One Stupid Mop

We like music. You should too.

Bauhaus - All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

(download)

Serious music fans are complete and utter weirdos.

I've never met a serious music listener who didn't, at least for a week, have a goth phase. It was always just a matter of whether they reached for Orgy or The Birthday Party - with that range usually determining the short-to-long of it, in that order. There's a natural anti-societal appeal to the idea for those who spend hours upon hours seeking out, listening to and evaluating countless new artists and tracks, often to the substitution of social interaction.

Every time someone mentions goth, they always go with Joy Division as the definitive. Buzz. Wrong. Sorry, thank you for playing. Ian Curtis got them a lot of doom and gloom points for checking himself out early, but Bauhaus has always been the prototype. Case in point: this is the most upbeat song they ever did.

Despite not being the happiest thing in the world, there is a beauty to it. It's difficult enough to make an interesting song in which an upright bass plays the lead in front of a guitar, but a song with instrumental lead changes is another animal of hard. The flow goes from drab to driven in a way that makes lyrics which are depressing to read turn hopeful and perhaps mildly triumphant. As the band had yet to make their conversion into keyboardism, this complex arrangement with a very minimalist arsenal is a small but significant accomplishment.

Okay, you can go put "Bela Lugosi's Dead" on now, and forget they ever made other songs.

Brainiac - I Am A Cracked Machine

(download)

I was attracted to Brainiac because of their album covers. From the first time I saw the covers for Hissing Prigs in Static Couture and Electro-Shock for President, something said, "You need me."

Brainiac was a rock and roll band, experimenting with the aural gusto of The Residents, Primus and Sonic Youth, but all turned sideways. Often, it adds up to a noisy punkish sound that simplified everything that went into it. (This was true until Electro-Shock, which veered off into stellar electronic experimentation.)

The band ceased to exist in 1997 when vocalist Tim Taylor died in a car accident, which especially sucks because this is one band that could have been interesting to watch in the last decade. Not that guitarist John Schmersal's band Enon hasn't satisfied, but they're not exactly Brainiac.

Anyway, I know only a handful of people who've actually heard the band, but I'm sure they'd agree that the sound is timeless. As would every band who sounds like them then and now.

Harold Faltermeyer - Axel F

(download)

I was out of commission last week because I am terribly uncaring when it comes to clothes and accessories. No, seriously. I just grab whatever is close and looks like it will work. As a consequence, my cheap-ass Target laptop bag broke in the subway, which subsequently broke the computer inside.

After I bought the new one, my lady wouldn't let me out of the house without a quality bag in which to carry it. [insert whip-cracking sound]

This song was playing on the iPod when it happened. In the following computerless week, I had plenty of time to ponder how stupendously I had fucked up with simplicity where Harold here turned it into a platinum-plated gold nugget.

Let's be real. This is little more than a commercial jingle. But whereas it won't be 6 months from now that people will stab anyone who even attempts to bring up the Filet o' Fish song, you can rest assured that one of our contemporaries will break a hip at 65 trying to get down to this song at his retirement party. Hit play and tell me you can't see a years-from-has-been Eddie Murphy cracking a huge smile. And you know damn good and well you'd jump at the chance to go back in time and pull a Family Guy.

For what it is, it's simply perfect.

Blackalicious - Swan Lake

(download)

I was going to offer a lot of words on what makes this track, well, perfect. I think it speaks for itself though: beats, samples and lyrics. Got it?

If you've never heard of Blackalicious or Solesides (or DJ Shadow), here's your introduction. The only thing that Gift of Gab is bragging on here is his brains. There's nothing about bitches or money. 

This is a smooth track. I've been listening to it for years and it's one of the best ways to ease into the week. For most of you, you'll hear this on Tuesday morning. That's a good thing, for both you and the song, because all that bitter Monday garbage will be out of the way.

Pretty Lights - Total Fascination

(download)

It's not my Stupid Mop day, but I couldn't hold this back until Monday. Pretty Lights latest EP, Making Up A Changing Mind, may have blown the dust off my love of techno in the last 12 hours.

Crashing through the roof like the bastard child of early Prefuse 73 and wreckless big beat abandon of Lunatic Calm and Monkey Mafia, Pretty Lights is poised to stomp a mudhole up your back. From the Timbaland-meets-Isaac Hayes stutter-stepping soul of "Still Rockin'" to straight pounding hip hop of "I Can See It In Your Face" to the acid-tinged bounce of "Easy Way Out," Making Up A Changing Mind does not stop. 

This is slash and burn, blow your headphones, is-this-DJ-for-real-? kind of stuff. It's almost like somebody was paying attention to the promise of the late 90s. You're going to recognize some big-name samples on here too which only makes the bouncing beats that much more effective.

