Tag: Alt-J

If I played roller derby, I would want The Bobby Lees on my team.

A new album from The Bobby Lees is making its way to us, and I’m banging on the table in anticipation. Also, I meant to call that Alt-J song “Breezleblocks,” it’s a long story. Freaky weather continues!

All that Peel Dream Magazine asks is that you have a little bit of faith.

Things get off to a rough start, but quickly smooth out. I have a special spot in my hear for the sui generis musicians that create and produce their music entirely within their bedroom, Jay Som being a perfect example.

Mimi Parker, vocalist and drummer and half of the Minnesota band Low, passed away a couple of weeks ago while I was traveling. It’s a shocking loss and an abrupt end to a musical career that was still unfolding; the band’s last two albums, coming at the tail end of a discography that spans decades, showed a blossoming new direction for an act that was famed for their quiet and glacial approach. We open the show with Low’s rendition of a Bee Gees classic in tribute.

Nothing to do with Peggy Lee’s sultry standard, this particular “Fever” comes from Aldous Harding, whose unique marshmallows-and-razor-blades sensibility makes for songs that leave you bleeding but which you crave again and again. Also tonight and also from New Zealand, a track from Garageland, one of my favorite underrated Kiwi bands of the ‘90s, which isn’t saying much because they were all underrated and they are all my favorites.

I always thought Kurt Vile was a play on the name of the German composer that gave us “Mack The Knife,” but that seems to be his given name (bonus: middle name is Samuel). Sonically, he’s more in line with Lou Reed than Weill, topping his awkward nouveau folk with a voice that may not be the most musical but is actually the perfect medium to express this particular malarkey.

It takes a certain mindset to take on a King Crimson song, and clearly black midi is of that mindset. Is it a bugle call for all prog rockers everywhere to take up their Moogs and sparkly jumpsuits and join the New Prog Revolution? I can support that.

Shane McGowan was a true Irish poet, and although Cat Power delivers the classic track from the Pogues in a voice very different from the original whiskey-and-gravel, the song's deep inner character is unchanged.

The mysterious Snapped Ankles are descended from the forest people, though it seems they took a detour through some harsh industrial spaces to bring their stuttering electro-strangulation to our ears.