Archives : all posts by Sean

Alina Simone - "Prettier in the Dark". Simone's debut EP, Prettier in the Dark, is only two-toned, but those tones are silver and black. While she's got all the longing of Chan Marshall, these songs match that teary wistfulness with a snap and snarl. This approach has mixed precedents - PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, - but in her best songs, Simone succeeds utterly. There's something ephemeral that separates one kind of singer-songwriter (good) from another (bad): songwriting, or presence, or probably just spirit. When the drums pick up, the second guitar chimes in, when Alina Simone is singing a snatch of notes that she really loves, well - all that stuff's here. This is the music to shake up a melancholy night, to maybe shake it somewhere better. (via songs:illinois)

[alina's website / buy]

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Gareth Auden Hole - "Drink Up". It's tricky when I have friends who are musicians. And I do. A pal shares his or her stuff, knows about Said the Gramophone, and this sort of expectation hangs in the air. And while I've stuck to my guns here, never posted anything that didn't meet the quality expected, sometimes it's tense, tough, grim.

My friend Gareth makes it very, very easy.

"Drink Up" is fantastic. The song's been hammered, been torched, been hammered again. Its metal has been stretched, its gleams extended; the song's substance has been worked until it's long and deep and intricate enough to bear the music's feeling. And no more. Evoking The Microphones, Jim Guthrie, Calexico, Micah P Hinton, even early Smog, "Drink Up" moves slow, stares slow, cracks its chest open for a look at its longing. But it doesn't stop there. At the end of the second minute there's something else - there's passion. There's movement. There's the kisses, the birds, the space and the bliss. There's mandolin, there among the guitar and the words and the keening pedal steel. "For the wind may blow us off our heels / and the bird may drink us off our wheels / and the stars be safe from falling down." It's exciting, it's brightly sparkling. A desert's birdsong (literally). And then back to the dry, dry, dry life.

Gareth's not got anything to buy. He'll soon have a website thing I'll point to. He is newly arrived in Ottawa, however, and is looking for people to play music or start a band with. Share your comments or get in touch here.

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I am loving what Jose Gonzales (a sweet fellow) is doing with his new band, Junip. mp3s at the ever-essential catbirdseat.

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A mysterious source (Gramophone has "mysterious sources" now! Cool!) tells us that StG-faves Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! are signing to 4AD, and will later this year be touring Japan with The Pixies. You heard it here first (and perhaps last).

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Early notice - I'm going on holiday to Slovenia on Saturday (for two+ weeks), and will have patchy-if-at-all email, so please get in touch soon if you need to talk to me about anything. Cheers.

Moondog - "Symphonique #6 (Good for Goodie)". So according to this article in the Oxford American, Moondog was a blind homeless man who spent three decades on the streets of NYC, begging, composing music, wearing a cloak and a viking helmet. For real. Sure, after he was 'discovered' he was flown to Germany and leading American orchestras and receiving fan-mail from Philip Glass, but in the meantime - there he was, day after day, enough of an institution that the New York Times devoted two columns to the story of his obtaining a different pair of trousers.

It's a good story. Too good, almost. It's as if Moondog's life was purpose-built for a Robin Williams-starring biopic. But before we giggle at the tall tale, before we let the attention focus too strongly on this strange man's biography, let's listen to the music.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, it's wonderful.

It's a stew of sounds, this is. It's a conspiracy of counterpoint. It's clarinet and bass and flute, french horn and tuba, violin and this numbskull snare. It's an orchestra's joyous assembly, a union of likeminded folks, everyone speaking for themselves and yet twittering in sympathy. It's friendly as a warm pie with one slice taken out. I hear Mark Mothersbaugh, Jon Brion and certainly Philip Glass, but Moondog's playful, arbitrary, he chooses places to point at (clouds! town hall! mullberry bush!) and the music skips to new destinations instead of pummelling incessantly the same spot. I saw Annie Hall last night, but a few weeks ago I saw Manhattan, and if Gershwin hadn't written Rhapsody in Blue, or if Woody Allen had chosen high angle instead of low angle shots for his opening Manhattan montage, this woulda been the movie's soundtrack. I'm pretty sure.

Moondog - "Lament 1".

I include this track as well because, whoa!, it's so familiar. Mr Scruff's gleeful "Move On" is built on samples from Moondog's "Lament" (for Charlie Parker). In this excerpt, the drums are skid-scampering like hot sneakers over pavement, violins seesawing like shadows over twenty-four hours, saxes singing the praises of someone, reminding each-other of someone, telling those old stories, trying to capture that someone's old tics, smiling with the memory.

