Music Update

It's been one of those rare periods of time where the new music has been slow and somewhat lacklustre, fairly typical of the period just before Christmas. It's kind of a no man's land between Hallowe'en and and American Thanksgiving, as nobody wants to release and album that can be "forgotten" before the Chrsitmas rush. However, this has given us the oppotunity to go back into our extensive supplies of musical material.

First off, we've been quite happy with the Woodpigeon CD, Songbook. "Death by Ninja (a love song)", is simultaneously one of the funniest and saddest stories of heart ache we've heard in a long time. Our friend at But She's on Fire! agrees. "A Hymn for 2 Walks in Different Cities" carries with it a delightful nineteenth century pop architecture, right up until the cacophonic crescendo, when you're reminded of why these people draw comparisons to Belle & Sebastian and Arcade Fire.

Speaking of sonic sprawls, the Red Sparowes first full-length, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun is another spacey instrumental album, equal parts Tortoise and Zeppelin. Built around Chinese iconography from the Great Leap Forward, the Red Sparowes invite us to question our views of the world, our choices, and the impact of the decisions we make, through heavy, introspective tracks spanning the five, six, and even ten minute marks.

Our other new releases, Henrik Schwarz's DJ Kicks venture and Wired All Wrong's Break Out the Battle Tapes, are something of a disappointment. While Schwarz mixes together some very good moments, ranging from "Bird's Lament" to James Brown, through Afro-funk, world music and R&B, the many sparks it throws nevertheless fail to spark. Wired All Wrong meanwhile, blend heavy buzzsaw guitars with a hiphop aesthetic (in fact we thought that maybe it was a DJ compilation from the title), in a manner that many have done before - most critically Atari Teenage Riot, most successfully by Rage Against the Machine. Whereas these bands were most noted for their political stances, Wired All Wrong echoes the pop fascination of Whale - as it should since the two members of WAW are from sELF and God Lives Underwater.

As mentioned earlier, this relative dryspell has allowed us to go back and renew our appreciation for Kentucky's sorely missed Slint, whome Red Sparowes cite as an influence, as well as Grandaddy, a group that manages to capture that quirky, eclectic, fuzzy pop sound that WAW seems to dally with.