Wednesday 20 August 2008

deerhunter






it's always nice to hear a band get slowly better, and at the consistent speed of motorway journeys at night. Atlanta's Deerhunter are a band i discovered a couple years ago being ambient and fairly interesting, so i naturally picked up a few tracks (notably 'Like New'*). at this stage they were comfy round the delay-y shoegaze campfire, and suited it grandly, emotive apathy, lost jangles, muddy mixes and all.

now deerhunter are a v different band (but not too different), making tracks with the lushly registered tinkle and chord+tambourine stomp of early velvet underground, but all under a warm familiar fur coat of Bilinda Butcher Jag feedback -- try 'Little Kids' & 'Never Stops'. the band are energetically fronted by Bradford Cox, whose worringly skeletal frame is due to Marfan Syndrome, which as a condition does absolutely nothing to stop his onslaught of self-sacrificial live expression. one to watch.

AA



mymusic
myspace
facebook
*nevermind

Thursday 14 August 2008

the whines





to the left is the only existing (and critically acclaimed) logo for Beaver State shitgaze buzzards The Whines.

as lonely as their myspaz seems, their grungey-jams-heard-from-over-several-neighbour's-fences-whilst-pissed sound and tuct alt works wonders.

'Insane Ok' is an oddly haunting midday/midnight drive which could slot nicely into a surf mixtape as it could a drug scene in a Tarantino flick. the simple, grainy vocals provided by either Barky(?) or the Riddler(?) (who I really hope looks like a ginge Carrey in green question-marked lycra and a semi), turn the strangely relevant lyric 'people are insane' into the traditional lethargic-cynical tendencies of this scene. 'teleporter' and I ran with weeds' both deliver bassy clunkage and punk that is (importantly) forgettable as it is catchy. i just want to see what they fuck they look like.


Andy Apples

mymyspace
myothermyspace
myfacebook

Sunday 3 August 2008

psychedelic horseshit






this line represents Ohio's Psychedelic Horseshit. is it good? is it bad? is it actually 2 lines? what is a line? am I gay? how can I hope to have a stable family that appreciate me individually but equally? all valid questions.

the band are from the super-relevant genre of Shitgaze. so um um sire? wot da fuk does that mean?

-- i guess it means MBV played shit? guuhhihhhrr!!

not so much. instead, imagine the music industry. and then imagine the frustration of how shit (on the whole, if youre honest) it is, on a global fucking scale. its the frustration that music like Psychedelic Horseshit (it's a chore to write that out) are born from. and praise Allah they exist, because with any luck the impressive sarcasm of Matt Whitehurst's lyrics (the kind that make you feel like every decision made in your life is a naive dirty joke), as well as the band's overall cluttered, hurtful sound, will make people question what the fuck theyre listening to on a night out, or on their 1/2-volume iPod Shuffles.

songs like 'Rather Dull' speak a rare, square bitterness at pretty much all subcultures, (other than their popular satirical/not satirical targeting of New Age Hippies). because of the absolute horror of the sound of Psychedelic Horseshit, things become so mangled that the listener can make their own interpretations, musically and lyrically ('rather dull' becomes 'radical' por ejemplo). but, despite the crap-sliding-off-a-tin-roof sound of PsyHoSh, (and like you were expecting much after all this justification) they make sick choons, genuinely catchy (I had 'Mouth Disciples' lodged in my brain for 427890 hours) pop songs, albeit played by 3 ravaged foxes. they really are well worth a listen if you wondered what an undead version of a parallel universe Strokes would sound like if they cunted their amps and worked in telesales.

listen at MySpace
listen at Last.fm

x!
Andy Apples




WAF myspace
WAF facebook