These tracks come thanks to Lawrence. I am very taken with this Moondog man, but apart from the above know little about his work. Looking on Amazon, I see there are rather a lot of records (including a remix album). Can anyone suggest any in particular?

[buy Moondog stuff at Amazon UK/US. And pick up the music issue of the Oxford American.]

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The Clientele - "Since K Got Over Me". So earlier this week I was in a certain Edinburgh record shop, lookin' to buy the new Beard, maybe hoping to find an inexpensive copy of the new Akron/Family or R. Kelly cds, flipping through the cheapo bin, and what do I find but a promo-sleeved CD by The Clientele, called Strange Geometry, for £1.99. I own - and love - The Violet Hour, but "Strange Geometry" didn't sound familiar. I had a vague recollection of a b-sides/EP collection, so figured this was it.

Instead I got home and found that this is their new CD, out September 5.

The Clientele are a band of singular purpose, singular sound. They play a sort of music that seems obvious, that's so familiar it's already dear. It makes me think of The Smiths' golden guitars, the hushed vocals of (Felt, and) a hundred shoegaze bands, but then I think about it, I slip on some headphones, and I realise there's nothing like this. This is dreamy but lucid, it's melancholy but not unmoving, it's quiet but loud. And the Clientele are fiercely evocative, bringing visions of a place I've never seen.

It's England, I guess. A London of honeyed fog and smothered light, or else hills and heath, will o' the wisp between the trees, swirls and glimmers and faint recollections. I can never decide if they play music for cities, or for the country. I suppose it's both, but separately. It's for dusk and for dawn: violet hours.

"Since K Got Over Me" is the first single from Strange Geometry. It's all those things I said before, mist and gleam and smokestacks and moors, but it's also got a stronger stare than anything on the previous record. Strange Geometry is a break-up album. Maybe. "Everything's so vivid and so creepy since K got over me," MacLean sings, then much more insistently, "THERE'S a HOLE in-SIDE my SKULL with WARM AIR blowing IN". The drums are realer than on The Violet Hour. Elsewhere there are Five Leaves Left-style strings, maniac "Revolution 1" electric guitar. And also a familiar (dear) sparkle, a shine, a whisper. Here and there, the band play the same parts as they did on the last record. But that's okay: they're just remembering them, like we do.

[read my old review of The Violet Hour]

[More mp3s at The Clientele website, and watch Merge and Pointy for ordering info over the coming month.]

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The strangest thing in the universe? Probably K & K Mime.

The new OK GO music video, all lo-fi tripod dance-moves style, is indeed pretty rad. But so is the DIY Clap Your Hands Say Yeah thing that some fan did, in order to bring attention to the Awesome Guy In Shirt-Collars Who Is Dancing. (both via mefi)

Menlo Park - "Cochon Cochon". I stumbled across this CD in an Eastern European bargain bin. I didn't know what it was, only that there was substantial allure in the wood and woodsmen of the cover, the flair and the leer and the little niggling bit of threat. The liner-notes made me think they were from Belgium but subsequent Googling shows that Menlo Park are "based in the UK but with members from all over the globe". This is a relief as I had been wondering why Belgians would so mispronounce the words "cochon cochon". Now all that's left is the mystery of why an Englishman is drawlin' like a Louisiana hog-man. And that's not really much of a mystery: it sounds good.

"Cochon Cochon" is a naughty song. Don't be misled by the awkward romance of the opening, Chris Taylor's Herman Dune-like scene-setting, the sliding violin and sunshiney mandolin. Soon enough the rest of the band will jump into view, splattering mud, stamping muck for the pure fun of it. "Cochon, cochon! Tu est le garçon qui molestait mon fille!" Taylor doesn't use the french u, or the gentle European patter of syllables. No, it's clumsier farmhand enunciation: "Too est lé gar-sonnn key m'lestay mon fille".

(Come to think of it, there's a mystery here. "Mon" (my) is a male-gendered adjective. "Fille" (girl) is obviously a female noun. So is Taylor's grammar wrong? Or is he really saying "Tu est le garçon qui molestait mon fils!" (You are the boy who molested by son!")? And is "her lily-white leg" connected to all this? Is the singer goin' after the whole family? How very, uh, rural.)

