Hello, It's Me

It's been a while eh pard'ner? Some point this week I'm gonna gallop through a ton of review bits for the past couple months. I've been moseying on down the dusty trail and it's time to pick up the pace. I'll catch up, I promise you. Speaking of dusty trails, I'm back from my trek out to the Big Apple and I brought back a dusty trailer (my god, am I on a youtube kick or what?) for "Gold Lion" the first single off the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Show Your Bones:



Let be the first to say that I just threw up in my hand and will offer it to anyone who might be interested. What the f happened guys? Where's the reckless rock? This sounds like Gwen Stefani teaming up with Collective Soul, in a bad way. In a "I really hope Art Brut doesn't actually move to LA, because this is what it might sound like if they did like Karen O" way. The song is extremely uninspired and uninteresting and the video is a bit LA rockstar over-dramatic (sparks comin' from the drumkit is pretty hot though). Nonetheless, I'm gonna give Show Your Bones the bonafide, satisfaction-guaranteed Wu listening treatment tomorrow, which involves spacing out at work and picking at every note of the album. I still reserve high hopes. I'll report back with my findings as soon as I can gang, but first, the whirlwind review. It should be quick and impossibly pointless.

In the meantime, check out an actually awesome Yeah Yeah Yeahs video:



Yeah Yeah Yeahs play Bimbo's two nights this week (2/1-2/2) but seriously, they better bring their A-game.

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I Love New York City, Oh Yeah New York City.

I got a new computer party people. But I'm off to the Northeast for a little vacay. In the spirit of the big apple I will post the short review I had for The Strokes a few weeks ago. Also, thanks to Mr. Christian Oittenen, I've been blessed with tons of listening fodder for the next few months. Among them are new albums by Grandaddy, The Flaming Lips, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Built to Spill, Neko Case, The Concretes, Secret Machines, The Rogers Sisters, Love Is All, Boris and Stereolab. Thanks to him, I might assplode with an abundance of great new music.

Next week, my friends, we will get down. Have a fun long weekend in Frisco, suckers...

The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth (RCA)

Does anyone like these guys anymore? Nearly a month has passed since the release of the NYC elite's third full length and all anyone can talk about is We Are Scientists. Really, guys, let's be serious. First Impressions of Earth sounds like the The Strokes most experimental album to date with it's relatively complex riffage and more ambitious song structure. Off putting at first, Impressions, at the core is still a marvelous pop album full of Julian Casablancas' underrated songwriting and of course, his signature broken-down warble. It was a travesty that the brilliant and extremely overlooked Room on Fire did not receive the attention it deserved and perhaps Impressions reaches too far in order to re-establish lost ground. Songs like "15 Minutes" are neary insufferable, save for a few bursts of melodic respite. The single "Juicebox" is rough and dissonant before slowly digging into you like a parasite resting in the part of your brain that stores all the stuck songs. However, for the most part, the record is chock-full of reckless and catchy pop tunes like "Heart in a Cage", "Electricityscape", "Ize of the World" and "Fear of Sleep". And the Thin Lizzy guitar harmonies of "Red Light" reconfirms that the premier hipsters still have some swagger left their 5th of Johnny Walker. First Impressions of Earth is a humbling, sobering turn for The Strokes, as if they've been grounded to see that they are only human. And it's very encouraging to see that they've kicked around in the dirt and realize that all they can do is continue to make solid records, ignore the insurmountable expectations and realize they can't be the next Arctic Monkeys.

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A Little Quick Hello

Hey everybody. Still no computer, but I wanted to drop by and youtube this little dandy of Broken Social Scene playing Conan. Jake tiVoed it and while watching decided to call me and tell me that it was the "hottest thing I've ever seen... Emily Haines and Leslie Feist are like a sex sandwich." This I knew already but I had to see it for myself.

Enjoy friends...

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Jeez.

It's always one thing or another. Yesterday, my dear laptop (so dear that I didn't even know what make it was when the cops asked me) was heisted out of my room. Now some lucky bastard is enjoying my assorted Arrested Development mp3 clips, my desktop picture of Emily Haines and my half written murder mystery novel, ironically about a stolen laptop, a laptop made of pure gold. And diamonds.

I swear I was 1/3 of the way to writing a masterwork of short reviews of The Strokes, Gossip and Tarkio. But this not having a computer business is tough. This morning already, I've used both Panther and Jacquelyn's computer to email and browse Myspace, and I feel as if I owe them each a cheap bottle of wine or a private karaoke serenade. So I'm gonna make this brief... Updates will be indefinitely on hold, probably til mid next week when I A) find the person who did this to me and stab him in the neck B) construct my own laptop with parts of a Sega Genesis, Daniel D's busted boombox and a cheez-its box C) develop some kind of mind control ability to post what I think right onto Backfield in Motion, kind of like the Mel Gibson of What Women Want but in cyberspace D) borrow a 'puter from the 'rents. I'm very interested in what option C has to offer, but I'll probably go with D.

I'll leave you guys with a picture of the band I saw last night. They're pretty good. They do good work.


This is before they got in an invisible shell and flew to
jellybeanland with robotic unicorns soaring by their side.

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