album of the week - 3.4

Super Furry Animals

Dark Days / Light Years

Rough Trade (2009)

Why you'll love it:  Great jam band pop without stoner pandering

Why you'll hate it: Entirely forgettable

Super Furry Animals is one of those bands I just take for granted. I have all their albums, I wouldn't say anything bad about them, I never skip them when they appear on my iPod... but I don't think I've ever actually sat through one of their albums with full attention.

I can't even sit entirely through this one to review it. This is a terrible review. I enjoy this hippie psychedelic jam stuff, but don't have enough interest in it to go over the fine details. It's just really good background music. With all due respect to the Welsh psych rock vets, it's not you, it's me. This is a good album, but if you're like me, you'll remember nothing of it except that it was enjoyable and guilt free.

b-b-beatbeatbeat

The wii has successfully managed to completely pull me away from the clutches of Microsoft this month, thanks to Mad World and the Wii Ware title Bit.Trip:Beat. Mad World has caught the attention of the gaming press quite well, so I don't feel I need to talk about it. I'll just say I like it. Bit.Trip:Beat on the other hand, just came out Monday with little notice, and is fantastic. I can't even complete the first level (or song) of B.T:B, but I'm already shooting it to the top of my very short games of the year list. Why? Because I'm the kind of prick who prefers presentation over gameplay. Bit.Trip:Beat is the perfect name for this game. You see bits, and you trip out to the spacey visuals as you catch these bits to a musical beat.

Holding the wiimote like an NES controller, you tilt forwards and backwards to navigate a pong paddle along the left side of the screen. With these controls, you can determine the degree of speed at which your paddle moves. While I can see why they did this, my nerves and shaky hands sometimes fail me and I end up missing easy bits, which are traveling at high speed right to left (thank Satan for widescreen television!) A great electro-disco soundtrack helps you pinpoint when exactly the bits will reach your end of the screen. At first you're echoing every 16th note of the song, and eventually will be hitting nearly every other note. That is of course if you are a retro game wizard, which I am not. I'm constantly distracted (in a good way) by all the wacky space junk flying around the screen.

At its worst, B.T:B can be an annoyance to the colorblind. At one point in the first song, I always trip up when navy blue bits appear before a black background. I can see them, but it requires all of my concentration and distracts me from the other colored bits momentarily. These misses eventually flash DANGER warnings. When you miss too many, the screen goes pure black and white, while all the music gets regulated to the wiimote speaker. This is a really cool feature. Instead of giving you a stubborn GAME OVER, the game figures "ok, you're being too distracted by the sounds and sights" and gives you a chance to get your bearings. You eventually fight your way back up to color, but if you fail monochrome mode, it's game over for real. It's a fair and stylish technique.

Go download Bit.Trip:Beat off the Wii Shop Channel! It's six bucks, which may seem like a lot for what looks like an overclocked Commodore 64 game, but I would have probably spent that much playing a game like this in an arcade.

album of the week - 3.3

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names

#4
Labrador Records (2009)

why you'll love it: modest dorky pop

why you'll hate it: for sissies

I tend not to review singles, but if Swedish twee-pop duo, Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, insists on calling them EPs, I may as well treat them like so. Make no mistake, the opening track will appear on the forthcoming album (which will be titled #5) just as the first track on #1 and #2 eventually made their way to the debut album entitled ... wait for it... #3.

So here we are at #4, many moons after the LP. The Kids have been promising new tunes for nearly two years, so just a taste is both a blessing and a tease. The opening track, "1999", is a perfect pop song. Great hook, more of the classic melodic rambling that made "Rent A Wreck" a fan favorite. The duo hasn't gathered any rust in their downtime.

There are more electronic bells and whistles in the EP, which is a good thing. "Loop Duplicate My Heart" is my favorite SKWBN song. I have no idea if this will be representative of #5 though, as they are the unpredictable type. The theme continues through #4, with "Studenter På Flak" their first Swedish language song. "Europa" is an enjoyable mellow number that's been in demo limbo for a while until now.

"World Music" closes off on a rather artsy tone. While it's still at a standard 3 minute pop song length, it has a real David Byrne ballad vibe. Before you know it, the EP is over. At only about 12 minutes, the EP feels even shorter than it is; but "1999" is such a good song, I could have just listened to that four times in a row and been happy. The Kids have successfuly wet my appetite. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll see #5 this summer.

"I am Lame"

Just this Saturday, I lamented with friends that The Sci Fi Channel needs to change it's name. Nevermind the stuff that isn't sci-fi, like wrestling and a superhero contest reality show; it's that everything on that network is lame. Just call it Lame TV. It's not the worst insult in the world. I enjoy the the occasional lame movie from the network. If they would only out-and-out admit that movies like Supercroc are lame, the honestly would possibly make the experience more enjoyable.