What's most impressive about the song is the spontaneity of the chorus, the way everyone can decide at once to throw dirty leaves in the air, to hop and holler. That all it takes to make a riot, a hoe-down, a drinking song, a hijink, a crime - all it takes is for everyone to join in at once, to tie their fortunes to a kicker of a melody, to play the guitars, mandolin, violin, drums and Hammond, to revel in the grimy glad moment. And to try to avoid the farmer with the shotgun.

I trust, Jordan, that this is the sort of adventure you are enjoying this week in Paris.

[I am astonished to find that Menlo Park's albums seem to be out of print. You can buy some EPs, though!]

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The Wilburn Brothers - "Trouble's Back in Town". One of the things that Edinburgh does best is evening. The light's diffuse, a flat grey. Everything still feels bright, but muted - pausing, taking a breath before doing something else. (That something else is, inevitably, night.) It's the streetlights that look most beautiful in this grey hush haze. The orange is so orange, the bright is so bright, the still is so still. As Robbie Burns said, "There are no stars as lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps."

One of these evenings I'm going to camp out and watch the street-lights come on. Ping ping ping, down the street, a glow coming in amongst the grey. And as they do this, I am going to listen to "Trouble's Back in Town". "Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh" - everything lights up, kindly and beautiful. The Wilburn Brothers will remind me of the humanity in a city, and the bass and piano will remind me of the groove, the beat. Such kindly "trouble". Such happy trouble. Such longed-for and welcome trouble. Yes, we'll let this trouble come. On, lamplight! On, dusk! Let's huddle in the twilight, under one of those bright orange globes, and look out for the "girl with big brown eyes and ... smile so sweet."

This is country music in gold and velvet, vocal harmonies to come wafting in through windows. If the Inkspots were more whinsome, if Aaron Presley didn't die and he and his brother remained good little boys. But enough ifs - these fellas discovered Loretta Lynn, and that's reason enough to listen to their finest song.

(This track's taken from the comp that accompanies the current - Music - issue of The Oxford American. It's a great, varied comp, running the gamut from Elvis to Bubbly Puppy, Lightnin' Hopkins to Erykah Badu, Dale Hawkins to Buddy Holly. Moondog! Better still is the magazine. There's an article on each of the CD's artists, pieces full of verve and wit. Don McLeese's Buddy Holly profile is personal, modest, incisive; I admire the small reflections of Anthony Doerr on Howard Tate; and there's a real grace to Warren Zanes's take on The Wilburn Brothers. Best of all, however, is Roy Blount Jr's remarkable, tender take on Ray Charles -- one of the best pieces of music writing I've read this year.)

[Check out The Oxford American and buy Stars of Grand Ole Opry]

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Elsewhere:

"The Sleeper", over at Tuwa's Shanty, is a humble and handsome (read: outstanding) cut by Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane. A piece like a first date. Or a stranger handing you a piece of fruit.

I really like the messier version of Andrew Bird's "Sovay", played live with My Morning Jacket, which you can grab at the very elegant new mp3blog, Baskerville's Syndrome. Note to jez: please let us have permalinks.

This week I heard both of my favourite pop albums of the year. Okay, it's only August. But I think it unlikely that anything will unseat these babies. They're not just sugar-sweet -- they're "Sugar Sugar" sweet.

Robyn - "Bum Like You". I mentioned Robyn on Monday, pointing you all to "Be Mine" at PopText. I then saw that Matt had posted "Crash and Burn Girl" at Fluxblog. But look, and this is important - this album is fantastic. You really oughta hear it. I think I probably hated Robyn before this week. The radio single from her last album, all those years ago, was a boring pink smear. The video? No, not exactly my thing. And maybe I'd still dislike this Swedish pipsqueak if I were to see her on the tube. But in the face of albums like this - melodic, glowing, full of surprises, - who cares? Who cares.

There's beats and strings, there's dry-voiced asides, there's melody and counterpoint and then these sudden splashes of beautiful harmony. The choruses are so plentiful that you'll forget them and then break into a smile each time a song comes back over repeat. It's truly great pop music. It's like the stuff of Lennon, McCartney, Robinson, Merritt, Harrison, Holly. Yeah, for real.

If you weren't persuaded by the synths and strings of "Be Mine" or "Crash and Burn Girl", well then maybe try this one on. "Bum Like You" is guitar - ringing, dinging, empty basement electric guitar. Robyn's sick of it. She's sick of him - of "you". But she's also kinda still in love. You know how it is.

