These guys are playing Joe’s Pub, a local place this week. They have a funny name. They call themselves punk, but this song is more hard rock (and others are more theatrical). Yeah or Nay?
Category Archives: discovery
Mainland, Leave the Lights On
Very Strokes-ish, which means it sounds pretty good. It’s two years old, and would be a welcome sound on the radio. On the other hand, could there be a worse band name than Mainland?
Listening to other tunes, they are pretty good at mining the same commercial rock vein as the Strokes, but the rhythm section doesn’t hit quite as hard, and the songs aren’t quite as good. And the arrangements can veer toward, ugh, the commercial crap we try to avoid (and ambitious rockers sell their souls to achieve).
But this one just dropped, and apart from the fake English accent it’s pretty jangly and rocking.
The Traditional Fools, a medley
So, came across this band tonight. A few years old, so not new, and referencing old music mostly, but trying more.
This song, Please, is like a soul cover, but it might be an original.
This is catchy. A real cover.
I like this one because it starts out like a Crystals song, though it goes in a different direction. But there is a lot of music, harmonies and arrangement going on here. And maybe I’m thinking of the Shangri-las.
Jesus and Mary Chain, Amputation
They have a new one, same as the old one. Which is good enough.
Chazz Kaster Profile in the Nashville Scene
Who Da Fug is Chazz Kaster? Well, um, the killer guitarist in Hans Condor. The only rock ‘n’ roll band left in this world alive.
Kaster broke up the Condor a few years back because he became a dad, and because he was a dad he became a cop. Weird, eh?
But after some time spent in the Halls of Justice Nashville style, he gave up his badge and went back to bartending.
Plus playing kick-ass guitar in a great rock n roll band with better and cleverer songs than other rock bands.
You can read the profile here.
The odds of me getting to Nashville are slim. The band is in North Carolina this weekend, but that’s no better.
I want to see these guys live. That’s all I can say.
I think you can find most of their recorded work on this site if you search Hans Condor, but here’s a little reprise for those who are wondering what the fuss is about.
Here’s the coda to a tune:
Here’s their excellent music video, supporting their album, with a fine rock n roll song:
Maren Morris, My Church
Lots and lots of music sounds derivative of some other music. Sometimes that’s a bad thing, evoking the thought, Why bother? But other times the song is so right it feels absolutely fresh and absolutely classic at the same, which is the case with this new country song.
What’s extra-funny about this tune is that it is paean to listening to FM radio in the car, which is not the religious experience it once was (unless one finds one of those rare stations practicing the free form format).
Form meets function in My Church. I can’t stop playing this.
Graveyard, The Apple and the Tree
I had two chances to see Graveyard in NY this week, and I didn’t. I’m sorry about that, but it couldn’t be helped.
Here’s the first single from their new album, which is pretty darn good.
Songhoy Blues, Al Hassidi Terei
Mali was the home of the great blues guitarist, Ali Farka Toure, who channelled John Lee Hooker from across the water and brought him back home to the deserts near Timbuktu.
Songhoy Blues were formed by north-Mali musicians exiled to Bamako in the south by jihadists who banned western music in their appropriated shariahland up north. There’s a movie out about the exile of the musicians of Mali, called They Will Have To Kill Us First, which features Songhoy Blues.
I started watching this tune because of the colorful and appealing video, but I’m a sucker for Africans from all over the continent playing electric guitars, so I share this guitar music here.
Their first single was produced by one of the guys from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the video seems to have been recorded in a Soho loft in New York City. This is a rockier tune.
Pierre Kwenders at Lincoln Center
I went with some friends to see Pierre Kwenders at a small room off Broadway called the David Rubenstein Atrium last night. They regularly program free shows in the atrium, and this was the first I’ve gone to.
Kwenders is from Kinshasa, Congo, and now lives in Montreal. His band, three young Quebecois, play guitar and keyboards, various drums, and dj. It’s this last that was a little problematic. Being able to fire samples of strings and horns and chants distorts the small band vibe. Not that this world music wasn’t lush and gorgeous, it was, but when all that recording came to fore things started to sound more like a Peter Gabriel record than a four-piece band on a small stage playing for a couple hundred people. Live became qualified.
The best songs were popping and angular, with a little space between beats. Kwenders is a crooked and crafty dancer, a strong vocal presence in three languages (French, English and, maybe, Lingala–the predominant Kinshasa language), and a charming host. This was his first show ever in the US, and he got the decidedly mixed crowd (all ages, all colors, many nationalities) on their feet and singing and clapping along. The song that got us to the show was Mardi Gras, on record a Francophone hip hop hipster melange, but lacking the rap parts live seemed more a cajun lament.
Another good one was a raucous reggea-ish tribute to the Rumble in the Jungle called Ali Bomaye! This is a much sparer version than what the band played last night, but in a way the spareness is a tonic, an open window into Kwender’s lovely voice and lyrical songwriting.
Meet the Metz
Canadian noise rockers. What could go wrong? Maybe nothing.
The interesting thing for me, listening to their second album today, called II, is that they sound great, awesome, excellent, and yet it was hard not to think that I might like Nirvana or the Pixies more. Or more than 20 years ago.
I listened to their whole II album while making dinner tonight, and there isn’t anything about their sound I don’t like. Will I ever go back? Probably not. Musicianship is cool, a retro sound, too, but there should be something new. That’s not here.