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| From | "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net> |
| Subject | Re: 2006, let's hear it |
| Date | Tue, 12 Dec 2006 01:13:52 -0500 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Holmes Online" <bholmes_fm@msn.com>
> So let's start with one album, ANY album, that might be floating
> under the radar of most people. Tell us. Sell us.
I have two, one indie and one major-label. Neither of them are my
favorite album of the year (that's probably gonna be either Beirut's
GULAG ORKESTAR, an album that's far enough outside the standard
Audities purview that I'm not even gonna bother to sell it, or the
Pipettes' WE ARE THE PIPETTES, which is probably going to rate fairly
high among those who heard it), but they're records that I think
deserve more mention than they've gotten around here, which is...well,
pretty much none.
Indie: BE YOUR OWN PET, Be Your Own Pet (XL) -- these guys have gotten
a boatload of comparisons to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but to me, they're
much more like the band I had *heard* the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were
supposed to be like, before I finally heard the YYYs and discovered
they're a bad Siouxsie and the Banshees tribute act. Four teenagers
from Nashville, with surprisingly impressive Audities credentials --
the original rhythm section consisted of the sons of local '70s cult
fave Robert Ellis Orral (though they've both left the band) and the
album was produced by Redd Kross' Steve McDonald -- Be Your Own Pet
specialize in noisy two-minute punk songs with just the right mix of
pop smarts and bratty attitude. Singer Jemima Pearl (also a music-biz
legacy: her dad's Jimmy Abegg, a CCM musician and photographer) sounds
shockingly like Pylon's Vanessa Briscoe-Hay, and as a whole, they're
recommended to anyone with fond memories of Pylon, pre-reggae Slits,
the Adverts and that whole wing of spiky, noisy post-punk stuff.
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/beyourownpetmusic
Major-label: NOTES FROM THE UNDERWORLD, Persephone's Bees
(Columbia) -- I have trouble deciding what's more shocking, that this
album was released by a major label or that as far as I know, it was
never mentioned on Audities. The closest musical comparison is Ivy,
and it's a very close one indeed. The singer, Angelina Moysov, is
Russian instead of French, but she has the same chilly,
slightly-accented purr of a voice as Dominique Durand (and, shallow
though it may be of me to say, is to my mind even hotter: imagine
Nigella Lawson fronting a band), but where Ivy's wayback machine is
set to the UK indie charts circa 1985, Persephone's Bees add a few
other obvious influences: some '60s psych and freakbeat, a bit of
indie-dance along the lines of Stereolab and St. Etienne, a little
glam. (The AMG review -- not by me -- repeatedly mentions Brian May
in the guitarist's sound; I don't personally hear it as much, though I
see what he means.) What I love about it is that all of these
influences tend to be going on at the same time rather than being
segregated per song. MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/persephonesbees
and YouTube has videos for "Nice Day," "City of Love," "Climbing" (my
personal favorite), "Paper Plane" (the most freakbeaty/glammy of the
lot, for those whose tastes run in that direction) and "On the Earth."
This record never had a chance on a major -- I'm sure they've already
been dropped -- but it's got "future cult classic" written all over
it.
S
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