Those kids in Blue Screen Love Scene sure are cute. And, while the Resonator obsession continues, their fan base, and show list, starts growing. If you happened to be in Athens (Georgia, not Greece, what the hell, do you think they’re turning a profit yet? First year business, son, first year business) this past weekend, and you happened to be drunk and leaving the Elf Power show wondering why they’re never as good as a naked Kevin Barnes tran-stravaganza, then you were probably on hallucinogens.
That being the case, you might have stumbled into Go bar, thinking what you were imagining was some of the cutest, most upbeat dance-pop you’d heard in forever. If what you saw was this:
it was not, in fact, a hallucination. It was, however, the first BSLS live show, and the reports from the larger-than-ADULT.-on-the-Gimmie-Trouble-tour crowd were that they rocked it out, albeit politely and with a Siouxsie Sioux cover tacked on at the end.
As always, attempting any discernible lyrical theme in this one is tough, and trying to do so kinda misses the entire point of BSLS (does that, then, make them a prose contemporary of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe? Do I dare, and do I dare, draw that parallel?…nah.): perfect pop songs in under 4 minutes flat.
It’s the word “radiation” in this one that’ll grab you, though. “Scientist” comes through like a bolt of blue lightning, supercharged from the get-go.
If you’re in the southeast of the States and looking for a reason and a way to see BSLS, there’s one night you can’t miss: they’ll be playing Wordsmiths Books BGB Vol III, with Raw Shark Texts author Steven Hall (seriously, this book is so incredibly cool, a feat both of literary prowess and design genius) ’s only appearance on the East Coast, on April 24th. Cue that little info card:
You’ll be seeing the poster soon enough. R-r-r-raaadiation, and all that.
Wordsmiths Books, in Decatur, GA, has done a phenomenal job pairing literature and music.
Tomorrow (Monday, March 24th), though, they’ve outdone themselves, joining forces for the second time with southern lit-scene blog BabyGotBooks to pair the sweeping, pain-swept landscape of Hillary Jordan’s debut novel Mudbound with the similarly rural, achingly pretty sounds of Athens/Decatur junkyard soul trio Hope For AGoldenSummer.
Together, Page Campbell, Claire Campbell and Deb Davis call themselves a “junkyard soul trio”, but they’re actually so much more. This is music that’s definitively southern, definitely rural, and reminiscent of a folk-art angel singing her heart out. At times, the territory tread by Hope For Agoldensummer is equal parts Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor with weaponry provided by Nick Cave-the sort of songs that hold knives behind their backs, lingering in sweetness just long enough to unveil the darkness lingering ‘neath. Other times, the songs are southern field gospel revivals, celebrating the sweaty southern pastures of life and love.
Then, though, the song was “4th Night”, an aching back-seat ode to the always-inevitable morning after.
In celebration of tomorrow, though, comes the jaunty, schoolyard-rhyme that is the closing moment to the sweepingly pretty Ariadne Threadalbum, “Old Questions”. Opening with the sound of a form of pattycake, Page, Claire and Deb pose the questions that make up the song’s title-questions on the nature of tried-and-true love. This song sounds dusty, sounds aged, sounds love-worn and rough around the edges, a little hazy as though the night’s just beginning.
And it’s wonderfully infectious, the perfect cap to the album’s darker moments and the perfect summation of the joy the ladies in Hope For Agoldensummer bring to their voices, their instruments, music itself.
If I began this how I’d initially thought, with some sort of high-handed espousing that “there are far too few living singer/songwriters that capture the” bla bla bla whatever gothic intensity of Nick Cave bla bla, it really would have rolled many, many eyes. Mine included.
Instead, I will leave it at this: Nick Cave’s a fucking genius. I’ve seen him live, which is not something a lot of folks under the age 0f 40 living in the U.S. can say, and I’ve been pushed by him during “Red Right Hand”, which, I must imagine, has an even smaller percentage of relateability. The bar-room fist-fight project Grinderman, from last year, must still be coursing through his veins a bit, because that whiskey-drunk, molester-’stached oily Nick has overtaken the velvet smoking jacket Nick that prevailed on his last few albums with the Bad Seeds.