The brains behind Pretty Lights, Derek Vincent Smith, is offering up the EP for free (just as each of his previous albums has been) at his website as the intended first of a three EP series to be released this year. 

Go grab it now - this thing might change your plans for the weekend.

Pretty Lights official website (Making Up A Changing Mind is on the downloads page)
Bio at Wikipedia, which I'm guessing was written by Smith himself. Just a shot in the dark there.

Kashmir - Surfing the Warm Industry

(download)

I have a love/hate relationship with SXSW.

It's just an awesome event. Crazy amounts of free stuff wherever you look, more bands than is reasonably possible to see in an entire year, new tech, killer movies and, oh yeah, you're getting all of this while in the middle of a city-wide party. Again, awesome.

The hyper-marketing, "I'm on the list" attitudes, the fact that you need to be on "the list," and the holier-than-thou opinion pushers just screw it all up. So much so that I don't even make an attempt to go anymore. I live in New York City. There's no need to travel just to find a group of pricks ruining a bunch of decent people's fun.

I'm much more of a Fest guy. There are plenty of jackasses there too, but you never have to skip 15 bands to wait on line for a big name. The drinks are many and the merch-hawks are few.

What those two share, however, is kick-ass people who put them together. Like the guys who develop a site with nearly 6 gigs of free music, the motion of which doesn't cripple their server every 10 minutes. And not a one of them is bitching about the "unofficial" torrent that is spreading those tracks for free.

This one here by Kashmir isn't the best of the lot. I've got no idea what the best of the lot is. The download finished 2 days ago, and I've yet to make it through half of the collection, which includes literally a couple hundred bands I've never even heard of. This is just one of those that made me look down at the iPod when riding in to work.

The spreading of new music is really what SXSW and any other similar event is supposed to be about. If that ever again becomes the central part of an attendee's experience, I'm all over that. For now, I just suggest you join me in donating another chunk of your hard drive in the pursuit of new and exciting shit.

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Gimme The Wire

(download)

With The Brutalist Bricks, Ted Leo is bringing the anger. I mean, it's more melodic than it is growling and spitting, but it's still sort of angry, you know? Frankly, I like Ted Leo when he's angry because the albums are that much better.

Leo and his Pharmacists lean punk the way the Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer did - with good songs. They are/were punk in spirit. Doing their own thing and shit. Ted rocks so hard he's shut down almost every label he's been on. I know, that's pretty punk rock, right?

Ted Leo is expressing the frustrations of people in the 20s and 30s, much as he has for the last decade or so. Unlike Living with the Living, which Leo must have purposely been aiming for specifics politically, The Brutalist Bricks is more about frustration with everything. We've all got a little of that.

I think he knows we're all just trying to get by without getting screwed by the man or having to totally sell everything out to get there. This album, with this song toward the end, is 14 tracks that make it a little easier.

Full disclosure: I've been listening to this nonstop since it leaked because it's just that good. I'm going to buy it on principle tomorrow. And it is without a doubt going to be on my top 15 for the year. That's right, I'm already planning on it being a top 15. The Surfer Blood album is also on this list. Just saying.

Listen to The Brutalist Bricks in full on MySpace.
Buy The Brutalist Bricks at Amazon.
Join up with eMusic and then use some credits on The Brutalist Bricks here.

RVIVR - Derailer

(download)

A teen anthem, screaming out for the city to let the punks do their thing because they just want to, like, be. "Derailer" is one side of RVIVR's second 7" and hopefully will lead to something more. I mean, half this band is Long Island, NY's Latterman, which was a decent band in it's day and put out four decent full length albums. I don't think I'm asking for too much here.

I thought at first that this was about the Republican Party's entertaining and frightening purging of their own. Then I figured it was an obnoxious teen hate anthem. Much like the first theory, all I heard was "Get out Get out" in the chorus. Then I focused on two lines: "The city tries to take it away" - which led to my actually paying attention and figuring out what the song is about - and the line that I think is really good but doesn't belong here: "You've got to scream when nobody's listening." It's just a good line and statement on life.

Nobody is listening to RVIVR but this is the kind of band I used to go see at small places in Gainesville, drink PBRs in the back and nod my head to because I'm a lazy, conceited, writerly puss who doesn't do the pit. The world could use more bands like this. I'll be satisfied if this band can write 11 more songs that are this good and release them somewhere.

RVIVR's record label

*Bonus subtext: I'm glad I wrote this last night because the subject matter and rocking song is a nice way to kick off another week of community news coverage! I hope it's not wrong to reference the day job in terms of rock and roll here...