The fourth song is out, only 40 to go. The next thing is the first EP entitled Teargarden by Kaleidyscope Volume 1: Songs for A Sailor. This will be available for pre-order on April 17th,¬† National Record Store Day. It will be in a limited edition collector’s box along with a 7″ vinyl, artwork, and a hard-carved wooden obelisk “hewn in the shadow of Machu Picchu.” Snazzy indeed.
This is to be the first installment in a series of entries for The Coolest Song Ever! … Right Now dedicated to The Elevator Drops – the best band you’ve never heard. It makes no sense to me that this band never enjoyed any commercial exposure at any level at all – ever. I’ve described them as Bowie meets Devo meets Zeppelin electro glam pop (throw in some shoegaze for good measure) with their outlandish outfits, excellent drumming, walls of synth and guitar, psychedelic or oddball concepts and themes (they seem to have an obsession with Blade Runner style future transport), insanely bombastic live performances – and all of this churned together and spit out with excellent musicality, originality, and pop sensibility. This song is “Car II” from their ’94 debut album Pop Bus. Just to demonstrate a touch of their quirkiness; “Car II” is the second song on the album and the seventh song is “Car” for no apparent reason or visible tie-in.
Chali 2na is the bad-ass baritone from Jurassic 5 – the best hip hop outfit around right now. The first time I heard the “verbal Herman Munsta” was with Ozomatli way back and I’ve been a fan since.¬†The deep voice is something I thought would irritate me. but it works so well. Despite the short run time of “Get Focused” it still slams. [media id=37]
Lusk’s one and only album, Free Mars, was released in 1997. They are described as a “highly experimental psychedelic pop band.” Tool’s original bass player, Paul D’Amour left the band after Undertow to pursue something “more experimental” and Lusk is just that. “Backworlds” is the first song on the album and maybe the most listenable. It is actually reminiscent of current, progressive indie rock – along the lines of MEW. The song creates the clever parallel of sounding light and poppy while the lyrics and feel lend themselves to something darker. The video for “Backworlds” is similar; innocuous yet disconcerting.
[media id=36]
“Wide Eyes” is this first song I heard from California band Local Natives. Their debut full-length album, Gorilla Manor, was released in England in 2009, then February of 2010 here in the States. This song mixes the vocal feelings of Fleet Foxes with the frenetic passion of Modest Mouse. Despite my annoying capacity to compare one band’s sound to another band’s sound, this song from Local Natives feels fresh. The vocal arrangements, solid drumming, and cool guitar work make it stand-out in the ever widening sea of indie-pop faces.
[media id=35]
Ah, Modest Mouse and their penchant for clever song titles and even cheekier album names released the EP, No One’s First and You’re Next, a few months back. Another well-crafted notch in their belt No One captures all that is great about their sound – then and now and continues Isaac Brock’s witty, humanistic, if not nihilistic view of life through his lyrics. “Guilty Cocker Spaniels” could be overlooked with the catchy “Satellite Skin” and the Heath Ledger directed video for “King Rat” sucking up the oxygen, but it shouldn’t be. It starts with that loose and jangly sound that they coined – chaotic at first glance, but beautiful with further listens – then slows and builds to a grand soaring feel somewhere past the halfway mark. Modest Mouse is one of those bands where you get so much more from the song when you listen while reading the lyrics.
Guilty Cocker Spaniels:
Well I took off running at the greatest speed
I didn’t bother looking to either side of me
Well I didn’t see, I just didn’t see
What was really going on
The truth had stopped and the skyline rose
Exchanging comfort for more fashionable clothes
I’d left the hills at this point in time
To run on treadmills in a perfect line
Salad days add up to daily shit
Sparked imagination until the sparks just quit
And if this is fun, why am I so bored with it?
Well I’ll probably never know
Guilty Cocker Spaniels eating table scraps
Well we rolled over, how our masters clapped
It felt so good we wanted more than that
But when the program failed they defensively laughed
We did things just how you asked
Don’t try taking us to task
Didn’t buy a face, no just a mask
So happy Halloween!
I drew a blank, we put it in a frame
Wait what you’re winning, you didn’t say this was a game
Well I guess I’ll just have to play and play
Until I’m out of cash
Before I could spit it out
I guess the words had burnt my mouth, what can I say?
There’s the thought I laid it down
So you could take it out of context either way
We said all along we deserve every bit
And mostly we knew that the supply would quit
But we got going, going just away with it
Until everybody lost their mind
Directly behind me and ahead of the time
But don’t you worry he’ll fall right in line
Yep, everything just might fly by
No one’s getting blamed this time
Blame me so blameless
Can we find a way to blame our way out?
Well I postdated the eulogy
For every blameless body, nah nah
We are blamelessly teething
On much more than we need, nah nah nah
Blamelessly teething
Well we’re all getting blamed
While everyone, everyone knew
Well everybody, everybody knew
With a bold statement in your name like The Phenomenal Handclap Band you better be good. TPHCB brings an electronic tinged, spacey, psychedelic disco sound on their debut album. “You’ll
Disappear” backs up the name and is The Coolest Song Ever! … Right Now.
[media id=32]
Have you ever wondered why songs by the electric Sam & Dave or the sweltering Otis Redding have that same tight, grooving sound? Well it’s because of the Mar-Keys and members like Steve “The Colonel” Cropper on guitar and Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass (also of Blues Brothers Band fame) along with other all-stars like Isaac Hayes, Charles “Packy” Axton, Al Jackson Jr. (amazing drummer) and Booker T. Jones. The Mar-Keys were the house band for Stax Records from the late 50′s through the late 60′s and backed up the likes of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Rufus Thomas just to name a few. They evolved into Booker T. and The MG’s and finally The Bar-Kays all the while expanding on blues and jazz roots and laying the groundwork for modern funk and soul. They were cranking out jams like “Grab this Thing” while James Brown was honing his groundbreaking sound in The Famous Flames and several years before Brown defined funk with ‘Cold Sweat” in 1967. This song is from a collection called That Memphis Sound which is now out of print.
The Broken Bells, a collaboration of Danger Mouse and The Shin’s James Mercer, self-titled album debuts March 9th. “The Mall and the Misery” is one of my favorite songs in the collection. The lush symphonic intro and catchy hooks draw you in and just when you really start to like it – the song fades out leaving you wanting more.
[media id=34]