It’s fitting, though, because the sound of the new Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds album, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is rowdier and dirtier than any of his most glass-jagged output in recent years, and therefore essentially a more lyrically-heavy bridge from unhinged piano ballads like And No More Shall We Part into the Nick Cave of old. Grinderman, one could say, gave Nick his mojo back. Dirty old man mojo, for certain, but that’s how and why we love him. I’ve been living with Lazarus (oh, the pun!) for a moment, and though at first I didn’t really dig (another pun! I’m so…oh, god, sorry) much of it, the fact that a couple of these songs, and more than a handful of Cave’s twists of wordplay, have lodged themselves in my head only goes to prove that it’s a much, much better album than I at first thought.
It’s possible my initial distaste for this record came from songs like this, songs with everything in both form and content cranked up to 11. Funny, though, this is the song that screamed to be posted here. Insane from the first note, sonic and disturbing, this is the sort of storytelling that’s trademark Nick:
“My girl
you lost a foe
And you found a friend
Lie down here and be my girl
I’m back now, baby, that man
He won’t be coming round here again
Lie down here and be my girl”
Over Warren Ellis’ incredible bar-rock fender, Nick coos and intones as though he still has his woman’s other man’s blood on his hands. There’s no amount of exposition to this song that can bring the twisted glee it, itself contains.
The video for the album’s title track and first single, with that Nick swagger and sway and one of the coolest fucking choruses to come out of rock in recent memory. Also, that organ? It’s as big and fat as, well, you can make your own very, very obvious phallic reference here.
Again, I say: Nick’s got his mojo back, and it, apparently, is in the moustache.
MC Rove. Just the mention of Karl “Sith Lord” Rove’s rippity-rappin’ alter-ego is enough to send icy bolts of fear pulsating like the strobe-lit Justice cross into the hearts of all thinking, feeling ‘mericans.
Which is why, dear hearts, the fact the Fed-K….K-ex? Ex-fed? What the hell is Kevin Federline going by now? Anyway, Kevin Federline brings a not-just-winking humor and voice to the long-dormant skizzillz of MC Rove, this past week on Lil’ Bush (the best show you’re not watching).
My favorite band of the year is playing a very special, super intimate show tomorrow night at my favorite venue in the city, and you should be there. If you manage to spot me, I’ll even buy you a beer– since the Tank has the cheapest beer in Manhattan.
Details:
The Royal Chains
(With The Beards and Butterflies)
Thursday March 13, 2008
9pm doors / $6 / ALL AGES
New track, “Villainy,” from their live show a few weeks ago, to give you a little taste:
shaun (9:20:54 AM): DID THEY PLAY THE SONG THAT GOES RUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPRUPPRRRRT? shaun (9:20:57 AM): i like dat one trixie (9:21:27 AM): it was actually fucking insane. i kept saying to hacks that this should have been at hell at the masquerade. trixie (9:21:36 AM): it was the most roger sanchez-y thing ever. shaun (9:21:54 AM): good roger sanchez, or Placeholder-era roger sanchez? trixie (9:21:57 AM): next to roger sanchez. trixie (9:21:58 AM): GOOD. trixie (9:22:03 AM): like, i get the cross, now. trixie (9:22:07 AM): cause they were holding church. shaun (9:22:22 AM): yeah but it’s kinda obnoxious to say that about yourself, isn’t it? trixie (9:22:26 AM): though i have never known it was possible to feel 30 years older than everyone in a room when only 27. shaun (9:22:28 AM): like, sanchez wasn’t always the s man trixie (9:23:01 AM): but he was at connected. shaun (9:23:05 AM): yeah, true shaun (9:23:12 AM): what was the crowd? trixie (9:23:16 AM): oh, man. trixie (9:23:24 AM): it was like 12 year olds in nu rave hoodies. trixie (9:23:39 AM): you know, the ones with so many little bits of small color that you’re sure you’re having a seizure while on ecstasy and dying?
Every so often, music comes along, sneaks up behind you and puts a damn groove in your step. Drops your jaw. Does that sort of cheesy-ass thing from old cartoons where the sun comes from behind a cloud, starts smiling and bobbing back and forth, whistling a jolly lil’ tune accompanied by bluebirds and robins (or whatever, I didn’t major in ornithology).
It’s even less often that I find one of these bands in the urban hipster haircut wasteland of Atlanta.
