This was one of the many records I lost at college by innocently agreeing to lend it to ‘a friend’ never to see it again. Truth be told I didn’t much like it and probably bought it as much for the Vaughan Oliver sleeve as the music. And I don’t know why but the title of this record is always Hunkapapa in my head, I guess it just flows from the tongue better.

New Zealands finest, The Bats, har kommit ut med en ny singel på Slumberland och det låter lika fint som vanligt. De har hållit på i 25 år och givit ut 7 fullängdare samt ett gäng singlar och EPs. Kan verkligen rekommendera Daddy´s Highway från 1987 eller nån av de tidiga singlarna som gavs ut på Flying Nun (om ni skulle lyckas få tag i nån). Det finns också en ganska schysst samling, Thousands of tiny luminous spheres.

That´s how you´ll find me

You don´t belong

Hela EPn samt samlingen m.m. finns på Spotify

A round up of the latest releases from the most excellent Slumberland Records featuring the debut album from the excellent Brilliant Colors, the début single from Vivian Girls founder Frankie Rose and a return to form by New Zealand legends The Bats.

Brilliant Colors – Introducing

Play Introducing

Download Absolutely Anything by Brilliant Colors

Frankie Rose – Thee Only One

Play Thee Only One

Download Thee Only One by Frankie Rose

The Bats – Don’t You Rise EP

Play Don’t You Rise

Download Face Inside The Sun by The Bats

SOUNDTRACK: TOPLESS WOMEN TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES soundtrack (2006).

I learned about this soundtrack from a very cool article in The Believer (the beginning of which is online here).  In the piece, the author claims to have never seen the film (he was given the soundtrack by a friend) and he doesn’t want  to change his associations with the music by watching the film.  And now, I too can say I have never seen the film, and likely never will.  And I really enjoy the soundtrack too.

The soundtrack is sort of an excuse to showcase a bunch of bands from New Zealand’s Flying Nun record label.  Featured artists are The 3DS, The Bats, The Clean, Superette, Snapper, The Chills, Straightjacket Fits, and Chris Knox.

It’s nigh impossible to give an overarching style to these songs.  Even when the bands have multiple songs on the soundtrack, they are not repetitive at all.  Even trying to represent a genre would be difficult.  The opener “Hey Suess” is almost a surf-punk song, while Chris Knox’s gorgeous “Not Given Lightly” is a stunning ballad.  There’s a cool shoe-gazer song “Saskatchewan,” and some great simple indie rock (a bunch of other tracks).

The only thing these bands have in common is that they’re all from New Zealand.  And as with any large body of land, no two bands are going to sound alike.  Nevertheless, all of the bands fall under the indie rock umbrella.  It’s a great collection of songs that many people probably haven’t heard.  It’s worth tracking down for the great collection of tunes and, if all you know about New Zealand is The Flight of the Conchords.

[READ: September 24, 2009] Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

After finishing Infinite Jest I wasn’t sure just how much more DFW I would want to read right away (of course, seeing as how I have now read almost all of his uncollected work, that is a rather moot point).  But when I saw that John Krasinski (of TV’s The Office) was making a film of this book, I had to jump in and read it again.

Obviously, there are many questions to be asked about this film ().  Is it going to be based on all the stories in the book?  (Surely not, some are completely unrelated).  Is it going to be just the interviews? (Probably, and yet there’s no overall narrative structure there).  And, having seen the trailer, I know structure is present.  I’m quite interested in the film.  In part because I didn’t LOVE the stories.  Well, that’s not quite right.  I enjoyed them very much, but since they weren’t stories per se, just dialogue, I’m not afraid of the stories getting turned into something else.  The text isn’t sacred to me, which may indeed make for the perfect set-up for a film.

Anyhow, onto the stories.

The obvious joke is that the author of Infinite Jest has created a book with “Brief” in the title!  But indeed, many of these stories are quite brief.  Some are only a couple of paragraphs (which true, from DFW that could still be ten pages).  But, indeed, most of the interviews in the book are brief too (except the final one in the book, which is nearly 30 pages).  

There are a couple of very long pieces, most of which follow DFW’s now-signature roundabout style.  But it’s these new short pieces that are quite a change of pace.  And I have to say I’m mixed on them.  Most of them feel like sketches: a scene or two but little more.  And while plot is not essential to every story, it often feels like these are experiments in writing shorter pieces.

The title stories (the Brief Interviews) (some of which appeared in Harper’s and one of these Harper’s stories (the first one (#16)) does not appear in the book) are indeed brief interviews.  They are scattered throughout the book in seemingly random order.  But I’ll look at them in numerical order.

The basic conceit here is that each hideous man is being interviewed by an unamed interlocutor whose questions remain unseen.  Most of the questions regard sexuality or women (although some deviate).  And the men have different perspectives on situations (some of them offensive, but most of them offer an insight that is almost shocking in its frankness).  Nealy all of the men are “educated” which means they get to use interesting terms, either literary or psychological.  And one or two have even studied feminism, it would seem.

I’m not going to review each B.I. because that would be silly.  The stories don’t really “do” anything beyond giving a picture of a man.  There’s not necessarily a plot (although some do have a plot) and there’s no real resolution to most of them.  And yet I found them all quite engaging (some more than others, obviously).

But so here is a one-line summary of the context of each B.I.   There is no indication that the gaps in numbers mean there were other interviews.

B.I. #2:  “Honest” explanation of how he can never fall in love with you.
B.I. #3: A dialogue about a man “assisting” a woman at the airport whose fiancee was not on the flight.
B.I. #11: Man is leaving the questioner (this seems to break the mold of the B.I. set-up, as the questioner does not appear to be the same one and I wonder how the film will address it).
B.I. #14: Man screams inappropriate things upon orgasm (very funny).
B.I. #15: Bondage with relation to parent issues.
B.I. #16: (Harper’s only) Dad laughs when son is too impetuous (quite funny and worth clicking on the link for).
B.I. #19: I like you cuz yer smart.
B.I. #20: Not brief at all.  This is the tour de force interview about a man who falls for a woman only when she relates the story of her abduction.
B.I. #28: Intellectualized dialogue between two men about how difficult it is to be a woman (no specific interlocutor here).
B.I. #30: He marries her because she has a good body.  Anything wrong with that?
B.I. #31: The selfishness of the Great Lover vs the honesty of the selfish lover.
B.I. #36: Self-help is good.
B.I. #40: Man with deformed arm.
B.I. #42: Man whose father worked as a bathroom attendant.
B.I. #46: Rape could be a meaningful experience, like the Holocaust (features my favorite New Jersey-ism “Alls I’m sayin’”).
B.I. #48: Third date=asks to tie her up=sexing a chicken (innuendo laden & hilarious).
B.I. #51: Fear of “what if I can’t?”
B.I. #59: Masturbation fantasies ruined by physics (very funny!).
B.I. #72: Weird twist ending (to the whole series?).

Another “series” in this book is “Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders.”  This book collects numbers VI, XI and XXIV.

VIII appeared in McSweeney’s #1 (in 1998) and again in Oblivion as “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”.
VI appeared in McSweeney’s #3.
I have no idea if others were written or were published.

These are all very short pieces (about 2 pages) and they work more as sketches than actual stories.  They don’t even work as flash fiction.  After the length and detail of Infinite Jest and even many of the pieces in this collection, it’s hard to know what DFW was doing with these short pseudo-stories.  I enjoyed VI and XXIV but not so much XI.  VIII, which appeared in Oblivion but not here was very long and convoluted and quite enjoyable, very different in almost every way from the ones here.

As for the rest of the book, there are several very short pieces here (and one seems to have once had the “Yet Another…” title but has been changed for the collection.  These short pieces include:

“A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”
Two paragraphs about the effects of introducing people.

“Death is Not the End”
A Poet Laureate sits poolside, ruminating.

“The Devil is a Busy Man” (there are actually two stories with this title)
The first one (“Plus when he got…”) was originally called “Yet Another Instance of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XII)” and reveals how you can’t give things away for free…you’ve got to charge something even if it’s worth nothing.

“The Devil is a Busy Man”
The second one (“Three weeks ago…”) examines how revealing the secret of a good deed can actually make the deed evil.

“Think”
A story of infidelity which changes dramatically, unexpectedly.  Despite its unspecific information, it’s still a powerful story.

“Signifying Nothing,”
Here is a weird one for you.  That’s how the story opens and that is what it is.  In it, a man recounts a time when his father wagged his dick in front of him.  The incident is never mentioned again. The story ends with a strange family reunion in which the incident is, indeed, not mentioned.

“Datum Centurio“
A lengthy definition of the word “date.”  It is written as a very expansive definition, and the definitions do get funnier as they go along, although really this is sort of a lexicographer’s joke.

“Suicide as a Sort of Present.”
This story is the most complete story of these little vignettes, depressing at is may be.  It is also rather unsettling.

In general, I’m not that big a fan of these shorter pieces.  There’s nothing wrong with them per se, they just don’t do a lot for me.

That leaves these longer pieces:

“Forever Overhead”
This is a pretty great piece about a boy climbing to the top of the tall diving board at the community pool.  It is one of Wallace’s great, detail-obsessed pieces.  You can feel yourself on the ladder with the young boy.

“The Depressed Person”
Another of Wallace’s tour de force pieces. This story is quite long for what all happens in piece.  However, its recursive nature and its attention to details perfectly encapsulates the mindset of a depressed person, trying desperately to reach out to friends that she has reached out to far too often already.  A very moving piece.  (It was published (I think a little differently) in Harper’s and is available here).

“Octet”
This piece is weird for many reasons.  It is a footnote-fueled set of ostensibly eight pieces.  However, the footnotes explain why there are not actually 8 pieces and why the whole piece has failed in its original intent.    The pieces are designed as sort of pop quizzes, and yet as the footnotes explain, some of the original questions were just bad.  And one question was reworked but the original version had to stay in for the rework to make sense.  It’s a very meta- piece of fiction and is fairly fascinating.  Although, what its point is is anyone’s guess.  And, one gets the feeling that the footnotes are all true, and yet there is no way to know if this whole exercise is as DFW intended or was just a fun experiment.

“Adult World (I & II)”
This two-part story concerns the same characters.  In the first part, we meet the young wife, a few years after she got married.  She comes to the realization that her husband’s sexual proclivities have nothing to do with her.  And that for the first few years of their marriage, she was foolish to be so self-deprecating. As is DFW’s way, the story wends it way around several different focal events but eventually curlicues around itself to get to the heart of the matter which is fully revealed in Part II.

Part II of the story (although actually Part 4) is designed in an entirely different format.  It continues the story from where it left off, but it seems as if it is a rough draft for a skit or play.  Strangely, this style increases the dramatic aspect of the story and makes it climax a lot faster.

It’s certainly a weirdly designed piece, and yet as experimental fiction it works quite well.

“Church Not Made with Hands”
This is one of my least favorite DFW pieces.  I simply could not connect to anything that was going on.  It is set up in several different “chapter” segments, but the surrealness of the story combined with the peculiar storyline never meshed for me.

“Tri-Stan:  Sold Sissee nar to Ecko”
But this piece is probably my least favorite DFW piece of everything I’ve read by him.  The conceit revolves around mythical characters trying to create shows for TV.  I got a lot of the jokes and references in the story (Sissee Nar, etc).  Even the title, Tristan & Isolde, I see a lot of what’s going on.  And yet the whole conceit seemed simultaneously painfully obvious but also far too obscure.  So I don’t know if I’m missing something crucial or if the conceit is just not well founded. I still haven’t figure out who Agon M. Nar is supposed to be (as it doesn’t conform to the Narcissus inversion style or even the Herm ‘Aprho’ Dite jokey style).  Anyhow, this piece degenerates into a protracted (dream sequence?) attempt to sell a story about Narcissus’ beauty.  This is also one of the few cases where I feel that DFW’s circuitous style fails him.  The “metaphor” (or whatever it is) is working too hard to compete with the detail obsessed style, meaning you’re too busy thinking of two different aspects of the story to allow it to do what I think it wants to do.  It’s also well known that DFW had a love/hate relationship with TV, and it seems like he is just taking potshots at TV as well.

“On His Deathbed Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright’s Father Begs a Boon”
This is another very lengthy piece that doesn’t really go anywhere.  And because of its very subject, I at first found it hard to bear.  Basically the story is of a father on his deathbed relating how much he has always detested his son.  Because yes, as a father there are things that your kids do that drive you crazy, but to hear someone this hateful and spiteful  made me very uncomfortable.  However, at about the midway point, the story really comes to life building to a fascinating twist at the end.  I think you could lop off the first ten or so pages and make this an even more successful story.  This is one of those rare cases where the repetitions and circles were just too circuitous.  Not to say that that opening information wasn’t important.  I just feel it was too much.

So, overall, I found this collection to be somewhat mixed.  The strong stories were really great.  The Brief Interviews were fun and interesting as character studies.  And some of the short pieces were enjoyable as sketches.  And yet, I can’t help but think that the short story is really not DFW’s strongest suit.

The mail came superduper early today, weird, very weird, and I just received The Bats’ new album.  Ah me, I’d like to buy the world the title track!  Gorgeous + melancholy + pure poppy + just what you want to hear as summer ends and you get ready for new things.  I’ve had it on repeat all day.  Hearing Robert Scott’s voice was friendly and sweet. Reminds me, I’ve been listening to them and The Clean most of my life. Wow, I understand why aging hippies/ yuppies/ yippies/ deadheads/ parrotheads/ etc. cling and shell out serious dough.  It just feels good to hear them.  I had the same feeling when I played Barry Adamson’s last record: Hello, friend!  Anyways, it’s awesome.  Grandpa says, go get it!  And get ready for Mr. Pop  next month. Ahhh me….

Week ending…oh, today.

1. Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2. The Deadnotes + The Legend!
2. The Pastels/Tenniscoats
4. Ramones
5. The Jam
6. Blind Blake and the Royal Victoria Hotel Calypsos
7. Gablé
8. The Undertones
9. The Bats
9. Blondie
11. Les Calamités
12. She Keeps Bees
13. The Monks
14. The Modern Lovers
15. Cornershop
16. The Beatles
17. The V.I.P.’s
18. Orange Juice
19. Speech Debelle
20. 4 God

Robert Scott of The Bats | photo chris familton

The Bats played a stellar set at the Hopetoun on Saturday night, supported by a stripped down Songs and The Crayon Fields.

The Crayon Fields had some nice guitar pop moments; a few 60s influences mingling with some 80s synths and melodies and a tasty cover of Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talkin’.

The Bats set featured new tracks from the recently released Guilty Office as well as a bunch of older tracks like North By North and Boogeyman. The crowd loved it, the band seemed to have fun and we all went home with smiles on our faces…

The Crayon Fields | photo chris familton

The Crayon Fields | photo chris familton

The Crayon Fields | photo chris familton

Kaye Woodward of The Bats | photo chris familton

Kaye Woodward + Paul Kean of The Bats | photo chris familton

Kaye Woodward + Paul Kean of The Bats | photo chris familton

The Bats

Compileletely Bats(Flying Nun 1990)

http://www.mediafire.com/?yijyouzkdog

It may be sweltering here in Philadelphia, but I’m an organized soul who likes to get a head start on the next season, especially when it’s autumn, my favorite time of the year. Throughout the years, there are only a handful of bands who somehow capture my admittedly biased view of that time where life slows down and the leaves take their sweet old time on their way from the treetops to the concrete below them. Yes, summer is a time for exploration and adventure down country back roads and travels to farflung locales, but autumn is when you take your sweet time and patiently watch another year come to close and reassess your priorities for next year while taking inventory of the present one. It’s a time for meditation and speculation about what went right and what went terribly wrong before another year gets brutally latched upon your sum total. For some reason, the Bats, along with fellow Kiwis, the  Chills, Verlaines, Magick Heads and Peter Jefferies capture this sense of ennui so perfectly that I start listening to them in earnest a couple months before they are best suited to my mood. Then again, I am an impatient soul, so it is only fitting that I pay tribute to autumn in August.

On the surface, Compiletely Bats, a collection of their first three eps, is an odd choice to associate with autumn, but they are forever intertwined with it because their songs are so optimistic on the surface, but scratch a little deeper and you see swaths of melancholy, self-doubt and introspection. In short, these are the the qualities that I associate with a time where the party slowly comes to a close and you are left questioning and applauding the past while generating a plan for the murky future.

The best example of this can be found in the opener “Made Up in Blue” which may be the apex of New Zealand pop, but the lyrics paint such a contradictory image to the chipper strums and jangles. It’s an ode to indecision and worry as its protagonist questions his social circle, direction and the advice of others as he bemoans the dead weight that surrounds him. It sums up that moment when you doubt a big decision, ponder the consequences and benefits and take a leap into the new.

In between are tales of faded glory, grasping at straws and tragic nostalgia, all of which highlight their focus on the grey and beige in our lives, but its closing number provided a perfect bookend to it superficially sunny opener. “Offside” closes out the compilation on a pitch perfect note as it eloquently depicts the onset of winter and its resultant stagnation. It details a fight against depression when your friends are hibernating, trees are bare and optimism is a rare commodity as vocalist Robert Scott embraces the bottom of the barrel only to discover that there is nothing there but darkness. Instead of wallowing in woe, Scott decides that the best path is introspection and meditation and he ultimately he decides the best path is a long walk where he embraces the scenery and decides that innocence and new beginnings are just around the corner. Just like most Bats songs, it sums up the moment before you hit rock bottom when you realize things aren’t quite so bad as your neurotic mind makes them out to be.

That’s why the Bats embody autumn. Their songs are about scenes of darkness and despair where the storm clouds break and meager rays of sunlight break through the murk and provide hope in barren times.

Thought I’d start this, for my own benefit mostly. Seems like I’m losing track sometimes. Need to pull myself back on line. Keep focused. My feet are freezing. The order isn’t significant. Favourite tunes, this week.

1. Cornershop – “The Roll Of Characteristics (Of History In The Making)” (from Judy Sucks A Lemon)

2. Taken By Trees – “To Lose Someone” (from East Of Eden)

3. Les Calamités – “Toutes Les Nuits” (from C’est Complet)

4. The Deadnotes + The Legend! – “Wait A Minute” (from Volume 5)

5. She Keeps Bees – “Bones Are Tired” (from Nests)

6. 4 God – “Belmondo” (from Amateurism)

7. Speech Debelle – “Go Then, Bye” (from Speech Therapy)

8. The Bats – “Countersign” (from The Guilty Office)

9. Blind Blake and the Royal Victoria Hotel Calypsos – “The Cigar Song” (from Bahamian Songs)

10. The Pastels/Tenniscoats – “Song For A Friend” (from Two Sunsets)

Expect a Pastels interview shortly. And, of course, an appraisal of the rather surprising new album from Taken By Trees.

New Zealand band The Bats have been peddling their indie guitar pop for 27 years now and many of their releases came out on the seminal Flying Nun label. They have a new album The Guilty Office out now via Mistletone in Australia.

8th Aug MELBOURNE – Northcote Social Club with Crayon Fields and The Twerps

9th Aug SYDNEY – Hopetoun Hotel with Crayon Fields and Songs (acoustic)

Fuck it. I can’t stop listening to this album.

It creeps up on me, catches me unawares. It’s so gentle, deceptively unobtrusive. It’s so sweet and full of subtle magic and intricate guitar motifs and lines that never revel in their own cleverness, just melt. It doesn’t shout, no it never shouts. I have no idea what Mr Scott is singing about most the time: truth and distance, crimson and clover, communication and insomnia, and the way vapour rises from trees in the early morning in Brisbane, possibly.

