (Skin is My, Fake Palindromes), there’s also no 2 to 3 songs in one song rambling either. “Heretics” (4) makes slight allusions to “Fake Palindromes” using its violin bits. The witty lyrics this time around involve being grateful that “It’s Fatal”, thank god. The chill break beats and wafting violin of “Simple X” (7) made it my favorite track on the album. “Scythian Empire” has a gentle multi-folk-instrumental-build that bounces like a bike ride through a small European town. This time around Andrew Bird doesn’t knock your socks off, he carefully pulls them off. Either way, you’re still barefoot.
Simple X Live at Bonnaroo
Buy Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird
