The Vaselines - "I Hate The 80's"

18 years after Kurt Cobain breathed new life into them, The Vaselines are putting out a new album (!). It's funny how no one expected them to make one, while the Pixies and My Bloody Valentine have repeatedly mentioned new releases, all to no avail. Out in September, Sex With An X features the song "I Hate The 80's", released as a free download on the band's website yesterday. The song isn't quite as rough and tumble as the tracks off of Dum Dum, but Eugene Kelly's bent indie blues guitar hasn't aged a day. Neither has their sugary sweet harmony vocals, which coast through this duet so effortlessly perfect, that it sounds as if this song were from some locked up followup the band made in the 90's that no one knew about. More so than anything, the song sounds like great jangly indie rock akin to Guided By Voices and Polaris. Sex With An X will now at least give us one reason to look forward to the end of summer (aside from those NY Pavement shows that is).

Northern State

Back in 2003, an all female, white, hip-hop trio from Long Island called Northern State released their mini-LP, Dying In Stereo. Aside from an EP called Hip Hop You Haven't Heard, this was their big debut into the world. While many didn't even notice, the reactions to those that did were polarizing. Rolling Stone and Allmusic gave the group four stars while Pitchfork panned them with a 0.8. I saw the video for "At The Party" on Subterranean, an MTV show that specialized in alternative music. I immediately saw the 'joke meets serendidpity' quality of the group and went out and bought the EP with my first paycheck from my new job.

The problem was, I couldn't listen to the record with anyone present. All my friends hated it. It made sense - Hesta Prynn's voice in particular was very grating. I loved it though. It worked in a sense that they were a group that started doing rap as a joke, that accidentally churned out some great tracks. The rhymes were cute and goofy, with an occasional political standpoint - on opener "A Thousand Words", Prynn raps, "Keep choice legal/ya wardrobe Regal/Chekhov wrote the Seagull/and Snoopy is a beagle". It was only when those politics took center stage that they lost their footing, like on the third rate feminist 'ballad' "Vicious Cycle" where Sprout says "You say I'm beautiful underneath your breath/but you're not looking in my eyes, you're staring at my chest/ I can see history like a pal obsessed/ I'm sure the ladies can figure out the rest."

As a whole, Dying In Stereo was a good one off project. Clever and fun, through and through. The problem was, from the touring build up, and the selected praise they were getting for that record, they now had to take themselves as a serious hip-hop group. This is why their first full length, All City, is rife with problems, even though the formula is essentially the same. Now they had semi-high profile collaborators working on their material like Pete Rock, Har Mar Superstar and Martin Luther. The album had a few good tracks but it's a hard listen top to bottom. The concept had simply gotten stale. I remember being excited about their third record, Can I Borrow This Pen?, which I had heard was incorporating new rock-based elements into the group (something that seemed inevitable considering the girls rap as if the only hip-hop they've ever listened to are the Beastie Boys), but when it finally came out in 07, I forgot and never got around to checking it out. I'm not sure if the group is still together but I know Hesta Prynn has a new dance/rock project in the works. Here's the song that hooked me all those years ago. If you haven't heard it, maybe you'll embark on the same journey I did...or piss on it like everyone else did.

Pavement show

So my Pavement tickets have been printed for their Williamsburg Waterfront show in September. It's still shocking that all of their Central Park shows sold out a year before the actual event. The fact that I held out and waited for a new show to open up rather than paying exuberant eBay prices is very gratifying. Here'a clip of them playing "Gold Soundz" in Australia last March. So excited!

Surgeon interview

Sorry for the infrequency of the posts but I've been working on some stuff for Big Shot Magazine. One of the pieces I've been doing is a feature on English DJ Surgeon, who I interviewed two days ago. A very nice guy, we talked about his history in the scene, as well as his new mix CD, Fabric 53, the latest release in a series of mix albums released by the famous UK nightclub, Fabric. Here's a clip of Surgeon (Anthony Child) mixing it up intercut between an interview he gave for some Spanish broadcast (I'd tell you what the show was but I don't speak the language)

"Blue Monday" Sunkist commercial

I was shocked to discover this commercial in NewOrderStory, an overly long, music video heavy, documentary about my favorite synth poppers (although the clip does now seem vagueley familiar). The film wasn't exactly clear about how this advert came about, but listening to the recording, it sounds like it actually is New Order performing the parody themselves. I'm sort of over being angry with bands who lisence their songs to commercials. The only time it's bothersome is when the original song has a message that gets lost in the advertisement (like the infamous "Revolution" Nike ad), something that "Blue Monday" doesn't really have to worry about giving Bernard Sumner's oblique lyrics.  Check it.