I just know that it feels like such a perfect companion piece to The Friends Of Rachel Worth I don’t even need to get out my copy of The Friends Of Rachel Worth and feel embarrassed about bumping into Robert Forster in my local supermarket anymore.

It’s the sort of album those dickheads at Pitchfork would probably end up giving 7.5 to, because… um… because… um… well, it’s a nice safe sort of number, 7.5, isn’t it? And it’s not the new Animal Collective either. (Jesus, they gave that record 9.6? What do they do when a good album is released? Break out the linguistics? Start writing?)

Look. I know I already wrote about this here. I just thought it deserved a second write-up.

Um, I was just going to stick to the UK in this series, but…

Damn it, now I’m going to have to start including The Laughing Clowns, The Go-Betweens, The Bats, et al

Just thought I’d give a shout-out to Mistletone Records.

Not only are they are a fine record label (Australian home to Beaches, Panel Of Judges, Marnie Stern and Panda Bear, among others) and gig promoter (forthcoming shows from The Bats, not Brisbane sadly, and – swoon – Vivian Girls), but they also seem to be damn fine cooks, if this recipe is anything to go by. Respect.

P.S. Check the listing for Vivian Girls in Brisbane, Step Inn, October 4. Totally rockin’!

for your lazy summer mornings/early afternoons, the Free Music Archive has a fantastic set the Bats did at Primavera Sound. it’s perfect 80s jangle pop to listen to as you drag yourself out of bed and try to decide which pair of cutoffs and old camp tee you’re going to wear today. think R.E.M. by way of New Zealand. your dad probably would have loved them.

yeah, I like dad music.

Girls is playing three times this weekend.  I acutally think I am up for going.  I haven’t been so interested in going to shows lately but I’m into this.

Also, I’ve add WFMU’s Beware of the Blog to my google reader.  They’ve got all these recordings from the recent Primavera Sound Festival that just took place in Barcelona.  Today I’ve been checking out The Bats‘ set.

Laters.

I’ve been in a super-retro, 50s pop mood for the past few days. Strawberry Fair’s “Give Up” in the video above is a perfect example. (one part ABBA + one part “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To”) it’s pretty much impossible to find the mp3 now as it came out some time ago and all the blogs that had hosted it have dropped it. BUT you can listen to more tracks at Strawberry Fair’s myspace.

in other news, I’ve been digging Crystal Stilts too. you can get a lot of their stuff for free at the Free Music Archive. I’m working on picking up “Alight of Night” right now.

speaking of the Free Music Archive, there are lots of Primavera Sound tracks going up everyday. I’m listening to a very nice sounding Bats set right now.

One has to assume that Mueller got these Australian review gigs as a result of having already flown back home at his own expense rather than IPC whisking him on a first class flight to Sydney to review The Ramones and The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, a band with a name worst than Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts. But then Stephen Sweet took the picture so perhaps IPC did splash the cash afterall.

So this retrospectively posted on 17th June in honour of meeting Mr. Andrew Mueller in person on that very date.

And when I say met, I suppose you could read ‘mugged’ or ‘door-stopped’ or whatever the word is when you recognise someone in the street and shout “Andrew!” before you’ve really thought through what you’re going to follow your opening salutation with. God bless the jet-lagged Mueller for not telling a rambling drunken stranger to fuck off.

Xa pasou un ano, parece mentira, e o Primavera Sound abre suas portas dentro dunhas poucas horas para ofrecernos 3 días de sobredosis musical. Demasiado tempo pasarei no Fòrum esta fin de semana asique antes hai que ter claro o que un vai a ver (e o que un se vai a parder, está claro).

