// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Mister Fusty, Connect EP

By John Lane

In the interest of full disclosure, right off the bat, Mister Fusty (a.k.a. Rob Gibson) is a musical comrade-in-arms who collaborated on a track from my recent album. That out of the way, I was a fan of Mister Fusty long before I mustered up the nerve to ask him if he would work with me.

I discovered him somewhere between his first album Honest Blundering (November 2006) and the follow-up Sparkle Darkly (August 2007). These two instrumental-only albums knocked me off my feet and made me reconsider the whole idea of what it means to write a melody line.
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Wild Beasts, Two Dancers

By Ann Clarke

Its not often that I’m ever impressed with any new band. I rarely am . . . but occasionally something crosses my radar that is worth further investigation. Wild Beasts are one of those oddities that I probably would’ve overlooked due to their stupid name. However, the stupidity stops right there with their name, and after listening to them, it is ironically appropriate.
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Japanese Gum, Hey Folks! Nevermind, We Are All Falling Down!

By Hanna

Japanese Gum are an Italian experimental music duo (based in Genova). Hey Folks! Nevermind, We Are All Falling Down! is their first full-length album, consisting of songs previously released on EPs and some new songs.
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The Futurebirds, Hampton’s Lullaby

By Adam McIntyre

On Hampton’s Lullaby, The Futurebirds create lush, reverby indie pop with varied acoustic instrumentation and those western Americana leanings. These guys from Athens harmonize, they twang with beards, they do some pretty damned interesting gritty guitar solos. . . and did I mention that they like reverb?

They’ll probably stop just short of reminding you of My Morning Jacket (though they do remind me a bit of a favorite band of mine, Hands Down Eugene) and in spite of the steel guitars and southern-sung style, they’re unlikely to evoke a country vibe. More like Pernice Brothers having a country-tinged lullaby writing session.
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The Birthday Cakes, Expansion Pack

By Jemiah Jefferson

Okay, these guys are total freaks. And I think I love them. Don’t be fooled by the cheerful grins on this trio of damn handsome ginger brothers, nor by their love of really dreadful ’80s sweaters and paint-streak-patterned T-shirts: The Birthday Cakes are ready to rock your face off and make you howl at the moon (or at least roll up a really good werewolf mage).
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Young Doctors In Love, 5 Golden Greats EP

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto five-piece Young Doctors In Love has recently released 5 Golden Greats, an EP that is aptly titled and perfectly suited for sunny days and hot weather. These five tunes are catchy without being repetitive, hefty without being heavy, and unique without being precious.
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Peggy Sue, Fossils And Other Phantoms

By J Howell

Watch the video for “Watchman” and download the song here.

Peggy Sue singer Katy Young recently said of Fossils And Other Phantoms that the main themes of the album are “absences and presences, and the emotional and physical beings that remain after various endings.” This is a break-up record, but fortunately, it’s a damn fine one.

Peggy Sue—composed of Young, co-singer/guitarist Rosa Slade, and drummer Olly Joyce—mine some raw emotional territory on Fossils, and it’s a rather melancholy record. In places, it’s reminiscent of, say, Beth Orton, but with a somewhat more aggressive point of view. While the subject matter may not exactly be fun, and thus some songs may not quite enjoyable as such, the presentation is admirably insightful and interesting.
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Johnny Dowd, Wake Up The Snakes

By J Howell

It’s more than a little puzzling to me why Johnny Dowd isn’t better known or revered as a master of American music. Dowd’s latest release, Wake Up The Snakes, is everything that rock and roll could and should be, or at the very least, one badass variant thereof.

In this day and age, even if Dowd isn’t exactly a household name (and I have to admit, prior to near-synchronous name-dropping in song by Howe Gelb and seeing the brilliant film Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus a couple years back, Dowd was a stranger to me, too), it’s easy enough to find a lot of recurring descriptors and comparisons on the Internet. While it may be somewhat lazy, it’s not exactly a huge stretch to say that listeners who enjoy the work of Nick Cave or Tom Waits, or readers who like Harry Crews, will likely find a new favorite in Dowd: he deserves the respect those three command.
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Tobacco, Maniac Meat

By Less Lee Moore

“I want to make you feel paranoid in a good way. There’s something seriously fucked about workout tapes from the mid ’80s, and just about everything obscure on beta tape. They make me feel awful, but really good and curious at the same time. With this Tobacco stuff, I’m trying to translate that feeling.”
—Tobacco, September 26, 2008, Interview in Kotori Magazine

The contradictions inherent in being both a music lover and a music writer frequently lead to a profound tension between pure enjoyment and the need to explain and categorize every song that weaves its way into my ears. One persistent classification has been “music that makes my mom nervous.” Although I have empirical knowledge that Born Innocent by Redd Kross is one such album, I have never been brave enough to test out other potential contenders like Nirvana’s In Utero or anything by JG Thirlwell (the cover of Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel’s Nail was enough to send her into apoplexy).

Certainly Tobacco‘s Maniac Meat would introduce my mom to an entirely new dimension of nervousness.
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Hanson Is Cool. . . Seriously

By Brenna Chase

Photo credit:
http://boston.com/

To celebrate the upcoming release of Hanson’s newest album, Shout It Out, and to commemorate their recent “5 For 5” concerts, here is our entire five-part series on Hanson. Yes, Hanson.

Unless you are a Hanson fan, you may not be aware of these simple facts:
1. Hanson is still alive.
2. All three of them are of the male gender.
3. They are still together as a band

Allow me to clear this up for you. Yes, Hanson is very much alive and writing and performing songs—successfully enough, in fact, to make a living from it. Though you may assume they went out of style back in 1998 (if they were ever really “in style” at all), their new material is actually better than most of today’s mainstream pop music.
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