Pittsburgh surf rock/ post pop duo Action Camp (Maura Jacob + Bengt Alexsander) are back in the studio busily recording their follow up to the 2009 stunner Best I Can Do. In the meantime, the first single from their upcoming as-yet-untitled release ”zero/one” is available for purchase now. Apparently it was also recorded for Conspiracy for Good, an organization I am not totally clear on even after perusing their website for the better part of ten minutes.
Regardless, “zero/one” soars. The call and response vocals of Jacob and Alexsander work effortlessly amidst their self-proclaimed “doom pop” recalling pretty much any artist on Toronto’s Art & Crafts label (Metric, Stars, Broken Social Scene) with delightful effect. Don’t miss the chance to catch more new material when the duo hits up Howler’s Coyote on Sept 3rd.
Steel City MC Jack Wilson is back with the brief mixtape/EP Fame, enlisting Pittsburgh turntablist DJ Spaed to produce a challenging, dynamic collection of beats. ”P & LE” possesses the most shadowy, sinister beat of them all, coiling like cool smoke underneath Wilson’s tongue-twisting rhymes. This is pure mix tape nirvana: no hook, no pauses, just some muscular, spartan production and an MC who refuses to take a breath. Wilson and Spaed’s Fame EP is available here for purchase.
After seeing some other examples of Tobacco’s music video output, I don’t think we should expect anything less than a free form, sensory overload freak out. Suffice to say, his new video for “Grape Aerosmith” off his 2010 releaseManiac Meat is inching closer, and I mean inching, to something resembling a linear narrative. Forsaking the old VHS mash-up style of his most referenced video “Hawker Boat,” Mr. Fec decides to give us a glimpse (maybe more of a screen capture of a dream) of a working stiff going off the deep in ways Kafka would be hard pressed to imagine. Flaming meat wads be damned.
Meeting of Important People’s 2009 self-titled debut release was a sketchbook of small details and stolen moments, stitched together as lyrically impressionistic vignettes and set against too many perfectly cultivated harmonies to count. The high points (“Mother’s Pay More” and “I Know Every Street”) offered glimpses of a dreamworld populated by desperate youth and blood thirsty babes, detailing the lost nights and lost loves that never existed.
While that wistful album resembled something like a book of poetry, the group’s current effort, the seven song Quit Music EP available for download here, comes closer to a collection of short stories with each song possessing slivers of plot, drama and the fragile soul of small town life. Lead singer/songwriter Josh Verbanets provides his characters with rousing backgrounds of British Invasion pop, bristling with moments of AM radio melody and world beating power chords. Slowly, I could not shake the comparison to The Kinks and their small town/countryside opus The Village Green Preservation Society. Tracks after the jump.
Pittsburgh’s native shoegazers and local scene veterans Black Crash are back with three two tracks available for download on the group’s Facebook page from their forth coming LP due out in the fall. “Sometimes Dreams” captures the group’s zeitgeist perfectly: cascading walls of guitars drenched in reverb, yearning vocals from lead singer Ryan McElroy, and a muscular drum section that appears to be pushing everything else around. Passionate nods to the early 90′s alternative scene from Manchester are present but welcome, recalling Jesus and Mary Chain, The Stone Roses and some Boy-era U2 via the gorgeous, ringing guitar work (The Edge is smiling happily somewhere). Keep a look out for these lads with shows around town and an upcoming release on the horizon, I know I will.
While The Flaming Lips’ upcoming show at the Amphitheater at Station Square has the Pittsburgh music scene buzzing with excitement and possibility (it’s their first appearance in the area in seven years), the opening act the native Oklahomans slotted for their summer tour has quietly defined the sound of 2010′s hottest months.
With their self-titled debut album released in late March, Fang Island have crafted what is almost certainly the greatest pure guitar record of the year. Combining the pummeling, dueling axe theatrics of vintage Journey and the unabashedly life affirming harmonies of Andrew W.K., the Brooklyn by way of Rhode Island group truly live up to their self-described aesthetic of “everyone high-fiving everyone.” Tracks after the jump.Keep reading →
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are six years from their last release and about 14 years removed from the eye of the storm they created. After the group’s initial three record output in the early 90′s that focused on fusing noise rock, hip-hop drum patterns and delta blues together by any means necessary ending with 1994′s Orange, the boys had varying results sprawling in every goddamn direction. Regardless, their live shows were legendary. Each set came down like a ton of bricks on fire, showering crowds with heaving masses of seething New York City rage and white hot blues swagger. And no one really attempted to challenge The JSBX’s persona as new age, hardcore bluesmen; the group predated the short lived garage rock revival of The White Stripes, Mooney Suzuki and The Hives (among others) by a good five years.
Until 1996, however, the pieces had yet to come together in the studio sessions to recreate the incendiary nature of the JSBX’s best performances. But with Now I Got Worry, The Blues Explosion finally coalesced their influences into a sweaty, volatile stick of dynamite, injecting the recklessness of their infamous live act into the raw production techniques that pumped up tracks like “Skunk,” “Wail,” and “Fuck Shit Up” with red levels of hairy distortion. The album is a shotgun blast of the Stooges proto-punk, Muddy Waters slide guitar and rockabilly’s cruising road-ready weirdness, easily sounding as fresh as it did 14 years ago. Tracks after the jump.Keep reading →
C-Mon & Kypski don’t really play it straight (or safe for that matter). These four Dutchman seem intent on jamming every possible dance/hip-hop/soul influence they have ever come across into four minute bursts of insanely catchy, schizophrenic, beat boy symphonies. With their latest release We Are Square, no two tracks sound the same, bouncing back and forth between Beck’s kitchen sink production approach of Mellow Gold and Odelay and a sort of DJ Shadow-taste-making, crate-digging dream world. “More is Less” leans heavily on some fantastically placed soul samples, but is propelled forward by the goofy Euro-tech beat, solid horn section and Abba-like sense of melody.
Along with Nobody Beats the Drum and Pittsburgh’s own electronic-freak smith Summer Lungs, C-Mon & Kypski make a stop in their (presumably) first stop in Steel City tonight at the Brillobox. Video for More is Less and tracks after the jump. Keep reading →