So Robyn sings. Maybe she starts sitting but soon she's standing. She's a smoker, the rascal, but she smoked her last cigarette earlier this morning. Now she's just listening to the creak of her leather boots, she's singing. She's got a sheet of lyrics in her hands, scribbled out. Lyrics about mittens, about pie.

She sings "your car's a dump and you're broke," but I love the way there's this instant aside, this quiet spoken lovesick doleful shrug - "But that's alright."

Later Robyn takes the song into studio. We add overdubs, so that the song's not sad. We add an acoustic guitar, so we'll hear that fret squeak, fingers on strings, the noise of hesitation. And we add drums. Such simple drums - no synths, no mad beatz. But with those first bass drum thumps, gosh, the chorus has got me by the lapels and it's holding me so close that I can't look away from Robyn's eyes, the song's acheing sentiment.

Is this a love song? Is it a break-up song? Is it a fantasy?

No - it's just an exchange of looks.

[Inexplicably, absurdly, there's no clear word of a UK/US release. But sooner or later, it's gotta happen. In the meantime, see Robyn's website]

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Sigur Rós - "Hoppipolla". Iceland's biggest boy-band are back, and Takk is a doozy. Agaetis Byrjun is one of my favourite albums in the world, such a joyful and mysterious confluence of post-rock and pop, swashes of sound that resolve into sing-along melodies, reveries, themes. ( ) was much more of a muddle, like all the band's pop bits had been drowned in the Arctic ocean. Torrid, turgid, overwrought. Gems of beauty, but all of it swathed in "difficult" bits. The album wasn't just high-concept (and dull), it was also stricken. There were dense, tense, knitted emotions at play, hard to pluck out of the churn. I think I might love it if I were to hear it at precisely the right moment, everything twisted in me according to a similar weather.

Here's a diagram:

Takk is everything that the last album was not. It's happy, it's stupid, it's clearly and blindingly beautiful, it's without silly pretenses. It's pure pop, glacier-huge. The songs glow then they shine then they combust. Coldplay look like insects next to this crew. They look like bugs. Because Sigur Ros are the Light Brigade if the Light Brigade were as awesome as their name suggests. They're collapsing continents and exploding blues, they're singing goofball unsubtle songs that make the sky shake in its cloudy foundations.

"Hoppipolla" is my favourite tune in an album full of joyful climaxing tunes. Everything's wrapped up in a solar shimmer of strings and drum reverb, and for the first couple minutes you think that maybe that's all there will be - warped Icelandic vocals, an inane-and-lovely keyboard line, flurrying strings, smacking percussion. So when things go quiet you wonder what could happen. Faster? Louder? Well, yes - they sure as hell know the tricks. But first, counterpoint! Swirl! Windows are opened in places that you didn't know windows could be. (In your shoes, in the backs of your hands, in the shadow of that bush.) And then there are horns - cresting, cheering, fanfaring. Yes! Yes! Hooray! Yes! Yay! Yes! Hooray! YES!

Only boring people hold their noses at songs that are so clearly glad, that play so uninhibitedly on our weak human minds, pushing the musical buttons that make my ribs spring open and lift my heart out on stupid little wings. Love it!

[pre-order at Amazon]

The Constantines - "Soon Enough". So the Constantines are hot and sweaty, sore-throated from the indie rock house-party of Shine A Light and The Constantines; they climb up the stairs from the basement and they nod at the girls in the shoulderless t-shirts and they put down their brownbottle beer on some stranger's settee and then they hike up the steps to the second floor, feeling cream carpet under their socks, and they go into the owner's kid's room, airplane wallpaper, and they go to the window and they heft it open and then they stick their shaggy heads outside into the starlit night, starspecked night, cold black night, they feel the cold on their face, the sky in their eyes, the wind - it's always the wind, isn't it? - and that's what the new album, that's what Tournament of Hearts sounds like. They haven't forgotten the cocksure rawk of earlier, no, but there are longer moments of concentration, dearer things held up to the light.

And this song, my my, it's of such unconfused sweetness, such plain sentiment. Bry Webb's voice is unwavering, Strummer and Springsteen and Garvey but without any hesitation: say the words and they'll mean what they'll mean, they'll say what they say. During the slow, starry guitar solo in the second minute, I imagine him standing and waiting, unbothered, unrushed, the words not going anywhere as they're there in his heart.

(Compare this with the fantastic Elevator to Hell cover by the Cons, on the new Believer comp. There, the lyrics are held back because at the chorus everything's gonna rush right out and everything'll be drained dry, nothing pent-up anymore: no! freedom!! And pop music!)

