MALT LIQUOR MALT ICE CREAM. Try to figure out what my favorite release this week, won’t be too hard to figure out with that all caps intro, ey?
Listen:
Brooklyn’s own The So So Glos seems to be the new Great Punk Hope, with good reason too––this week’s Blowout employs all of the greatest things about punk in 12 tracks. Semi-political consciousness is present “Son of An American,” which they performed on The Late Show with David Letterman this week. It’s a perfect patriotic anthem in the way that it exudes pride but also realizes all the privilege of being a white male in America with lines like, “I tried and tried but I can’t hide/What I am as an American /And all the kids overseas/Can’t never know freedom like me.” The band’s “Diss Town” sounds both like an ode and a, well, diss. “All of the Time” sounds like it could have been a Kinks song, but it’s a little more sinister in it’s lyrics. With Blowout, So So Glos create one great party and an epic hangover all at the same time, and it’s totally worth it.
Frank Turner’s music has always been very lyrically driven, and the punk troubadour has always been an outlier in terms of me enjoying him. I enjoy sincerity and cheesiness very very much, but something about Tape Deck Heart specifically turns me off because of Turner’s literalness. Songs worth listening to are the cutesy ballad “The Way I Tend To Be” and “Good & Gone.” “Four Simple Words” had the potential to be a great song, what with it’s saloon-like piano intro crushing against a great punk drumbeat. Unfortunately, it started sounding a little too like Taylor Swift’s “22”. The lyrics feel whiny and far below Turner’s capabilities. I mean, “Yeah is anybody else sick of the music that’s churned out by lackluster scenesters from Shoreditch/Yeah it’s all sex drugs and sins/Like they’re extras from Skins/But it’s okay because they don’t really mean it,” come on! The hipster bashing later on in the song, “Somebody told me that music with guitars was going out of fashion and I had to laugh/This shit wasn’t fashionable when I fell in love/If the hipsters move on why should I give a fuck?” I know what you’re saying Frank, but it sounds more like you do give a fuck what the hipsters have to say, and I really wish you didn’t.
Phoenix, oh Phoenix what can I say about you? It’s interesting that all the songs on Bankrupt! seem to be about Hollywood or at least the Glitterati in general. There’s no denying that “Entertainment” is probably one of the greatest pop songs of the year. That comes as no surprise as Phoenix have become a massive success based off “1901” and “Lizstomania.” Somewhere after “Entertainment” though, Bankrupt! becomes too much of a synthesized blur for me to enjoy until the groovy “Chloroform.” Phoenix’s strongest point has never been it’s lyrics, I remember an epic argument with a friend over whether “1901” said “fallin’ fallin” or “fold it, fold it.” It’s fold it. If you think I’m wrong, you’re dumb! Anyway, “Chloroform” might include some of their best lyrics on the album, as well as “Oblique City.” So what makes Bankrupt! a worthwhile follow up to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix? Listen to it and imagine how these songs are going to sound live. They’re going to sound perfect–– Phoenix is a band to listen to live, especially at a festival. Considering how many festivals they are headlining this summer, you have plenty of chances to enjoy Bankrupt! in its best form.
Watch:
Like I said above, the So So Glos made their television debut this week. My favorite reaction to the fact that a tiny DIY band from Brooklyn made it onto Letterman came from another Brooklyn band, Japanther. I saw them at Crossing Brooklyn Ferry this weekend and drummer/vocalist Ian proudly shouted, “The FUCKING SO SO GLOS WERE ON LETTERMAN” before tearing into a song. Check out “Son of an American” below.
Here’s an excerpt from Nitsuh Abebe’s The Amanda Palmer Problem:
“However: Palmer’s logic here is itself generally identical to cold, hard free-market capitalism. Yes, the exchange she’s describing is “fair” — everyone involved is willing and happy to engage in it. It’s also “fair” to pay someone minimum wage for work that makes you millions, and fair for a male musician to spend every night having sex with starstruck, consenting young fans, but fairness is not the same thing as nobility, and neither of those arrangements is something you’d present as a revolutionary new relationship. Also not new: the very notion of music as a do-it-yourself gift-based community exchange. One reason some musicians have banged their heads on walls over Palmer’s post-Kickstarter press is that they’ve been doing this sort of thing all the time for decades — independent music in this country is a vast laboratory of artists and fans collaborating to sustain niche scenes, a context that’s weirdly unacknowledged when Palmer talks about her career.”
Please go read the whole thing over at Vulture.
Random Nostalgia:
The sun is shining, everywhere I go someone is driving around with their windows down and a night club in their car. Let’s party.
Follow Alex on Twitter.
