Shark? - “Hey Grrl”

Last time we saw Brooklyn’s Shark?, they were happily covering Beat Happening’s anti-Christmas, Christmas hit, “Christmas” (for good measure, once more, Christmas!). Now they’re doing all sorts of stuff: playing shows, releasing an EP, acting like they are some kind of band. Yeah, okay.

Their EP, Noise Maker is out today, and if it’s half as rowdy as “Hey Grrl,” then it is probably pretty rowdy. As “Brooklyn Garage” becomes a somewhat acceptable tag (ironically, because there are very few carports around here, but “Brooklyn Rented Practice Space” doesn’t really sound genre-fied), Shark? manages to sound consistently fresh. It may be the party-time synths (party-time synths mean ‘time to party’), or the drums that sound like Zach Hill violently beating a 7-11 dumpster. Either way, “Hey Grrl” is infectiously trashy.

Even the spelling of “Grrl” is a little tweaked from the norm. Tons of bands are using AIM-speak in their album titles (the Mae Shi’s HLLYH), song names (uhh..Katy Perry’s “Ur So Gay”) and band names (try LOL, “one of Utah’s finest dance and rock cover bands.” I found this on Google, unable to think of another Internet band name. I am still right). But Shark? takes the typical “grl” shortening, and makes it “grrl,” making the whole thing a bit more animalistic.

Bottom line: this song brings the Pabst keg to the party. You bring the grrls.

Download Shark?’s Noise Maker EP right now.

by Max Sebela

I’ve been known to criticize buzz bands’ MySpace pages. The now-dated social network, with its limited blog toolsets and style capabilities, sadly remains the very best way for a band to host .mp3s, and can lead to some terrifyingly awful web design. But Hooray For Earth has no excuse. The thing is caked with low res purple text, symmetrically layered behind, that is supposed to disjointedly read “Hooray For Earth” (stay with me, that’s the band name). Behind the text is a VCR display, and what I can only guess is the windshield of a car. Where is the car going? Most likely into bad Myspace hell (which is probably more populated than actual hell (to be fair, bad Myspace hell is probably the same place as actual hell, as one of the lost Commandments was “Thou Shall Not Upload Low Res and Obscured Images As a Background To One’s Social Network”)).

Still, as with Suckers before them, I’m willing to forgive the bizarre/sad/desperate aesthetic choice on merit of the songs. “Surrounded by Your Friends” is the best kind of electro posi-jam, right up there with James Murphy’s “All My Friends.” Simple, 8-bit pulses and drum pads back up the vocals, which are languid and rhythmic, if not slightly apathetic. As the chorus soars in, “In then end, you’re surrounded by your friends,” the listener is forced to smile. Isn’t that what we all wish?

As the world ends, I hope yellow-warm synth kicks in, and I look around, and there are at least a couple of my friends there. A four-minute pop song is able to evoke that – from a band with the worst Myspace page I have ever seen.

Stream it here.

by Max Sebela

“Oh my Lord, so FUNKY.” This is what you are about to think to yourself/say outloud (for those who find themselves in a semi-social situation midday through a Wednesday, or are of the sort likely to be overcome with excitement toward funk that you begin to speak outloud) when listening to Soundpool’s “But It’s So.” A thick, dreamy shoegazing guitar jumble, driven by an even thicker disco beat, “But It’s So” is immediately one of the best tracks recorded by the NYC quintet, who have been relatively quiet since 2008’s Dichotomies and Dreamland.

The track is good enough to ignore the chorus of, “But it’s so…,” without really understanding what “it” is, or what this “it” is “so.” And if you really feel like you need an answer, just fill in “hot” at the end of the line, and you’ll be just fine.

“But It’s So” is set to appear on Soundpool’s upcoming LP Mirrors in Your Eyes, released sometime early on this year on Killer Pimp. With this, and Music Go Music’s Expressions both due out soon, 2010 is already shaping up to be a pretty great year for disco-revival. Which, depending on how receptive you are to disco, means 2010 is shaping up to be a good/awful year for new/tired music.

Soundpool - “But Its So”

by Max Sebela

There are a few bands from the 90s that haven’t maintained their “promise of influence” all that well (I use scare quotes here, because I realize that this concept, a promise of influence, is a load of bullshit. A band’s lasting success is mostly reliant on the bands that “promise influence” immediately after them. Sorry, Television, that’s mostly why you’re important). Liz Phair, Archers of Loaf, and Walt Mink are a few of these bands. But one of the most striking bands whose arsenal is never drawn from is the Dismemberment Plan. Bands inspired by the Dismemberment Plan (which is indicated by crystal clear vocals, noodling, shifts in song structure, and blips. Lotsa blips) are few and far between. The closest thing I could think of is Yeasayer – but that’s more Floyd and the Flaming Lips, than it is Travis Morrison and Co.

The preceding paragraph is just a lead up to say, rather oafishly: “So..uhh…isn’t it cool? This band CAVES totally sounds kind of like the Dismemberment Plan. They uhh…even sing about science and shit. Not many bands do that I guess…yeah.”

CAVES just got to Brooklyn from San Francisco a few months ago. They’ll be releasing an album, A Year of Magic (for beginners) sometime this year, and are releasing an EP, Face the Wall in April (which you can check out here). Stream “Face the Wall” below…it sounds kind of like the Dismemberment Plan. Yeah!

