Culture Greyhound

Summer Camp – Christmas Wrapping (The Waitresses cover)

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The-Dream – Nikki (Gobble Gobble Remix)

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Star Slinger – Baby Mama

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Reading Rainbow – Euphoria

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Depressed Buttons – Ow! (Para One Remix)

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As far as posting goes, I’m pretty late to the game on this one.  I suppose December serves as the month I catch up on all the good stuff I didn’t get a chance to mention before, or only mentioned in passing.

The Walkmen’s track record is impeccable, and Lisbon is no exception.  The group is as gloomy as ever, and the slightly progressive approach to their signature sound pays off.  I am looking forward to hearing the new material live at Stubb’s in March.  Below is a sampling of some of my favorite tracks from the new record, epic and grandiose and depressing and brilliant all at once.

The Walkmen – Angela Surf City

The Walkmen – Stranded

The Walkmen – Victory

My favorite noise-punk, Half Japanese-channeling brothers the Numerators have been repping Lubbock right lately, receiving much-deserved press in Weekly Tape Deck and Pitchfork’s black sheep sister site Altered Zones.  And while those sites all by themselves get enough traffic to provide my old triangle-loving friends some crazy publicity, I just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t do my part here at Culture Greyhound.

The guys have a limited-release split 7-inch with Athens’ the Coathangers, available from Suicide Squeeze Records.  Grab it right here.  The song on the vinyl in question is one of the finest Numerators tracks, like, ever – a grimy, loud, distorted bounce-worthy tune called “Strawberry Dreams.”  Grab it and become a fan already!

The Numerators – Strawberry Dreams

Robyn – Indestructible (A-trak Radio Edit)

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Emil & Friends – Short Order Cooks

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HeRobust – Grief Case (Star Slinger’s WWHRD Remix)

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Reading Rainbow – Wasting Time

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Dead Trees – Back to L.A.

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Where did all the chillwave go? If 2009 was the year for it, 2010 was the year for slow, boring indie snooze-rock galore.  Once the xx got all famous, that sound (as pretty as it is) over-saturated our hipster culture.  Damn it, sometimes I just gotta dance! — to music that chops up samples, mixes 80’s new wave with trip-hop and electro, and usually consists of indecipherable, reverb-heavy vocals.  Love it!  So thank God for Brothertiger, and now thank God for Games.

While I personally haven’t been a huge fan of Daniel Lopatin’s drone-heavy Oneohtrix Point Never project, I adore this collaboration with Tigercity’s Joel Ford.  The crew’s latest EP That We Can Play (above) is a six-track synth-y treat.  The highlight is, of course, the Cocteau Twins-channeling “Strawberry Skies” featuring vocals from Brooklyn singer Laurel Halo, while “Shadows In Bloom” sounds like something clipped and diced straight from a deep Phil Collins bootleg.  So in short – the backlash is over; can we start hyping this stuff again? Please?

Games – Heartlands

Games – Strawberry Skies

Games – Shadows In Bloom

This is probably the newest collection of music I’ve done for Rocking Retro (Something to Crow About was released in 2003, not necessarily retro compared to other artists I’ve written about for this feature), but if 2009’s Underneath the Owl is any indication, the Riverboat Gamblers we know and love, that uninhibited, beer-swilling, brash Denton, Texas, punk band, are dead and gone.  Luckily we still have this, their Gearhead Records debut, to swig Lone Star to.

I’m not going to pretend I’ve been crazy familiar with this group until a few months ago.  I mostly knew them as a Texas punk group my buddy David Ward was in love with, but that was about it.  Then someone put them on the jukebox at Shangri-La one Friday night.  I ran to the machine to find out what the hell this badass sound was – I suppose we all get educated at one point or another – only to find this album as the selection.  From a band whose name I heard a million times but had never listened to.

I’m almost certain most of the lyrics in this album are complete drunken gibberish, but that’s totally ok – it fits perfect with the sloppy hammered sound the Gamblers provide.  Something to Crow About, I imagine, is a pretty great studio rendition of their energetic live show.  The album slows only for the outro, “Lottie Mae.”

Today, as AllMusic has pointed out, they sound more like Sum 41 than a raw Texas punk group, as is the typical regression most bands of this caliber tend to make.  Nevertheless, Something to Crow About remains a brilliant musical example of the independent and fist-pumping spirit of the Lone Star State.  Makes me proud to be from here.

The Riverboat Gamblers – What’s What

The Riverboat Gamblers – Rattle Me Bones

The Riverboat Gamblers – Ice Water

Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.

47. Fall Out Boy – From Under the Cork Tree

Coming home from the Green Day concert I attended in 2005, we stopped at a mall somewhere and my sister purchased Fall Out Boy’s second album From Under the Cork Tree. Because of the source, I was admittedly biased from the start – if my sister introduces me to it, I am unfairly skeptical of its validity.  In retrospect, I can see how this is utter idiocy; turning a blind eye to a young pop-punk group immediately after watching the elder statesmen of pop-punk live in concert is incredulous.  Once “Sugar We’re Going Down” hit Fuse, I was officially hooked, and I begrudgingly asked my younger sibling if I could burn a copy of the disc.

