Audio By Carbonatix
Welcome to Staff Trax, the weekly feature here on DC9 where we shed some light on the music we’ve been enjoying of late, regardless of the touring or album release schedules that tend to bear the focus of most of our coverage. It’s a chance for you readers to get more insight into our own personal tastes. Anyway, don’t think too much about it. Just listen, mkay?
Japanther — “Um Like Your Smile is Totally Ruling Me,”
Seeing that Japanther has been around for a decade, I feel kind of foolish having just recently stumbled upon this impressive duo from New York City. And, to make matters worse, the band’s excellent 2008 full length Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt sat on my desk for at least a couple of months before I was intrigued enough by the cover art to finally give it a listen. Once I was exposed to the joyful noise of Japanther, I was hooked. Butt‘s second cut, the pulsating “Um Like Your Smile is Totally Ruling Me,” begins with a hilarious spoken word sample and then proceeds to rock like all holy hell. There is indeed a righteous noise coming from Ian Vanek and Matt Reilly. This is what punk rock sounded like before it became a corporate entity. –Darryl Smyers
Local Natives — “Wide Eyes”
After being severely let down by Yeasayer’s “more accessible”
electro-infused sophomore album, Odd Blood, I stumbled a across these
guys and, fortunately for me, they’ve been filling the void: The Los Angeles
natives in Local Natives have been
amusing the heck out of me all week with their multi-part
harmonies, frantic drumming, and escapist lyrical content. And while
Local Natives may be comparable to Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, and well,
yes, pre-Odd Blood Yeasayer, the band certainly contains its own
individual aesthetic. Its debut album, Gorilla Manor, was released in
the U.S. on February 16, and the band is scheduled to play The Cavern
on April 22. Above is a live version of, “Wide Eyes” one of
my favorite tracks off Gorilla Manor. You may also listen to–and
download–the entire album off the band’s website. –Catherine Downes
Spoon — “Utilitarian”
For
a band that doesn’t really rock out as often as it spaces out,
“Utilitarian,” an early Spoon tune, is one that, for them, rocks pretty
hard. Of course it features the reverb studio guitar tricks they are
known for, but it’s also kind of a party-starter. –Lance Lester
James Mercer — “Caring Is Creepy”
Other
than the customary springtime listens to Oh, Inverted World and Chutes
Too Narrow, I haven’t really thought too much about the Shins since
college. It’s not that Natalie Portman and legions of fawning female
fans ruined them for me or anything–I still think “New Slang” is just
about flawless, even if it should be permanently banned from mix tapes
for the rest of eternity. I just never thought they could top Oh,
Inverted World, and, after seeing some magical performances at fairly
small Austin venues in 2001 or so, I couldn’t stomach paying the big
bucks to hear sorority girls cackle through the band’s sets at venues like
the Palladium. I haven’t given a proper listen to frontman James Mercer’s Broken Bells
project yet. (Here’s a question: Has anyone besides Cee-Lo ever
collaborated with Danger Mouse more than once?) But the on-line hubbub
surrounding it’s release allowed me to stumble upon this 2004 recording
of James Mercer’s solo set at the Moonshine Festival, a
charming little recording that features the Shins frontman
approximating the intertwining guitars and keyboards of songs like
“Caring Is Creepy” with a little Neil Young-style harmonica. For old
fans, it’s a great way to hear the songs in a new light–you can
definitely make out a few more lyrics in this setting–and the telling
cover of Young’s “Harvest” in the set isn’t too shabby, either. –Noah W. Bailey
Rialto — “Monday Morning”
Back
in 1998, I was a clerk in CD Warehouse in Mesquite. I’d listened to
just about every used record that rotated through our bins, and, eventually, I
stumbled across this gem. If a pop record can be cinematic, then
Rialto’s self titled album is film noir all the way through. And the band
managed to do it without losing its Brit-pop fundamentals. It’s too
bad that Rialto never saw any real success other than a few charting
singles in the UK. This record remains on my all-time heavy
rotation. –Daniel Hopkins
Yes — “Heart of the Sunrise”
Maybe
it’s because the band recently played the House of Blues. Maybe it’s
because The Mars Volta hasn’t been giving me the same prog fix as it
did on its earlier records. But, for whatever reason, I suddenly
decided that I needed Yes’s “Heart of the Sunrise” on the iPod so
badly, that I settled for buying the entire Fragile LP on iTunes, which
is the only way to get this infuriating, 11-minute assault of quirky
passages and very testy instrumentation. Yeah, it’s “that song from
Buffalo ’66” that was cleverly laced all through the movie, but it
works so much better served up as one, big foot-long of classic prog
instead of divvied up into bite size noshables. –Alan Ayo
The Life and Times — “My Last Hostage”
As
I scoured a few stores looking for my pick from last week’s Staff Trax (Lifetime’s self-titled fourth album), I found a copies of The Life and
Times’ debut EP and LP. Along with the band’s second album, Tragic Boogie,
you really can’t go wrong with this trio. It sounds like the right
kind of band that took influence from Failure and turned it into
something forward. Sure beats sounding like Deftones-lite. –Eric Grubbs
Hot Chip — “One Life Stand”
Firmly
stuck in my head for the past week is the title track from Hot Chip’s
latest release, One Life Stand. The two principle singer-songwriters
for Hot Chip strike me as being musically obsessive and residing
somewhere on the nerd end of the personality scale–two
characteristics that cut a little too close to the bone for me. They’ve written some of the catchiest dance floor tunes I’ve heard in the
past four years and, when I think of bands I can’t wait to see again, it’s Hot Chip that comes to mind first. This song demonstrates how the band has
lyrically evolved beyond sly takes on hip-hop bravado. And the video
has me obsessively checking to see when the band will be
returning to town. –Doug Davis
