Sleepies, Weird Wild World

By Less Lee Moore

Sleepies have a deceptively lazy name. If their music makes you sleepy, something’s wrong with you. According to a recent Noisey interview, they also considered Tires & Skunks as a name. That alone should be enough to pique your interest. Oh, and their new album Weird Wild World is fantastic, by the way.

Right off, there are going to be a lot of people comparing them to Nirvana with accusatory tones in their voices, but come on, didn’t that critique go out of style a few years ago? Sleepies are more reminiscent of Flipper (a huge influence on Nirvana) and Flop (who also happen to be an early ’90s Seattle band). If this means nothing to you, you should look up those two bands on YouTube immediately.

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Nude Beach, II

By Less Lee Moore

When MTV premiered in 1981, it was astonishingly free form. You’d see a wide range of musical styles represented. New wave, rap, and heavy metal hadn’t taken over the mainstream yet, so there was still a lot of straight-up rock & roll interspersed between U2, Gary Numan, and Adam and the Ants videos. Had they existed back in the day, Brookyln’s three-piece Nude Beach would have been on heavy rotation.

The band sounds like they’d fit perfectly on the soundtrack to a never-released Amy Heckerling or Martha Coolidge movie from the early ’80s, successfully straddling that precipice between pure rock and power pop. This description might cause some to grumble about “Brooklyn hipsters” but Nude Beach’s three members—Chuck Betz, Jim Shelton, and Ryan Naideau—look and sound completely unpretentious. Sure they borrow heavily from the past, but when it’s done in such a non-self-conscious way, it’s refreshing.

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Los Lobos, Kiko 20th Anniversary Edition: featuring Kiko Live, Kiko Live DVD/Blu-Ray

By J Howell

Los Lobos, photo &copy Drew Reynolds

It’s funny how time flies, and frankly a bit unnerving to think that Los Lobos‘ masterpiece, Kiko, is almost old enough to drink legally. In celebration of the benchmark album’s twentieth anniversary, Shout! Factory has a whole lot of Kiko for Lobos fans new and old to enjoy.

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Maxïmo Park, The National Health

By Less Lee Moore

On Maxïmo Park‘s Wikipedia entry there’s a great quote about singer Paul Smith: “When he first joined we didn’t know if he could [sing]; just that he was a lunatic jumping around in a suit, it felt like the last piece of the jigsaw.” When listening to The National Health, it’s immediately obvious that serendipity was on their side. At times Smith exhibits close, sensual vocals similar to those of Martin Gore (but minus the vibrato); other times, his soaring voice has flashes of Midge Ure.

The National Health is the band’s fourth album since their debut release in 2005, but it’s my introduction to them. There are thirteen songs included, all evidence of a self-assured bunch. Maxïmo Park’s songs are buoyant and radio-friendly, boasting interesting lyrics as well as first-class musicianship.

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Basquiat Goes To The Cinema

By Chelsea Spear

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, 2010

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life seems all but made for the silver screen. The art world star lived fast. During his 27 years on the planet, he created a complex, engaging body of work. In addition to his solo paintings, he collaborated with Andy Warhol and formed the No Wave band Gray. He died young as the result of self-destructive habits. And he left a good-looking corpse. The half-life of flickering 16mm and unforgiving video reveals a young man with the sulky charisma of a 1950s screen idol.

About a decade after Basquiat’s death, he began surfacing in the movies. His life has the potential for either a brilliant big-screen epic in the style of Lust for Life or a misdirected attempt at catching lightning in a bottle. How have the different films about Jean-Paul Basquiat stacked up?

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Assemblog: August 17, 2012

Cold Blooded, 2012
Still from Bloody Disgusting

New this week on Popshifter: Chelsea describes the main mystery man of documentary Searching For Sugar Man as a “kind of rock and roll Harry Lime”; Cait assures us that Ignition—the new album from Shoes—proves “they’re still as fresh, vital, and engaging as they were when Jimmy Carter was swatting at swamp rabbits” and extols the virtues of the “gorgeous, melodic” tunes on Bad Lucy’s self-titled EP.

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Bad Lucy, Bad Lucy EP

By Cait Brennan

The Internet is a magical place. A few nights back, I muted Bob “Olympus Interruptus” Costas and took a random gander at the live web feed of one of my favorite watering holes—Tempe, Arizona’s historic Tempe Tavern. A suitably vibrant crowd was on hand to revel in the music of some fine local bands. It was all good stuff, but one band stood out so much that I had to track them down. The band is called Bad Lucy, and their gorgeous, melodic songs and energetic live show blasted right through the off-kilter webcam and livestream hiccups—and into my heart. Shut up, I’m serious.

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Shoes, Ignition

By Cait Brennan

Zion, Illinois hardly seems like the kind of place to jumpstart a music revolution. But in the dark days of 1974, this tasty bit of spicy mustard in the middle of a Waukegan/Kenosha sandwich found itself with not one but two seemingly endless power sources. Say what you will about nuclear fission, but the Zion Nuclear Power Plant had nothing on the thousand-megawatt power pop of brothers John and Jeff Murphy and their high school pal Gary Klebe—the creative soul of Shoes. Pioneers of both power pop and DIY home recording, the band made their mark with 1977’s self-released Black Vinyl Shoes, released three gorgeous albums on Elektra from ’79-82, and over the next 30-plus years, blazed a fiercely independent trail with a series of critically-acclaimed albums (1984’s Silhouette, 1990’s Stolen Wishes, ‘94’s Propeller, and a ton of rarities and reissues).

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Searching For Sugar Man

By Chelsea Spear

Who is, or was, Sixto Diaz Rodriguez? A lifelong resident of Detroit, and the son of Mexican immigrants who moved to the Midwest to work for Ford. A “prophet, “a wise man”, and a “wandering spirit” in the eyes of his coworkers on construction crews. A social activist who ran for office in his hometown, and who brought his five daughters to protests. A man of modest means who lives an ascetic life.

For a brief period in the 1970s, Rodriguez was a solo artist who released two remarkable albums—Cold Fact and Coming From Reality—that reached an audience so small, the cliché “cult hero” would overestimate it. While the albums sold an estimated six copies in America and quickly lapsed out of print, Cold Fact made it to South Africa not long after it came out here. Rodriguez’s anti-establishment lyrics, combined with his driving melodies and funky arrangements, made him a folk hero to South Africans bristling under apartheid. That Rodriguez was rumored to have committed a grisly suicide before a live audience only deepened his legend.

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Assemblog: August 10, 2012

Kim Novak in Vertigo, 1958

New this week on Popshifter: Part Four in Paul’s album-by-album articles on THE BAND appraises Cahoots; my (sorta) objective, glowing review of Redd Kross’s first album in 15 years, Researching The Blues; Paul reviews Paul Thorn’s What The Hell Is Goin’ On? using the phrase “smo’ chicken”; Cait provides a brief history of The Tubes in her review of the reissues of their albums Young & Rich and Now; Chelsea wants to like Jezzy & The Belles’ Compasses & Maps but is unable to; and Lisa has mixed feelings about Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers on DVD.

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