Aquí poño os horarios de hoxe e uns videos das bandas que recomendo ver. Principalmente o que máis me gusta de hoxe, sen dúbida son The Jesus Lizard e My Bloody Valentine aínda que espero pasarme por Cuzo, The Bats, Lightning Bolt ou The Vaselines, e esa locura final no escenario Rockdelux que son Aphex Twin e Squarepusher. Pero tamén jódeme perderme a bandas como Dead Meadow ou o sueco The Tallest Man On Earth pero xa se sabe que un non pode ter todo.

Sen máis, saúdos e disfruten do espectáculo.

DIJOUS / JUEVES / THURSDAY 28

ESTRELLA DAMM

19:30 Spectrum

21:45 Yo La Tengo

00:20 My Bloody Valentine

ROCKDELUX

18:30 La Bien Querida

20:35 The Vaselines

23:20 Phoenix

01:35 Aphex Twin

03:50 Squarepusher

ATP

19:00 Magik Markers

20:45 Lightning Bolt

22:30 The Jesus Lizard

00:15 Dead Meadow

01:45 Wooden Shjips

02:45 Dr. Kiko

PITCHFORK

17:00 Veracruz

18:15 Women

19:30 Girls

20:45 The Tallest Man On Earth

22:00 Bowerbirds

23:30 The Bug

01:00 Ponytail

02:15 Wavves

RAY-BAN VICE

18:00 Cuzo

19:15 The Bats

20:30 Marnie Stern

21:45 Joe Crepúsculo y Los Destructores

23:00 Andrew Bird

00:30 Jay Reatard

01:45 The Horrors

03:00 Ebony Bones

04:00 Meneo

Day 28 in the tune a day challenge for NZ Music Month.

The Whare Flat folk music festival  is the New Edinburgh Folk Club’s annual celebration at, yes, Whare Flat.

This may not be typical of what happens there, and I suspect from the accent that at least one of these artists is from the other side of the Tasman:

Round the other blogs:

Zed is singing Renegade Fighter  at Keeping Stock

The Bats are singing Courage  at Rob’s

Op Shop are singing One Day  at Inquiring Mind

E: La primera mitad de esta semana es muy dura para los barceloneses. Primero porque el miércoles hay Champions (por favor, si gana el Barça no la liéis mucho…)… Y, además, ¡¡porque el jueves llega el Primavera Sound!! Bueno, esto es erróneo, porque cada año la organización pone más empeño en convertir la última semana de mayo en la sema Primaveril por excelencia. Por ello, desde el lunes y hasta el domingo, tienen lugar gran cantidad de actuaciones interesantísimas en diferentes escenarios. Cómo no, music4girls apoyamos con cariño muuuy especial las de Centella y Mujeres en el Metro de Sagrada Família el sábado 23; y la de Klaus&Kinski en el Parc Joan Miró el domingo 31 de mayo. Por lo demás, lo gordo, ya lo sabemos, llega el jueves. Que con los años también se está convirtiendo en el día más reconcentrado y aprovechable. Hasta tal punto este año que el primer día oficial del festival estarán ya activos todos los escenarios (menos l´Auditori). Ahí, poniendo toda la carne en el asador. Eso sí, nuestras apuestas para ese día son las que siguen (mañana y pasado llegarán nuestras apuestas para viernes y sábado, así que no os impacientéis)…

R: PHOENIX. Hace un año no habría dado ni un duro por esta banda. Porque les cogí manía con el boom de If I ever feel better, para empezar. Y porque su asociacionismo a la Sofia Coppola de Maria Antonieta aún me produce sarpullidos en diferentes partes del cuerpo cada vez que la recuerdo (la película, claro… la banda sonora no estaba tan mal). Pero como rectificar es de sabios, aquí están Phoneix, coronando mis preferencias del jueves… Y es que ya me deshice en halagos hacia su último álbum, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, así que ahora sólo queda disfrutarlos en directo, bailar y brincar con Lisztomania, balancearme mirando las estrellas con Armistice… y, ¿por qué no? Puede que incluso redescubra el resto de discos de la banda y me vea obligado a desempolvarles y darles nuevas escuchas. Si lo que buscas es empezar el festival con un concierto de esos que te entran con vaselina y ni lo notas del gustirrinín que provoca, Phoenix (a las 23:20 en el escenario Rockdelux) son tus hombres. Y los míos.

