Toys and Tiny Instruments , a shambling goodtime rock band from Brooklyn, NY, are exactly as they sound. They play their sets with toys and tiny instruments. There is a whole mess of them – like six or eight humans are onstage when the Toys play – but they pull it off since their instruments are so tiny. No, I'm kidding. That's not why they pull it off. They actually fucking rock, and their songs are stylish pop gems that speak for themselves. Some Toy Band members rocking out [...]
Because you know I love drama, and YouTube clips — why else did I spend an unmentionable amount of minutes watching Coco T's channel last night? But Coco doesn't really make music that much, so let's post something else — here's this video from cute-as-buttons English cabaret duo Bitter Ruin. They've started posting some Christmas posts today, and the song they've chosen is a work-in-progress called "Clinging On," set in a holiday living room. They threaten to take this video down if we watch it too much because it's "rough" or whatever, but as I myself am a [...]
My Left Tit are nine bored, horny friends in Queens who decided to start a band. What other reasons do you need, really? At the moment, they're less an actual "band" than a wad of inside jokes and fake backstories. But they're casually talented and gleefully vulgar, and beneath their smutty odes to dicks and queefs you can feel real creative impulses at work. I briefly hung out with these kids a few times last year, before they got to writing songs. As near as I can tell, they're in that post-college [...]
I've only been listening to straight-up doom sounds. But hear me out. There's a lot of gorgeousness in doom. Why else would we love the silent napalm opening of Apocalypse Now ? This album, Sabbath Assembly's Restored To One (June 2010) is doom melody of the finest order. It's gorgeous Age Of Aquarius-style choir psychedelia, controlled and chilling. And the origin story is truly fascinating: the songs are sourced from the hymnal of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. This church was a 1960s cult formed by an enigmatic [...]
I found myself in Boston once again. This time I had brought along a traveling companion, someone to act as a photographer and, perhaps, mitigate (or at least document) the various horrors that consistently befall me whenever I attempt to do anything with my life besides huddle in a darkened room under a pile of blankets and cats. In a twist worthy of a Greek tragedy, the most terrifying moment of all occurred at the hands of this same person when he startled myself and the occupants of a nearby SUV by, apparently, being taken with a sudden notion of [...]
Saul Williams posted a new song called "Explain My Heart" earlier today. The song is from his upcoming Volcanic Sunlight , and it's tribal-beat driven, rocking, and punctuated by a few bit of spoken word (but not annoyingly like what people usually mean when they say "spoken word" — you know what I mean by this). You can listen to the song at the below YouTube vid, or download it in its entirety by signing up for Saul's email list. Click here to view the embedded video. [...]
Saul Williams posted a new song called "Explain My Heart" earlier today. The song is from his upcoming Volcanic Sunlight , and it's tribal-beat driven, rocking, and punctuated by a few bit of spoken word (but not annoyingly like what people usually mean when they say "spoken word" — you know what I mean by this). You can listen to the song at the below YouTube vid, or download it in its entirety by signing up for Saul's email list. Click here to view the embedded video. [...]
Hey guys. I'm really busy trying to write a book, but now and again I get the chance to read Twitter, and when I do it's often 50 Cent's hilarious updates (why is he dating Chelsea Handler?). But today South African hip hoppers Die Antwoord tweeted their new video, and I have to say "Evil Boy" blew my mind a little and I decided I should share with Girlpants. Hmm, let's see, there are a lot of dicks in this video, so it's not really safe for work, but you shouldn't be reading [...]
I don't want to do this post, but I really should. I hate writing about shows, and I hate reading posts about them. But last night I saw a great, great show. This post is for all thirty some-odd people who made it out to The Met on a rainy Sunday night in Pawtucket. (*pictured here, a stage set for an absent audience, replete with basic instruments and mood*) THE BOYS WHO CRIED WOLVES [...]
Fall begins: sunstreaked schoolbuses, pumpkin beers fer sale, Obama in Martha's Vineyard, crabby homeless, and, of course, some great upcoming releases. Put away your girlpants, and get ready to put on your girllong-johns. Marnie Stern — Marnie Stern [ Kill Rock Stars ] To me, a self-titled album several records into a career means a reboot, or at the very least a repositioning, but for Marnie [...]
""Hailing from Springfield, Missouri" frequently precedes SSLYBY's introduction in write-ups and reviews, that association of band and place meant to locate the name in a homey, small-town sound. But the thing is, the band isn´t really from anywhere — I mean to say, yes, they have a hometown, and of course they go to bed at night somewhere , but the need to preclude description with location (oh, they´re from that specific town ) is entirely at odds with what they write and sing about. Way back on "Oregon Girl" from Broom , Will announces to his [...]
