Hot Damn Jamz 11: No Racket Required
March 19th, 2009 | 4:14 pm est |
It’s been eleven weeks of Jamz now and they just keep getting hotter. We say that every week, but dammit, it’s true. This week we have twee disco (tweesco?) from NYC, 90’s indie rock revivalists, a new slice of awesome from the DFA label, some more noise (we will never tire of noise!) and the 12th, and possibility best, band named Girls we’ve run across. At least one of these bands will be the best thing you hear all week.
Action Beat
On tracks like “Le Chap,” Bletchley, England’s aptly named Action Beat pile frenetic guitars on top of kinetic drums, and play tug-of-war with noise and melody in a way that should bring smiles to Sonic Youth and Battles fans’ faces.
The Bronsteins
Fronted by a moonlighting member of the Absentee, the London trio play a pleasant and cheerful mish mash of lo-fi twee pop, punky pop and folky pop that won’t set the world on fire but if they keep writing songs as immediate as Speed of Light, they might give it a good swift kick or two.
Cinemasophia
With their boy-girl vocals, dive-bombing guitars and rambunctious hooks, Cinemasophia recall the early-to-mid ’90s heyday of bands that weren’t quite dream-pop but weren’t straight-up indie-rock either (St. Johnny and Radial Spangle, anyone?). Check out “Dislodge from Thee.”
Girls
The slacker bedroom recordings of Christopher Owens and company are worth a listen, that is, if you can find ‘em in Google.
In Interview
This NYC band contains trace elements of the member’s previous band Toulouse (who released a buried treasure of a post-punk revival album New Points New Lines in 2001) but adds herky jerky disco underpinnings and sweetly sultry female vocals and comes out sounding real nice.
Moon Unit
DFA does it again with Moon Unit, an oddly elegant electro-pop duo from Berlin who excels at being frosty and sensual at the same time, as on “Hot Chocolate Boy”.
The New Lines
This Chicago group combines the good parts of Stereolab, the Magnetic Fields and Broadcast into something very familiar, but not in a derivative or lazy way, more like warmly inspired.
Slow Down Tallahassee
At first glance, this charming Go-Gos’ inspired girl-pop group seems sweet as sugar, but the sentiments of “A Little Hex for You” are pretty damn vicious.
We Have Band
We have band? Me have bread. Bread good. Fire bad! Fire baaaaad!
It’s hard for me to believe that any of these bands will be the best thing I will hear all week, when Todd Rundgren’s “Something/Anything” is spinning on my turntable.
I really like Slow Down Tallahassee. Kind of reminds me of the Pipettes. I nominate Man Plus for this, again. Saw them with the Handsome Furs and they blew me away.
Well, take it off the turntable and throw it out the window because it’s time to dig what the new breed are saying!!
On second thought, you may be right. Maybe “best new thing” would have been a better choice of words.