The appeal to Fall Out Boy, other than their uncanny ability to write something undeniably catchy and radio-ready, is their experimentation with several standard rock rhythms in one song.  It’s pretty typical today in the emo/power pop circuit, but back in 2005, I hadn’t really heard anything like it.  Combining elements of punk, emo, and even rap cadence, the group expanded from their mostly standard pop-punk debut Take This To Your Grave.  To the untrained ear, this is just a conventional album – the key is the passionate Pete Wentz-penned, sex soaked lyrics, crooned by the effervescent Patrick Stump.

Take for example, the unusual rhythm of “Of All the Gin Joints In the World,” a start-stop guitar-led anthem about a superficial, purely sexual relationship.  The chorus is blunt: “All the way/Your makeup stains my pillowcase.”  Or observe the so-honest-it’s-sexy pick-up lines in “Dance Dance” – “Why don’t you show me a little bit of spark you’ve been saving for his mattress?”  And of course, who could forget the candid observation from “Sugar We’re Going Down” – “I’m just a notch in your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song.”

The best pop albums, whether they be backed by instruments or computers or whatever, are ones that feel instantly familiar, yet provide a unique, progressive approach all their own.  Much like most music for the masses, pop-punk is a slowly progressing medium.  With mainstream success, Fall Out Boy opened the next chapter in that book with this album, a brilliantly accessible, glossily produced power-chord love affair with something subtly new to offer.

Fall Out Boy – Of All The Gin Joints In All The World

Fall Out Boy – Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down

Fall Out Boy – 7 Minutes In Heaven (Atavan Halen)

OFF! – Upside Down

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Cool Kids – Big-Talk

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The Death Set – Yo David Chase You P.O.V. Shot Me In The Head (feat. Diplo)

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Star Slinger – Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins Rework)

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Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart

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Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.

48. The Bloodhound Gang – Hooray For Boobies

Part of making a personal list of your favorite albums of an entire decade requires you to realize that you were younger and more juvenile once.  And I suppose that’s all I can say to my 2010 friends, the ones that know me now in all my present music snob glory.  That’s the only defense I have for putting this album on my list of my favorite albums of the 2000s.  Those who have known me since grade school, however, would not be a bit surprised.  They heard me blare it constantly long after the novelty wore off – they saw me slowly learn all the words to the whole damn thing.  I imagine I could have put something more in the “critical darling” category in this spot, but I opted to put something I actually listened to incessantly, as opposed to a summer fling album (it was either this or Hybrid Theory, though I’m sure some of you wouldn’t have minded).  I suppose this album represents the nostalgic part of this list – a time when life was simpler, making Mom mad with “parental advisory” stickers on CDs was a thrill, and I was easily amused by witty fart joke raps.

Released at the turn of the century, Bloodhound Gang’s third (but really second) album Hooray For Boobies continues the crew’s brand of now-cringe-worthy middle school humor delivered in generic rap-rock fashion.  While it didn’t have the immediate hilarity or major success of 1996’s One Fierce Beer Coaster, the disc spawned the major novelty hit “The Bad Touch,” featuring the most memorable line of BHG’s career (“you and me baby, ain’t nothing but mammals….” you know it when you hear it).  After a massive tour, they released the disappointing Hefty Fine in 2005 and made random appearances on the Bam Margera show.  Haven’t heard from them since.  Not surprised.  When you make music like this, you’re bound to embody the epitome of your core fanbase (privileged, slacker, stoner, white kid, et al).

In my defense, the melodies are catchy and radio-ready – the guys were good at coming up with hooks, and Jimmy Pop’s rapping is clever and at times laugh-out-loud hilarious, the best it’s ever been.  In “Three Point One Four,” witty remarks are delivered at rapid-fire pace, as are the dick jokes littered in the fellatio ode “Yummy Down On This.”  The whole album features Pop’s ability to take a taboo subject and litter it with metaphors, puns, similes, and random musings; it makes the disc (or at least portions of it) worthy of multiple listens.  Another appreciative aspect is the diverse use of electronic instrumentation (especially drum machines) and liberal, appealing sampling (Falco, Metallica, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Homer Simpson are all heard in “Mope”).  For such a dumb album, these guys sure spent a long time putting it all together.

At age 24, I’m not going to pretend that this album is awesome, or defend its musicality, or say it changed my life, or even make false claims that I listen to it today.  I guess it’s just here to remind myself that I’ve come a long way from 8th grade.  And that I used to enjoy life more. And I used to have a lot more fun.  To everything there is a season….

Bloodhound Gang – Three Point One Four

Bloodhound Gang – The Ballad Of Chasey Lain

Bloodhound Gang – The Bad Touch

Mr. Voytas has made headway here at Culture Greyhound previously (including yesterday’s Five MP3s), and upon further research, it turns out the guy writes some pretty catchy potential hits.  Endorsed by such indie mainstays as Fader, Prefix Mag, Gorilla Vs. Bear, and Pitchfork, Evan Voytas is the new name for dreamy, falsetto-filled, inspired pop, sometimes electro, sometimes not.  The classically trained multi-instrumentalist spends his time in LA, but Voytas has been all around the country, calling New York, New Mexico, and rural Pennsylvania (his childhood home) places he has hung his hat.

When he’s not part of the backing bands for the critically acclaimed Gonjasufi and Flying Lotus, he’s touring and writing his own material, much of which is minimalist pop with a texture of sonic brilliance, giving radio-ready tunes a trippy kick to the head.  He’s someone to watch out for as we approach 2011.

Evan Voytas – Getting Higher

Evan Voytas – I Run With You Spirit Animal

Evan Voytas – I Took a Trip on a Plane