K so lately I've been loving the song "Your Woman" by White Town. The songwriter, Jyoti Mishra, said of the tune: "I was trying to write a pop song that had more than one perspective. Although it's written in the first person the character behind that viewpoint isn't necessarily what the casual listener would expect." The gender ambiguity is one obvious discussion point; so is the somewhat broken narrative. Anyhow, this song has been coming up for me lately. Other pretty big hits that I now really love from the 90s that I didn't love at the time and/or that [...]
Newsflash: Unless you live in Portland or some other possibly mythical "cool" and "rainy" place, right now it's hot and summer. So let's listen to music and also read about it instead of going to Coney Island and staring at weirdoes (or busting open a fire hydrant and dousing our body parts in it/making our children run through it/giving our gypsy cabs a free carwash with it, as denizens of Bushwick, Brooklyn are wont to do. Believe me, I've called 311 more than once already to come shut down abandoned, gushing hydrants. Old Man Niina isn't a water waster). (That's [...]
If 2004 was kinda-sorta the start of "wolf" names a-go-go, then I'd venture that 2009 was the year of the girl names: Dum Dum Girls, US Girls, Parenthetical Girls, Vivian Girls, and then, of course, Girls. Now, I'm not the first to venture this (see here , here and here ), but it's nevertheless remarkable that these naming trends produce big batches before quickly getting to a series of self-referential names about names in the years to follow. If I had the patience or skill to do some sort of infographic for it, you'd see a [...]
Please excuse my non-postage pals, I'm away in Spain for a few weeks, making friends and meeting strangers. As a consequence of my travels, I have (understandably, I hope) left behind my technologies for a lighter adventure. I'm not naked though, so I can post here and there as available. I was forewarned about the cultural journey I would soon embark upon (fried hard roe, white pidgeons, cervesa with real cerevisiae) but not about its various sounds. I write now from the centre of El Arenal (they have wifi), where the music is probably that new Jacob [...]
I stirred. I was not certain what had awoken me. Even with awareness returning to me, I could feel something sapping my energy and my strength. Sucking the very life out of me. With a cry of rage, I forced myself to my feet, shaking off the last of the feeling of lethargy. I took in my surroundings in a split second. I was in the Girlpants office; in fact, at my desk, though I did not remember arriving there. I was surrounded by dark, faceless, half-transparent men, who were stumbling backwards, taken by surprise by my sudden [...]
Mas y Mas were introduced to me by a certain ex-waitress-at-a-strip-club on a recent jaunt down to Richmond. Let me set the scene: walking to the gas station for cigarettes you might see a dude sitting on his porch blowing on his digeridoo (thusly named Digeridude), too many cute girls riding bikes to count, and if you're lucky, girlpants' good friend Will in a dress, trying in vain to score a Craigslist Missed Connection. Mas y Mas, hailing from nearby NoVA, were a perfect soundtrack to this scene. They're at once fidgety and disaffected, smart enough to [...]
This is a shorty post, but I wanted to bring your attention to this video — last week, loads of brilliant musical acts got together for the purposes of fundraising for Chris Knox. Overall, it seemed that Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel was the draw of the evening, but the fundraiser itself was a huge success. Now, I know that this video is somewhat awful, but the audio is decent, and on it you can hear how beautifully excited the audience was — holding back an electric hum for what seemed like the entire time. It was [...]
This is a shorty post, but I wanted to bring your attention to this video — last week, loads of brilliant musical acts got together for the purposes of fundraising for Chris Knox. Now, I know that this video is somewhat awful, but the audio is decent, and on it you can hear how beautifully excited the audience was — holding back an electric hum for what seemed like the entire time. It was the sweetest audience I've seen in a long time. Click here to view the embedded video. [...]
It is with interest that I've been following this weird week (month) of bizarre endorsements – does it not seem like everyone is shilling for someone these days? Some are artistic collaborations, some are out-of-genre forays, some are fundraisers, and some are straight-up curious wtf moments (like when Bob Dylan teamed up with Victoria's Secret). Here are a few of my favorites genre mixups and lateral pop culture moves of the past week. Iggy Pop and the Stooges played Ray-Ban's rerelease party for the Aviator glasses . More [...]
Girlpants
Album Review: alt-J – An Awesome Wave
Azealia Banks – ’1991′ & ‘Van Vouge’
[LISTEN] Gotye (Passion Pit Remix)
Big Boi & Theophilus London (feat. TRE LUCE) - 'She Said OK'
