Tag: Violent Femmes

As it happens, if yours truly has a Valentine’s gig, it’ll be followed by one on Pi Day. Except on leap years. But the point here is that I thought about doing a show themed on circles, spheres, and other such expressions of the number and decided against it, but keep your ears peeled for some future incarnation of a “Round and Round” playlist. Instead, tonight we kick things off with the sort-of eponymous track from The Nude Party’s latest release, and wrap things up with about 30 seconds of Railroad Jerk, because technical difficulties.

After a dormancy of a few years, The Dodos have re-emerged and proven to be anything but extinct. This duo makes a sound that is easy to recognize but hard to describe, a sort of acoustic progressive metal filled with droning rhythms and cascading guitars that you can clearly hear on the appropriately-titled “Unicorn”.

Out of all the ways there were to get into Zugdidi — they could have taken the ekranoplan, for example — the agency had chosen the bus. This exasperated the developer to no end. Their gear sat somewhere in the guts of the green behemoth, guarded by six different hardware and software protocols, but it still felt queasy to be so far removed from it. The meteorologist peered across the botanical garden to the Dadiani palaces. Somewhere in there, a nondescript yogurt stand would have a small radio playing Konnakkol techno. They were to purchase two cones and overpay. Instructions would follow.

The carpenter took a leisurely walk around the perimeter. In the weird light cone projected by the light they had installed at the top of the can, the ropes they had used to rappel down looked like the undulating tentacles of a mysterious jellyfish. Outside the cylindrical building that very deliberately resembled an oversized Coca Cola can, the security guard’s radio played Chicago sambas into the crisp Manitoba evening as he idly played his flashlight over the bushes outside. The choreographer stifled a giggle. On one of the ornithopters parked atop the domed top, next to an opening that looked like someone forgot to bring a canopener, a single LED began to blink. The mission was running out of time.

The Sasha river was running dry, and the aerialist maneuvered his craft to take advantage of the fact. As they moved swiftly along the crumbling banks, exoskeletal legs easily scrabbling over the terrain in an unearthly three-limbed gait, they encountered sun-baked sections where a trickle fed a series of pools on the cracking river bottom, animals congregated around them in a temporary truce. They hadn’t seen a human since Saturday, a fact that concerned the actuary more than the dry river, and the attempted distraction of some Guatemalan gamelan techno was not working. In its steel box, the package of Peanut Butter Crunch patiently rustled and awaited its delivery.

The accordionist’s boot was tangled in a mangrove root. The deepening dusk of Meads Bay Pond brought with it a soft breeze and an ugly threat of bug swarms. Their chances of getting to the beach and capturing enough glowing sugar crabs were dwindling. The roots, more like underwater dreadlocks, heaved as the booted foot attempted to twist out, the accordion case held high as counterbalance. The technician glared at the spectacle briefly before shining a light on the clipboard. In the distance, a barbershop quartet with a Tuvan throat-singing baritone made it incongruous presence known. The keys to the long-range waterbikes had a floaty thing on them, but they were permanently attached to the metal clipboard, which would sink like a stone. The Governor’s Office back in The Valley would certainly hear about this.

Reminiscent of Bossanova-era songwriting, the band continues to make use of twisted lyrics and unexpected melodic flourishes to further iterate on their iconic sound.

There was no official name for this giant hole, this cavern that truly made you realize the proper utilization of the word “cavernous”. Those who knew of its existence referred to it as the “Sarlacc Pit”, while the geologists debated what to call this previously unseen feature in the farthest reaches of British Columbia. The ophthalmologist could not help but recount these facts as they descended into its depths; they were the chatty sort and had barely endured a few hours of self-reflection in the noisy Chinook that had brought the expedition here. The conductor whistled a short melody and listened for the glorious reverberation. The nearest person who could recognize its Peruvian punk origins was 2,524 miles away.

The economist wondered where they’d be if the herpetologist had been available. Probably not prone under a cover of leaves, covered in protective armor, tapping two small bamboo sticks as a ruse to attract a golden lancehead. The rhythm was from the single Nordic folk d’n’b that had played on repeat 142 times on their trip out of the Port of Santos. It had been difficult to find a captain willing to land them on Ilha de Quemaida, so it was not wise to criticize their choice of music for the journey. The epidemiologist was nearby, peering into the carefully held vial and running the numbers on when it would be filled at the current rate of collection, and how quickly they could get off the island once that moment arrived.

This is kept stripped-down and acerbic, completely aligned with the band’s original punk-folk ethic.