E: EBONY BONES. Joe Crepúsculo, My Bloody Valentine en abierto (como en el Canal +), Aphex Twin… todas propuestas suculentas. Pero si hay algo que no pensamos perdernos el jueves es… ¡¡Ebony Bones!! Ni shoegazers resucitados ni frikis de la electrónica paranormal. El jueves será el día de este permanente atentado contra la monocromía. Cuando los nu-ravers ya están pagando los impuestos de su nichos en el cementerio, y el flúor hace semanas que campa a sus anchas por el Freshka, viene esta apisonadora rítmica para invocar los sonidos más tribales, frescos y jetas del momento. Como si metieras en una licuadora a M.I.A., Santigold, Siouxsie y le añadieras cuatro toneladas de tang de limón. Ebony Bones es absolutely do it yourself: ella compone, produce, cose, canta y viste a su banda con los trapos que diseña. Así que su show de las 3:00 de la mañana en el escenario Ray-Ban Vice (donde me pasaré la vida, como si lo viera) puede ser una de las cosas más fuertes del festival. Si sobrevivimos a semejante fiesta technicolor, lo contaremos.

R: THE VASELINES. Tengo que reconocer que me ha costado seleccionar solamente un segundo grupo. El jueves, como dice Estela, la oferta es abrumadora. La expectación de The Bats, la exaltación de Wavves, el folk preciosista de Bowerbirds, el pop deconstruido de Ponytail, el reggetón tremendérrimo de The Bug, el punk pop de Jay Reatard, el bellísimo pop instrumental de Andrew Bird… Y, sobre todo, dos propuestas magnas: La Bien Querida, con su pop brillando en la estrella del Sur; y The Horrors, que con el discazo que tienen en cartera bien pueden revelarse como una de las actuaciones de esta edición. Pero nada, ninguno de estos es mi siguiente elección. Después de Phoenix, mi segundo seleccionado tenía que ser, evidentemente, una concesión a mi vena pajilleril y snob. Y si hay una actuación pajilleril y snob en esta edición es la de The Vaselines. Sí, ya lo sabéis: el grupo que siempre tenía en boca Kurt Cobain pero que le dan mil vueltas a todo lo que produjeron Nirvana en su momento. Con una producción exigua, se convirtieron en uno de los pilares del sonido indie norteamericano de principios de los noventa. Será por eso por lo que su actuación, a las 20:35 en el escenario Rockdelux, es de las más esperadas del festival. Puede que sea otra reunión. Pero, señoras y señores, pongo la mano en el fuego en el que no se nos caerá la cara de vergüenza (como, por ejemplo, el año pasado con The Sonics). Esto va a ser auténtico. E irrepetible.

Howdy all!

This is the second in a series of five podcasts I am doing for NZ Music month.

This time around I have decided to do a bit of a mixed disc (the first half has sort of a country feel while the second half has that indie-pop thing going on).

Lovely artists lovely tunes lovely way to celebrate NZ Music Month.

Have a look at the artists’ MySpace pages as you listen in.

• Rosy Tin Tea Caddy
• Mel Parsons
• Raggamuffin Children
• The Bats
• Robo Distaste
• The Puddle
• David Kilgour
• Luke Buda

And here we go…

Mixed Disc Cast

Stream

Download here

Subscribe to KBP on iTunes for the free download (Due to popularity [a good thing] once folks download it at iTunes the bandwidth goes out for three weeks [bad thing]. If you encounter problems on iTunes for this reason simply download above.)

Track listing

Rosy Tin Tea Caddy – Chestnut
Mel Parsons – Darlin’ Darlin’
The Bats - Castle Lights
Raggamuffin Children - A Fine Storm
Robo Distaste - Darth Vader Disco
The Puddle – Naked
David Kilgour (featuring the poetry of Sam Hunt) - Chord
Luke Buda - Blue Summer