Tag: The Evaporators

Unusual tactics and disruptive strategies make for some fine sounds from Courting.

It’s inevitable — I hate it, but it happens every few years. I’ll forget my headphones at home and have to use the station’s pair. The show must continue. And here is The Sonic Dawn to kick it off in style with some of that hard-hitting punchy punch rolling mayhem thing they do.

Every ten years or so, this late-Tuesday gig lands on Christmas Eve, and it’s about the right frequency to dust off and update the Organization’s Twisted Xmas playlist, two hours of familiar yet unexpected holiday-season music. The Final Hour, for all intents and purposes, remained its usual cheer-free self, you’ll be glad to hear.

I will let you in on a secret weakness: a band like The Rare Occasions can seize control of my playlist just by showing up with a surplus of pop hooks and grade AAA harmonies.

Looking for some wildman rockandroll? You need look no further than this four-song effort (one of which takes up more than half the album), featuring out-of-control guitar stunts, an implacable rhythm section, and a wonderfully unhinged vibe.

It’s the triumphant return of Pom Poko and their shattered-and-reassembled attacks of aggression and affection, like the sonic equivalent of staying inside the sauna for as long as you can, then running out to roll around in the snow.

There wasn’t enough room on the narrow boat for the botanist to take out a handkerchief and wipe their brow. The square head vessel, slicing through the water on its way to the Phong Dien Floating Market, looked to be laden with mangos, but that was a ruse. The pyramids that piled the boat only a had a skin a single mango deep. Underneath were piles of something with about the same density as mangos, but much much more valuable. The captain twisted the knob on the cabin radio on hearing some narcopolka, the device’s limited capacity making the sound increase not in volume, only in distortion. The sun sparkled off the water, a thousand heat lasers evading the shade thrown by the wide straw hats they wore.

The keypad beeped softly as the astronomer keyed in the coordinates. It was deepest darkest night on the altiplano, the stars above an unfamiliar configuration for those born to northern skies. The physicist tapped their pencil against their favorite clipboard (the metal one), the coffee-stained papers clipped to it showing the revised calculations for the Hole In The Sky. Over the tinny intercom, hacked because both had forgotten to bring a speaker, a particularly ironic song choice began to play, making them instinctively share a knowing glance.

Beach House's music always rings as the soundtrack to some brain-warped too-much-party film montage. WIth "Drunk In LA", their song titles are catching up with the vibe.