Surprisingly, I read today that they did change their name. Not to "Lame TV", sadly, just to something lame. SyFy: which I initially pronounced as "Siffie". The continued downward spiral of fail continues. Serves em right for canning MST3K.

album of the week - 3.2

Polysics

1st P / A・D・S・R・M! (remastered)

DECKREC/UK.PROJECT (2009)

why you'll love it:  new wave rockgasm

why you'll hate it:  you're a spud

For my favorite band ever, I sure haven't reviewed a whole lot of Polysics records over the years. I think last year's release has been the only one (can't remember if I did Karate House in 2007 or not). Maybe it's because droning on with biased praise is boring. *After all, all of their albums are absolutely brilliant!

But the new releases of 2009 are beginning to dry up, so here we go...

On the 10th anniversary of their first release, 1st P, we have here a remastered deluxe edition accompanied by the 1999 LP, A・D・S・R・M! The remastering is rather modest, although that is better than the traditional "hurr let's make it louder" approach. Quite frankly, the four songs re-recorded in 2004 from these releases are of much better quality; so much that it's hard to even go back the originals, no matter how cleaned up the tapes are.

That coupled with the opinion that A・D・S・R・M! is their weakest album may give the impression that this is a negative review. That is impossible (please refer to *). 1st P, while short, still packs a punch after all these years. "Buggie Technica", "Plus Chicker", and "Hot Stuff" are still mainstays in their live set ("Modern" regretfully isn't).

New fans looking for a history lesson should research the bands covered here. While Devo has always been an obvious influence, Japanese new wave worship has always been with the band as well. Their musical style wasn't brought into the mix since the last few years, but Polysics has been paying tribute to P-Model's look since day one. Their cover of "Good" by Plastics isn't as well done as Pizzicato Five's treatment, but the A・D・S・R・M! song, "Nice" is one of the best spiritual tributes I've heard.  Devo still gets the biggest name check here. Two Devo covers have been added to this re-release (though they were both performed better on their 1999 live album).

These were the band's only indie releases, and the very next year saw the release of NEU (the greatest album ever made!!!), so it's easy to forget these humble beginnings. It's still a great batch of songs and this is the best condition you'll hear em in.

new wave advertising

Somebody really cool works at Dell. That is all I know. Ages ago (in internet time), they managed to squeeze the first good song out of Devo in over 20 years; which is a real accomplishment.

Just this weekend a new Dell ad found its way to my TV, sporting a familiar tune. Over a Wes Andersto stylen slo-mo tracking shot of hisptars chillin with their laptops in an alleyway, played a cover of "I Love You, Oh No!" If you don't recognize the title, don't be ashamed. It's by the late 70's early 80's Japanese new wave band, Plastics. Either Dell's president is a huge record geek, or there is some brilliant intern in the ad department sneaking these ideas in.

Dell computers suck, but the ads sure have picked up since that annoying "dude" America wanted to collectively punch in the face.

album of the week - 3.1

Fake Problems

It's Great To Be Alive

SideOneDummy (2009)

why you'll love it:  big sound - simple rock

why you'll hate it: overdose of religious lyrics

The first real contender for album of the year has come out of nowhere, or at least someplace just as bad, Naples, Florida. The relatively unknown Fake Problems caused some buzz on the 'org in 2007, but failed to leave much of an impression on me. This time around, they've taken their Hot Snakes + (Charlie Daniels x Lynyrd Skynyrd) equation and threw in a crazy Streetlight Manifesto/World Inferno Friendship Society fraction.

It's Great To Be Alive sports a full and vibrant backup roster of brass, organs, handclaps, and violins. The composition and production of these songs are the real stars of this album, but their southern baptist punk shtick may turn people away. Any Swami Records fan will feel right at home alongside the first act of the album, as Chris Farren belts out a familiar sounding cocky redneck yell.

The middle of the album may test your patience though, as creepy religious themes take hold. I'm not a big lyrics fan. They only serve as a bit of flavor to the melody for me. But to some (nearly the entire internet), the mere mention of god and the devil are enough to convince that the band "is all about teh Jesus." Despite this, the songs themselves are quite riveting and full of impressive highs and lows.

The last three songs are surprisingly... emo. The good kind, don't worry. In fact it sounds a lot like the kind of melodies you'd hear in a Stay What You Are era Saves The Day song. There is a bit of the southern drawl and religious banter carrying over, but once again, the production and orchestral approach does wonders. A surprisingly modest end to such a boisterous album.

So there you have it, three different albums rolled into one! It's Great To Be Alive has a few imperfections stacked against it, but as of now, it's definitely the best album I've heard so far this year. Looks like I'll have to go back and give How Far Our Bodies Go another look, because halleighlujah I've seen the light!

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