The drums sound like hope, oh hope!, the hope that's there if you want it. And the organ, buried deep back there, is a sympathetic resonance, the way you wish bones were, that you might find your true love by listening for a person who ringsringsrings with your dreams.

The album, which is out in October, is - like I said - called Tournament of Hearts. So when Webb sings "a tournament of hearts / somebody's gotta lose", suddenly the album title unfolds accordion-style, new facets catching the light, and I fall in love with it. Every time.

If you like rock music, I think you'll probably like this song.

[Tournament of Hearts is out in October. We'll give you a BUY link as soon as we can, as you really ought to buy this. And in the meantime, Canadian tourdates]

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Tall Grass Captains Of Greater Chicago - "Countless Days On". Hopefully some of you heard TGCOGC over at Mystery & Misery, last week, but if not it's important that you swirl this ounce of song in your glass, breathe in and then take a nip. "Countless Days On" weaves through a forest of influences, Brendan Benson, Elliott Smith, mid-90s guitar pop, Crosby Stills Nash & Young ca. "Our House"... The critic's buzzword would be "AM radio", but there's also a hi-fi thickness to the production, a diffuse warmth. I can only imagine it as a swell of sound on a film-soundtrack, Almost Famous or something by David Gordon Green. Jangling guitars, thumping drums, vocals that fuzz into feeling - a kid seeing his girlfriend kissing someone else, a mother staring at birds through her window, a grandfather putting on his grandson's records, listening loud, trying to spark some life back into his chest.

[buy She Moved Through for $12]

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Abby has posted a remarkably awesome song by Robyn, over at Poptext. It's insistent and catchy and leaves some of its cards unshown. I've since sought out the whole album and holy crow, folks, Robyn might be one of my favourite records of the year.

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I just came back from a set by Eugene Mirman at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was fantastically funny, absurd and heartburning stand-up. Eugene's delivery was sharp as nutshell, his jokes like nuts thrown at my head. Don't stay home eating that bowl of tears, go see him.

In related news, although I had expected to be doing Fringe reviews with The Skinny, their press passes seem to have fallen into limbo. If anyone out there wants a writer, or has any shows they think I ought to see, please let me know.

Some of my recent reviews/features are online. The better ones: Architecture in Helsinki (AWESOME) and Smog. I'm also pretty happy with Devendra Banhart and Sir Richard Bishop reviews, from their gig last week, which should be up soon which are online now. I hated Devendra but loved Bishop.

Fela Kuti - "O D O O [edit]". Okay, screw Bono. This is the egomaniac I want at the head of my political movement. Nobody would be poor, nobody would be hungry, nobody would be unhappy. Racism: poof! Sexism: pow! Homophobia: zap! Instead - cowbell, chumchumstrum of guitar, brass, "ga ga goo goo". We'd build buildings that sway to music, everyone would know how to surf, love would be the easiest thing in the world. I guess the world would have a black president, too, which is worth a shot.

The best part is maybe that apathy would be annhiliated. How can you be apathetic with those horns tooting at you? If Fela looks you in the eyes, you'll take a bullet for him. If this Revolutionary Army comes by, even the tories will somersault into position, take up arms. Forget white wristbands - we would all get hot air balloons, every colour in the rainbow, floral patterns and cool modernist stripes, and our balloons would march (okay, bob) to the seats of government, nudging and bumping, so insistent and so glad that people would for sure pay attention. Cause even George Bush couldn't turn down Fela Kuti, "O D O O", truth, compassion, and a hundred million hot-air ballons.

[buy Black President: The Best Best of Fela Kuti, or one of his 77 albums]

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Elbow - "Mexican Standoff". Just when you've given up on British guitar rock, Elbow comes along and reminds us why they were always the most interesting of Radiohead's children. Sure, we're a long way from the indie-prog suites of their debut, but this album's got a spark that at times bursts into flame. Guy Garvey's feelings don't just prance about over silvery piano-chords -- they punch holes in the walls.

"Mexican Standoff" begins with one of my favourite possible recorded sounds - a yell from the back of a room. And then we're off, clapgalloping down a hill, headlong into... what? A thicket? A moor? An army of Moors?

I admit that these are clumsy metaphors, but how else do you articulate the majesty of this song's ending moments? The electric guitar that buzzes like shields catching the light; percussion like horse-hooves; the rising warcry chant. Garvey may be nervous but he isn't going to be cowed into spitefulness. Instead he makes his band radiant, triumphant. He'll nab the princess by the sureness of his sword, the dazzle of his smile, the sweetness of his song.

