1. The Pipettes -- great girl group sounds, suprisngly sharp lyrics, and a bit of Fuzzbox-ish attitude. Oh, and many of the songs just kill. 2. First review of Be Your Own Pet that made me interested - I'll have to pick it up. 3. An ex-girlfriend turned me onto Persephone's Bees -- she sent me a CD-R of an early album. Stewart captures it pretty well -- there's also some '80s new wave froth mixed in. To put it another way, these are strong, upbeat pop songs with a compelling front woman. A Top 20 candidate. Mike Bennett Blog: http://blog.myspace.com/mrhonorama Record reviews and more at http://fufkin.com Find out about Chicago shows: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/chicagopopshowreport/ >From: "Stewart Mason" >Reply-To: audities@smoe.org >To: >Subject: Re: 2006, let's hear it >Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 01:13:52 -0500 > > >----- Original Message ----- From: "Holmes Online" >>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 > _________________________________________________________________ MSN Shopping has everything on your holiday list. Get expert picks by style, age, and price. Try it! http://shopping.msn.com/content/shp/?ctId=8000,ptnrid=176,ptnrdata=200601&tcode=wlmtagline