Los Angeles atmospheric pop band And The Giraffe

You haven’t heard of And The Giraffe yet, I’m sure, but their music is building buzz around the Internet, and it’s thanks in no small part to the elegant textures of “Underground Love,” their latest single. Opening with a distorted drone which soon blends with mild, evocative acoustic picking and vocals which remind this listener immediately of Griffin House’s magnificent “Amsterdam” meeting up with Alexi Murdoch’s brand of understated vocal touches. You’ll know what I’m talking about the moment you hear it. The band’s two members, Nick Roberts and Josh Morris, filmed the video on virtually no budget, and their EP Something for Someone has been reviewed by more than sixty publications, including the blog Michigan Review, which called the EP “frustratingly short but attention grabbing.” Hey, that’s what repeatedly hitting the play button is for!

You can throw money at a project in the hope of receiving short term notice, but once a singer like McCreery steps off the Idol reservation, giving him material this weak leaves him to swim with the sharks while having no real talent to defend himself with.

I’m going to get a lot of hate mail for this one. But hear me out … unlike the Supreme Dicks review, in Scotty’s case he’s a genuinely likeable guy who has simply been screwed over by Idol’s powers which be, who gave him material which was so sub-par there was no way he’d build a career. Already disadvantaged by the fact that he’d won a national talent competition without the ability to actually write his own material, he was at the mercy of whatever songwriters 19 Entertainment would choose to craft material on his behalf. And when the best thing they can do is get Keith Urban to write drivel about how he needs to “loosen his tie and escape the rat race” on “Walk in the Country,” a song which also references hating “all of them TV shows.” If they wanted him to have a lasting career, they should have given him much better material to work with along with the support to develop his own songwriting abilities, writing about things he really believes. You can read the rest of the review at PopMatters, if I haven’t already sufficiently pissed you off.

As much as we want to think every underground band in the 1990s was producing quality just because no one was listening, the truth is sometimes underground bands are unknown for a reason. This is the kind of alternative music indie snobs drool over.

Of all the albums I listened to last year but didn’t manage to get published ahead of the “Year of the Album” banner, this was among the worst, if not that very thing. Bad albums are one thing, but this is a four-disc set which brings back to life a long-dead indie-alternative band which, from the sound of the material herein, should have been left mouldering beneath the ground. Deep beneath, if I had my way. You can read the full review at PopMatters, But after digging through the mess which is Breathing and Not Breathing, it’s hard to fathom there’s a significant audience out there featuring listeners who both haven’t already heard the Supreme Dicks and who are clamoring for the music they offer here. If a band existed on the fringes of a scene and then fell into obscurity, I see no inherent reason we should think their limited output is somehow suddenly relevant to rock music today. The idea that these guys from Amherst who made chaotic, inscrutable music are somehow ready for the rock canon seems, in itself, to be the height of pretension.

Martin Luther King Jr

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, I think this song does a good job speaking for itself. Don’t look to the future — if you want to find a better life and make change for the global good, it has to start now. Fear divides, love unites, and Martin Luther King’s words, and those of the others who made the civil rights movement possible, remain as relevant today as they were fifty years ago.

Just a little bit of fun to liven up your Sunday! After seeing the highlights of the Patriots’ 45-10 drubbing of Tebow’s Broncos, I think it’s fitting that his ego was skewered so aptly by Jimmy Fallon a few days prior:

Don’t you know my day of rest is Sunday?
And I’m sick of watching all these Broncos games
I hear that you play New England next week
Dude, you’re on your own
Brady is too good and I’ve got better things to do …

Priceless. Is there any genre he can’t parody?

Dare Dukes is ready to put Savannah, Georgia back on the indie map

FREE DOWNLOAD (MP3) — Dare Dukes – “Meet Me At The Bus”‘

Take his advice: “BE RECKLESS …” and give Savannah, Georgia’s Dare Dukes a chance to win you over; you won’t be disappointed. Opening with plucked mandolin and cymbals, but building quietly with a lone trumpet (soon doubled) and light male vocals that sound like a somewhat milder version of the Mountain Goats, this song builds enough good will in the first minute to own you for hours. His debut album Thugs and China Dolls is more than most indie records can be expected to be after a decade of work, let alone being a mere sophomore album. But the truth is, in a sanitized musical landscape where lowest common denominator frequently gets the widest praise, this songwriter is proof that sticking to honest music pays its own best dividends. On the bulk of this album it is, Dukes leads the material as a songwriter worthy of notice — the backing musicians, including members of Of Montreal, The Modern Skirts and TV On The Radio, provide extra heft but rarely distract from the essentials of the music. And in the end, that’s the best thing I can say about him; like John Darnielle before him, Dukes knows how to craft a song from the ground up,and he’s ready to show what can be accomplished when being an eccentric is considered a badge of honor. This one’s a definite keeper.

