A Glass Of Bubbly and Brand New Shoes

Basement Jaxx “Hush Boy” – I somehow get the impression that this won’t end up being my favorite song on the forthcoming Jaxx LP — I mean, come on, one of the song features Robyn! — but how do you deny this sort thing of thing? It’s exactly what you would expect of Basement Jaxx in terms of boldness, seamless genre blending, and intense exuberance, but also a bit fresh, offbeat, and ridiculous at the same time. There’s a delightful sense of cheesiness to this cut, but they pull it off, especially when they play off some mindnumbingly prosaic details (they looked up a Mexican restaurant on the internet, she enjoyed her chicken fajitas) with some wacky soap opera plot developments. (Click here for XL’s Basement Jaxx site.)

Hey “Cisza, Ja I Czas” – This is the beauty of file sharing, right here. This is exactly the sort of random music that you can find when you’re barely even looking, but it’s astonishing and exciting, and almost entirely unknown in your part of the world. Hey are a Polish rock band who’ve been going for well over a decade now and have apparently achieved some measure of success in eastern Europe and (I think) Australia, and sound a little like Royal Trux if all of their vocals were in Polish, and they were gunning for modern rock radio hits circa 1995. If you ever wished Neil Haggerty would’ve thrown in some la la la’s to balance out the gruffness of Jennifer Herrema’s voice, this might be the song for you. (Click here for Hey’s official site.)

A Sunny Day In Glasgow @ Cake Shop 7/16/2006
Laughter (Victims) / A Mundane Phonecall To Jack Parsons / Ghost in the Graveyard / The Horn Song / Fabulous Friend (Field Mice cover) / The Best Summer Ever

Last night’s A Sunny Day In Glasgow show went over much, much, much better than you would have expected given Ben Daniels’ warnings that I reprinted in the previous entry. Though the band most likely would have sounded better with live drums (this is something they hope to work out before they play their next show in August, so no worries there), they did a pretty great job of playing the songs and getting across their peculiar aesthetic in a live setting. Much in the way the recordings sound like fuzzy memories of old 80s indie records, the live performance sounded as though they were trying to replicate the sound of an audience tape of a My Bloody Valentine show from 18 years ago. It was strange and overwhelming, and not quite like any other band that I’ve ever seen live. As on the recordings, the lyrics were almost entirely unintelligable, but the timbre of the vocals and the melodies were clear and gorgeous. It barely mattered that the Daniels siblings did not appear particularly comfortable on stage — after all, who expects much of a stage show from what is essentially a shoegazer band? If anything, the band’s ordinary appearance and slightly awkward stage presence added to the show by contrasting with the somewhat alien sound of their music. If they themselves were as stylized as the music, it might not have worked as well. There’s certainly room for improvement, but as it stands, it was definitely the best abstract postmodern rock show that I’ve ever seen.