Fire On The Mountain

After the outstandingly terrible 2005 release of Odditorium Or Warlords of Mars, The Dandy Warhols have stepped up, re-energized, and now have a new album available entitled …Earth To The Dandy Warhols… (stream the entire album here). This time, the Portland, OR based band have abandoned the dilapidated subterranean haze their sound recently encompassed, and reconfigured themselves once again for the best album they’ve put out since 2000’s amazing Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. This is the first release with their new label Beat The World Records, and I really think this one will take off. Maybe it’s just the brazen attitude and androgyny of lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor, but when I listen to the Dandys I get a strange yet comfortable sense of being groped. That, in tandem with the large soundscapes their albums cover (Dandys Rule and Thirteen Tales, specifically), make for totally pleasurable listening experiences.

Pumpkin Soup

Check out the San Francisco duo The Dodos. I up and bought a 12″ of their new album Visiter this morning, after hearing just a couple bars of the opener. They’re incredible–at most songs, it feels as though Donovan Frankenreiter or Sufjan Stevens hooked up with Rodrigo Y Gabriela to create some amazing rhythms. With his Weakerthans-like boyish voice and love for fingerpicking guitar strides, singer Meric Long brings both atmosphere and placement to his counterpart, Logan Kroeber. And Kroeber is what launches this band up and outwards. The way he so easily slips throughout time signatures and backbeats slams the album with thunderous percussion, but his control keeps a bouncy taste of quirk. ‘Fools’ is definitely on my morning playlist now–it’s totally happy, kind of if Jeff Tweedy were to remake some ELO slasa-style (and had John Bonzo Bonham’s reincarnation on drums). Have a listen to ‘Paint The Rust,’ to get a White Stripes-esque grunge with pure psychedelic bang (there’s Bela Fleck love peeking through Long’s plucking on that one too!).

Kroeber’s stomping tambourine bangarang really recalls The Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker, and her ass-kicking violence towards instruments; he embraces his progressive metal background, and meshes it with Meric Long’s trippy bluegrass attitude.

Good shit!

The Dodo’s video for ‘Fools’:

European Son

I just downloaded a sick cover of ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ (Velvet Underground) by the Belgian band Été 67!  The group primarily sing in French, and channel a Dandy Warhols/Cafe Tacuba approach with contours that bring to mind Kings of Convenience.  Definitely worth a listen if you’re looking for something new and guitar-crunchy!

Unfortunately, I can’t locate any way to access their music without iTunes.  An interview with the band on French radio OUIFM with an acoustic set can be found here,  and SHIFT magazine has an (English) interview with them here (includes some fascinating bits about language and trans-national performances in that corner of the EU).

Check out the bootleg excerpt from their live show last May–the singer is really fucking cute!  That, and the band launch into the song completely