Best Of 2011: Less Lee Moore

As always, I wish I’d had the time and resources available to experience more, but here are some of the things that made 2011 memorable (in alphabetical order, to be fair).

À l’Intérieur (Inside) at TIFF Bell Lightbox, August 20: Though I’d already watched this film three times on DVD, I felt that I needed to see it on the big screen. I’ve probably said this a few times already, but it’s still true: it manages to completely transcend the horror genre to become a bona fide work of cinematic art. It is indescribable and powerful and if you haven’t experienced it yet, you should.

Adam Ant: For all those folks who thought he was a crazy, bloated has-been, recent live performance clips on YouTube will more than prove those half-baked theories wrong. He’s so much more than the guy who did “Goody Two Shoes” and any and all adulation for him is well deserved. His descent into madness, fall from grace, and subsequent return to form (used in the truest, most non-cliched sense ever) are remarkable achievements. He remains, after thirty years, a huge inspiration to me. (more…)

Electric Six, Heartbeats And Brainwaves

By Megashaun

With the release of its eighth studio album, Heartbeats and Brainwaves, Electric Six shows us its mastery of time, its appreciation of punctuality, and most importantly, its musical relevance.

Heartbeats and Brainwaves introduces us to a different sound than what we’ve come to expect from Electric Six, yet it’s exactly what we should have expected. Whereas Zodiac was gleefully deranged, Heartbeats and Brainwaves sits somewhere between seductive and downright weird (yes, weird even for Electric Six).
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The Chain Gang Of 1974, Wayward Fire

By Less Lee Moore

Based on “Undercover”—the first song I heard by The Chain Gang Of 1974—I was excited, fully expecting the album Wayward Fire to be crammed with lush, moody, ’80s-influenced synthy dance pop. (Even the cover art reminds me of Echo and The Bunnymen’s Songs To Learn And Sing.) Since my teen years were spent listening to the original incarnation of that style of music, I’m glad that so many bands are redefining the sound as a genre of its own, not just some passing fad. Yet, Wayward Fire is not what I expected.

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Best Of 2010: Megashaun

Here’s a list of stuff I was really into in 2010.

Music

Electric Six, Zodiac: This album arrived in the mail a few months before its actual release. When it arrived, I was so excited that I actually felt sick. So instead of listening to it right away, I read all the press notes that accompanied it. I listened to it the next day. I have listened to this album over 245 times. This is not a lie. Drive somewhere with me and you’ll hear it twice.
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Electric Six, Zodiac

By Less Lee Moore

Since it continues the mythology of the band—self-perpetuation through self-aggrandizing self-deprecation—there’s likely no more appropriate title for the new Electric Six album than Zodiac.

Zodiac is more ambitious than any E6 release since I Shall Exterminate. . ., more structured than Flashy yet more ridiculous than Kill.
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Playing The Hits: Electric Six At Canadian Music Fest

By Less Lee Moore

With Ben Stevenson & The Wondertones/Hot Panda/Sweet Thing
Lee’s Palace, Toronto ON
March 13, 2010

For a band to reach an exalted position on my list of all time faves they must possess two qualities: wonderful musicianship and witty lyrics. Because they have consistently excelled in both categories, Electric Six have ascended quickly up my own personal charts over the last three years. Put another, less pedantic, way: they crack me up and they fucking rock.
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Desktop EP

By Megashaun

Desktop is a combination of the creative forces of two men: Keith Thompson (from Electric Six and Johnny Headband) and Zach Curd (from Suburban Sprawl Music’s The Pop Project). When I first discovered the act several months ago, it was mainly with the intention of reviewing their all-too-short debut EP. At only three songs in length, it can’t possibly be difficult to describe them adequately.

But that’s exactly the position I found myself in. Having heard the EP hundreds of times now, I’m still at a loss to talk about it with adjectives other than “kick-ass,” “amazing,” and “awesome.”
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The Best Albums Of My Decade: By Less Lee Moore

In an editorial called “An Argument Against Year End Lists” Dusted‘s Ben Tausig calls them both “viscerally disgusting” and “overdone” and accuses those critics who write them of being lazy.

Point taken, Mr. Tausig.
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Electric Six “Rocks Ass” At Dante’s

Dick Valentine

By Christian Lipski
Photos by Deborah Lipski

Dante’s, Portland OR
November 13, 2009
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Electric Six, KILL

By Christian Lipski

“You can’t run away from your legs, because that’s what you’re trying to run away from them with!”
—unknown SubGenius

In “Waste Of Time And Money,” the second track on the new Electric Six album KILL, Dick Valentine sings: Take this back to where we started. It’s not possible to avoid your origins forever; eventually you’re going to have to accept that your beginnings are part of what makes you unique, and embrace them. Or in Electric Six’s case, you just plug them in and dance along with them.
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