I assume it ends as it does because Elbow won, so they don't need to strut around any more. To the bedroom!

[pre-order for September]

Svatopluk Karásek - "Zpivam, Pane mec v ruce mam". I stumbled upon this CD in the corner of a Prague CD store.

It has a black and white cover, an awkward snapshot of a man with dated hair, a goattee, and a battered acoustic guitar. Various long-hair kids lounge around him. And above the photo, in a damaged typewriter font:

When I got it back to the hostel and slipped it into my walkman, I swooned with delight. Not only was the music good, it was exactly what the cover had suggested. It's a CD of - yes, - blues and spirituals, sung by a nasal-voiced man with his plain guitar, sometimes joined by a chorus of pals, sometimes not. Recorded between 1979 and 1990, these tracks feel like field recordings from a movie, a staged portrayal of Prague's revolutionary hippies. It's all too perfect, from the mispronunciations to the dazed-and-confused call-and-response, from the whine to the ache.

In the 1970s, Svata (Svatopluk) Karásek was a Protestant minister living in Prague. The Communist government prohibited his work as a pastor, so Svata did what any strong-feeling human being would do: he turned his sermons into songs. He and several other musicians were imprisoned in 1976, but good things came of this --

A diverse group of supporters, including playwrights, writers, professors and other Czech intellectuals, had attended the trial and gathered outside in the hallway. Among the supporters was avant-garde playwright (and later President) Vaclav Havel... Havel left the trial feeling disgusted with the world and resolved to make a difference.

In the months that followed, these sympathizers gathered in solidarity with the hippies and rallied around the [imprisoned musicians]. They dared to establish a human rights organization and released a statement of principles on January 1, 1977, naming their organization after the charter, Charter 77. Havel said that the [musicians] were defending "life's intrinsic desire to express itself freely, in its own authentic and sovereign way"... Charter 77 evolved into a world-famous human rights petition that eventually landed Havel in jail, and was a precursor to the national revolution that occurred 12 years later. [link]

And the music?

Listening to these recordings, a man in a room with some spirituals to sing, I hear Dylan and I hear early Devendra Banhart and yeah I hear early blues acts like Mississippi John Hurt (minus the guitar skills) and Mississippi Sheiks. Singing in English, Karásek sounds cracked, almost funny, but still so honest; I imagine Moses with his stutter, a man on his knees whose words will obviously not be enough. God's so big he makes words immaterial. Your blues are too deep to be rescued by correct English pronunciation.

"Zpivam, Pane mec v ruce mam." "I am singing with the sword in my hand." Hear how serious Karásek sounds. Hear how it's like he's in a different place from the other singers, from his hand strumming the guitar. He's sitting beside himself. He's doing what he can to say what he can't. People sing along, for a bit, but eventually they go quiet. And they just whistle. They whistle along. Like the wind between stalks of wheat.

[buy?]

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Zivé Kvety - "Nikto Ti Nepovie Pravdu". The hottest garage-pop band in Bratislava. Yes, Slovakia. I wandered into a little shop and a kind little man showed me the things the city was into. Lakeside folktronica! Men with acoustic guitars! And this, Zivé Kvety, "quite punk," he said, but of course it's not at all. From the school of Richmond Fontaine, the Stones or Sloan, here are fun-time Slovakians who yell juicy choruses and slam drums and let the guitars run in red shorts up and down the street. The website's got all the tabs! The CD's got a cover of "Brown Sugar" ("Zhnité kvety")! "Hey hey hey!" (spelled, in the liner notes, "Hej, hej, hej"), "Ale je nám mej aké sme zlatí!" Oh yeah, that's gonna be my summertime cheer. (No idea what it means.)

There's just enough pizzicatto, handclaps, a girl with a road-dusty voice, chords mashed out like they're the recipe to party.

Okay, this is Said the Gramophone, so I better throw in some typical weirdness. If this song were having a conversation with itself:

SONG: Hey! Are you going to the movie?
Song: Movie? Look what I'm doing!
SONG: You're jumping up and down on the grass!
Song: I'm jumping up and down on the grass!
SONG: Yes! That looks fun!
Song: Join me! Look, I'm baking cookies too!
SONG: My electric guitar is a baseball bat that only hits home-runs!
Song: Thank god we're no longer controlled by the Communists!

[way more mp3s / buy for $14]