Tribes -- rock and roll lives!

DOWNLOAD (MP3):  Tribes – “We Were Children”

This one reminds me of that Pixies song that plays at the end of Fight Club … one of those memorable hooks you’ll want to hear as many times as you can to let it sink all the way in. The band, based in Camden, England, is an “it’s about time” return to straight-up rock & roll melodic guitar riffs, anthemic tunes, and they’re doing it all themselves, working these songs from the ground up and earning the acclaim. Inspired by Pavement, Nirvana, the Libertines — any of those 90s-era rockers who dared to twist conventions while crafting songs which have stood strong through two decades — Tribes are going to hit you hard and fast, and they’ll hope you’ll agree their music has the potential to stick around as well. Their EP We Were Children came out on Universal Republic in late November, and they’ll be dropping a full-length at some point in 2012, so there’s still plenty of time to check them out and become a convert to the sound. Once you do you won’t want to stop listening — take it from an addict with no particular need for recovery.

Braaaaaaaaains ... Love and Zombies works for those with "crunchier" tastes.

There’s no way out, folks! No matter what you do, you’ll find yourself singing along with this one by the time you get to the finish line. “No Way Out” (officially out January 24th as the band’s new single) does a good job introducing Love and Zombies to the masses, as the brain-loving punk outlet for San Jose-based solo artist Doug Young (formerly of the Muckrukers and Pale Like You), exploring such heady topics as “growing up” while not letting go of teenage aspirations, youthful aggression or individuality, while not losing your head to the zombie hordes chasing you down the suburban avenue, lustful over your tasty appendages. Okay, there’s nothing serious about this band — just straightforward, not even close to groundbreaking, sarcastic, honest and twisted as all hell music for those who enjoy NOFX, Thursday or Jawbreaker … or any other band willing to bring the rock crunch and have fun doing it.

Aaron Freeman (a.k.a. Gene Ween) goes solo to promote songs inspired by Rod McKuen

For those of us who loved Ween’s miracle of genre worship known as 12 Golden Country Greats, there’s no surprise that Aaron Freeman (a.k.a. Gene Ween) is teaming back up with producer Ben Vaughn for his first solo album, Marvelous Clouds, due out April 10th on Partisan Records. The interesting twist: you’ll hear Freeman like you’ve never heard him before, featuring 13 interpretations of songs written by Rod McKuen, beat poet and songwriter who has lived privately and never really received the reappraisal his body of work deserves. Freeman, who has with Ween managed to build a career based on range, reinvention and constant innovation, has chosen to use McKuen’s work to “articulate one of his most personal efforts to date,” which makes the album a must-hear from the start. But adding McKuen’s reputation as one of the most prolific poets and songwriters of the 20th century puts this over the top. His songs have been covered by everyone from Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash to Madonna, and now they’ll be filtered through one of the most innovative voices in alternative music. What more can you ask for?

I don’t have a full sample song from the album yet, so “Japanese Cowboy” will have to suffice. Enjoy!

Ugly Kids Club, a Nashville best-kept secret?

It takes real nerve to call Nashville home and launch a band with a modern indie-rock sound infused with grimy electronic beats. But Ugly Kids Club proves being Nash Vegas’s bastard musical stepchildren has its rewards, with “My Soul,” which is part of their self-titled debut EP. “Music is my lover, she’s a sage, she’s physical,” Aleigh Baumhardt sings as the beat backs her with frantic abandon. Music may not always be able to save our soul, but in this case it can give us one hell of a good time. It’s a sound which owes a lot to the early nineties pop trends, which frequently merged pop and grunge with hooks that resonated for days. Appropriately the band has released the EP on limited edition cassette, which in itself seems like a novel gimmick. As they say, “bust out that Walkman with pride” and give the Ugly Kids Club a listen. You might just find yourself a new guilty pleasure.