Enter, then, Blue Screen Love Scene, from the front (the front), the back (the back) and both sides:
These three kids, (r-l: Richy, Lauren, Matt: Richy and Lauren formerly of the best band to never record a song, Teenwich, and Matt formerly of the best band to implode over the price of Cheez-Its in China, Engineering) brand themselves “unapologetic dance pop”, and, if that’s a goal, they hit it square on the head. Like Resonator’s 2007 Faves (and also Atlanta natives) One Hand Loves The Other,Blue Screen Love Scene toss electronic manipulation into a blender with a cheeky sense of style. Unlike OHLtO, the equally-abbreviatable BSLS pour a decent amount of no-wave quirk and humor into their sound, and polish with a hazed, bedroom-gaze quality.
“Perfumery” is exactly what was lodged in my head when I wrote the bit above about “jaw-dropping”. You could also file it under “glorious”, “gorgeous” and “how the hell did three kids who never raved come up with this sort of back-room sunrise ambiance”
That’s a question I keep asking myself, and “Perfumery” glides and dreams away any necessity for an answer. There may truly be Paxil and Vicodin in the Atlanta water , if one was to compile the lost-love closet shoebox 4track wisp of the Atlas Sound album’s better songs on a mix tape with the softer, silkier BSLS moments. Lauren’s voice, part instrument made of anticipation, holds the hand of the swells of sound and leads the song along as though she was putting the thing to bed. I’m not gonna say “Eno”, cause that’s obvious. I already said Atlas Sound, so that one’s out of the way. I should also mention, then, that last night, when the new Portishead album utterly and absolutely failed me in that sort of way that only beloved friends you haven’t seen in forever who suddenly change beyond recognition for the worst, I turned to “Perfumery”. Granted, BSLS don’t inject themselves with Northern Soul, but they don’t need to. Not yet, at least.
Other than “I’m A Scientist” (which is streaming on the trippy, HAL 900-meets-Small Wonder BSLS myspace page), “Cheetah Belly” is the best example of all three concise facets of BSLS coming together to make something cute, quirky, memorable and unforgettable. What the hell’s Lauren on about here? Who knows, but it sounds total No New York-via-Berlin back alley, and there’s something about cheetahs, I think. Meanwhile, the laptopsthetic keeps the pace and Matt’s low-slung low-end gives the thing an anchor in an authentic realm, the sort of tune that spreads over that “unapologetic dance pop” sweet spot.
Trixie and I have been blathering, drooling uncontrollably, over these kids for days, weeks really.
shaun: give me a word, or a portmanteau, to describe BSLS
trixie: like feeding cotton candy to your hot new girlfriend in a park on a 78 degree day.
And that, really, is what BSLS are-the new TeenBeat pin-up idols of the thinking DancePop confectionery world. Hot kids who actually dance to their own stuff while dishing out their only expectation-that everyone move along with them. Their music is crush-worthy, and they’re about to set out to prove their live mettle with their first show on March 29th in Athens.
The massive response to the handful of finished tracks they’ve put together is proof of one major thing: this is less a breath of fresh air than a new (world) order. Color me blue, and color me obsessed.
Our friends from KISSAtlanta and involved in one helluva party out there tomorrow (the 12th) involving some of Atlanta’s top talent with with some west coast bangers. For preferred entry, go ahead and email SXSW@alliancetalent.net. The show is open to the public and does NOT require a badge or wristband, so you know it’ll be packed.
Happy 25th to”Blue Monday”, which, let’s face it, is the epitome of the independent ideal. The original pressing, infamously, made about as much money as Resonator does (which is to say it lost cash by the buttloads every time it sold).
Thanks Cerysmatic Factory for the note. Someone keep Hooky out of the cake.
Its been quite some time since I’ve made my presence known around these parts, so I’m sure you all are a) missing me and b) tired of shaun bitching about things that aren’t even relevant anymore (ZOMG JUSTICE! QQ), so here’s some dance music that delivers.
DMT Synth was just recently featured as the second release by the wonderful french blog/label/den of awesomeness know as Bouleafacettes. Think a little acid house meets sunny day disco mets dark roomed, bright lighted rave and you have “Navigator”. Its surprisingly infectious -having not left my playlist since the first listen- and even Trixie chimed in with her “I LIKE TRANCE” approval.
The release comes with 4 different remixes, each with their own style and flavor, but my personal favorite of the bunch is the Arm You Sampler remix. Its all hard and grungy, but still manages to maintain a 80s prom feel somehow.
If you’re a fan, you can download each track (for free) directly from Bouleafacettes, or download a zip of the whole release from zShare. And, if you can read french, you could let me know if I’m leaving out anything important from the above post. I’d ask Trixie, but she only speaks French whilst drunk.
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