Caves - “Face the Wall”

by Max Sebela

True Womanhood - “The Monk”

It seems that when we listed the reasons we wanted to go to the Babies/Beach Fossils/Sundelles show at Glasslands this Wednesday we forgot a pretty good one: DC’s True Womanhood. We just received this track that will appear on their soon-to-be released debut EP, Basement Membranes - which they recorded at Brooklyn’s own Death By Audio!

People often compare True Womanhood to Radiohead, (probably because of their overriding melancholy and Thom Yorke-ish vocals) but we think that’s simplifying it a little, and the members of True Womanhood say themselves that they’d rather be aligned with contemporaries like Beach House. We’ll go for that comparison, but after listening to more of True Womanhood’s songs like “Magic Child,” we think that they’ve got a potential for aggression you won’t find in Beach House…and we like it! (Besides, we already know not to mess with anyone who wields a sledgehammer while wearing flip-flops.)

Check out True Womanhood at Glasslands this Wednesday, January 6, with Babies, Total Slacker, Beach Fossils and The Sundelles.

by Erin Sheehy

Send in the folk (clowns?). Brooklyn’s Darrin James Band just sent over “The Lovely Ugly Truth,” the title track off their recently released sophomore album The Lovely Ugly. In 2009, it is hard to give great singer songwriters the attention they deserve – we receive so many submissions from guys with acoustic guitars, that it is sometimes easier to just talk about the ones that the big name blogs give the most press (I’m looking at you, Kurt Vile…I see you over there, smugly profiting off your questionably deserved hype).

But “The Lovely Ugly Truth” is such an enjoyable track: raucous, bluesy, and obviously classic, a composite piece of “rock and roll.” James has a such smokey gruff voice that it seems it would have been a rejection of his own birthright not to sing the blues. James isn’t going to invent any new genres, or get called a sonic pioneer, but with a song this genuine and immediate, who cares?

Darrin James Band - “The Lovely Ugly Truth”

by Max Sebela

Well, with a title like that, you don’t really have to imagine what this post is about. Brooklyn’s Shark? recorded a cover of Beat Happening’s stripped-down anti-classic Christmas song “Christmas” (which originally appeared on Beat Happening, the band’s 1985 debut). For those who haven’t heard its unpleasantness, here’s a stream of the original:

Shark?’s version adds instruments, which simultaneously defeats the original’s purpose, and makes it listenable. “I had sex on Christmas/ I had sex three times today” doesn’t really stuff my stocking full of gift cards the way imagining my father dressing up as Santa Claus in an ever-futile attempt to seduce my mother does, but hey, an anti-Christmas song is always appreciated. The original’s stark, tribal percussion is replaced by a pounding kick drum, and some lively jingle bells. This, with a stock surf rock bass line running over it, transforms Calvin Johnson’s isolated apathy into a raucous, bacchanal holiday rager. Yeah, doin’ it on Christmas! Getting’ hammered! Pour me some more eggnog, Aunt Carol, because I don’t want to remember this Christmas in the morning.

Shark? - “Christmas”

Shark?’s “Christmas” is part of Ear Farm’s Do you EAR what I EAR compilation, which features holiday tunes from the likes of Julie Doiron, Tom Tom Club, Sharon Van Etten, and Asobi Seksu. All proceeds go directly to the Association to Benefit Children. To learn more, and to buy the compilation, click here.

by Max Sebela

The JM.com office just got Keepaway’s debut EP, Baby Style — in case you didn’t know (which we didn’t up until now), the band formerly known as IN has changed their name to Keepaway). A short history: a friend of JM.com stumbled on IN, was absolutely blown away, and we wound up booking them for our September feature show, which subsequently wound up blowing all of us away. Then they wrote a “Musicians on Music” for us…about pizza.

IN was a hilariously cavalier band name. It is an unsearchable term in google, as it appears on nearly every website at least once. Even if you add “band,” you mostly get results about in-band signaling, which sure, is interesting in its own right, but not the obscure Brooklyn psych-band that loves pizza. So IN set themselves up to be relatively undiscoverable, recording demos and melting faces, but leaving people struggling to remember a name. It was their choice, making anyone who wanted to hear them ostensibly unable to.

So why change the name now? Who knows (these guys are fairly goofy, and probably have a reason way over my head…most likely having to do with pizza). But, if I had to take a guess, I’d say the trio realizes that they are sitting on one of the better 2009 Brooklyn rock releases in Baby Style, and probably desperately want people to hear it. Firmly in line with other modern psych bands, like Suckers and Yeasayer, Baby Style moves from a wide range of styles, from flowery pop to industrial electro. It’s got some seriously stunning moments, and you all should buy it immediately.

Here’s highlight “Family of the Son.” It’s a solid introduction to Keepaway: two layered percussion, both electronic and live, pounding through four-minutes of dense vocal harmonies and plucked guitars. It is obviously and possibly obliquely complicated, a technical jam. Somewhere in there, though, there’s a simple saccharine pop tune. It never gets completely unburied, and that’s fine. The emotion stays relatively elusive; the quality of the song doesn’t.

Stream “Family of the Son”

by Max Sebela