band and album reviews

I've been thinking of featuring more band / album reviews on this site as a companion to my delicious feed of mp3s. This is the *the* DZUSA blog though right? I am yet to figure out how to tie this endeavor to our awesome band, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

Oh, all the band or album reviews will take the form of "band A sounds like band X meets band Y meets band Z and they perform F function together." Short, sweet, hopefully funny. So I might say, DraculazombieUSA is like Aphex Twin meets LCD Sound System meets Lightning Bolt and they play Magic: the Gathering together. I realize the A meets B meets C thing is a little weird (do these meetings happen all together? Does band A meet band C?). OK, so when I say "meet" I mean in the sense that their aesthetics fuse (at least, that's what I think I mean). "But then they do something together Will!" you might say, exasperated. That's part of the joke dude!

la-dee-da

I'm not really sure what to do in this space these days. I am not particularly funny, especially in print. I am usually pretty busy, and aside from the occasional NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE on my bicycle, things chug along at a steady pace with few lowlights and highlights. Over the long the weekend, my buddy got hit by a car and my brother got engaged. Ho-hum.

Do you like music? If you haven't purchased the Futureheads album yet, you should. I recently did after mp3ing the album since it came out. This guy is holding my Ipod ransom and these British boys deserve the dollar they get out of the $14 list price.

The Futureheads are like the Buzzcocks meets Braid meets the Beach Boys. Admittedly, the Beach Boys is a bit of lazy ingredient. Anyway, I was shocked by how different my farrago of mp3s were from the album cuts. All the guitars are super tubey and a lot of the vocals have additional and extraneous twirls. There are a lot more dropouts too, so the boys can single out their voices. This seems like it might be a good thing, but the songs lose the youthful chaos and working-class speed. They went from sounding like the sons of stevedores and nurses to 30-somethings living in Boston, with black leather couches and Diesel shoes. So I'm all surly, reading about Isl-1 for the second time, worried about whatever and sweating the wet reverbs and various unfortunate additions. And then "Hounds of Love" opens and I'm reminded of how good, regardless of the production sheen, this band is. And I'm like, fuck it, this is a great band. Sure this release is a bit slick, but the songs are great and the singing's superb.

Next week: my lunch with Roel Nusse!

PBWiki

I've been using this very handy online wiki service that is kindly asking users for online props to spread the word. I'm a big fan of notebooks, drawing pads, and the like, and I use this wiki business a fair amount to jot down ideas and links. So go get a free wiki at PBwiki.com.