Unpiano | Music Blog

The thing that made me revisit this awesome slab of wax from ’81 was thinking that my 9 year old son would love it. It has two of his favorite things, Sharks and swearing. If the cover had a fucking Pokemon character on it, 4th graders all over the world would be turning off their Big Time Rush bullshit and getting into D.I.Y. London post-punk from yesteryear.

Tronics – Shark Fucks

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I know I’m probably a little late on this, I’m not the most current dude, but a really great way to get introduced to new music is by drinking beer and smoking pot. Blah blah blah “liver disease”, blah blah blah “low sperm count”. How about, “awesome amounts of patience to sift through hours of YouTube threads, blogs and message boards chasing forgotten treasures”? Or “tireless yapping with other record nerds about shit you don’t know about yet”? Just be sure to take notes, because there’s a good chance you’re going to forget a whole lot about what you learned before the morning. Case in point, this 7 inches of reissued wax only found its way into my collection because of a crumpled, beer soaked note I found in a pant pocket after a late nighter, in which the phrase “awesome Sing Sing reissues” was chicken scratched onto a torn chunk of grocery bag. Lo-fi power poppish punk with a hint of TV Personalities, recorded in ’79 and reissued this year. Grab one before they’re gone.

Voice Of The Puppets – I Don’t Want To Know

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While every other blog is talking about how Switfumz sounds like R Stevie Moore, Ariel Pink and John Maus (are those really the only people to ever record in their bedrooms?), all I hear is Ween and maybe the Busy Signals – but with leather jackets sporting patches from The Damned. I hear a Ween record that has been elevated to a different level by vocals that were held under and drowned in sticky sweet reverb. Add some tough melodies and picky guitar that finds all the right notes at the right times and you have Chris McVicker’s newest project – released on Holy Mountain. He has managed to create a record that sounds like the crispness and excited energy of Autumn, just in time to watch the leaves change. Also, and in a somewhat unrelated fashion, he has the funniest Twitter of any musician we have ever talked about on here.

Swiftumz – Angelita

Stream the rest of these tracks by scrolling through the Flash Player below:
Swiftumz – Day We Met
Swiftumz – 4EVA
Swiftumz – Tuff Guy

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In the world of bizarre music, there’s a fine line between interesting and annoying.  WU LYF stands firmly on the interesting side, but knows how to push the envelope to edge; they give little real information and create an entirely immersive concept and backstory, keeping fans and critics confused and interested. The Manchester-based 4-piece has nothing to do with Wu-Tang Clan, it’s an acronym for World Unite – Lucifer Youth Foundation. The websites are a confusing mess, but with a clean design that winks through the bizarre cult imagery, saying “This is creepy, right?  This is weird, right?” All in all, the mystery works in the band’s favor, allowing the music to speak for itself.

After an hour of listening and poking around on their website(s) I’m still not sure what to make of the band, but I know I love the debut record, Go Tell Fire To The Mountain.  The sound of the album sits somewhere just beyond the DIY indie rock/pop realm.  The guitar riffs are instantly catchy pop fare, the drums pound out primal, tribal patterns on the toms, and the vocals sound like they were overdubbed in a cave.  This is all great, and the juxtaposition of dark and mysterious vocals against the light and fun guitars continues perfectly throughout the entire album.  There’s something infectious about “Spitting Blood;” the lyrics are just the right amount of vague, forcing the listener to deal with some strange mental images, much like the band’s presentation of themselves.

The point here is, the album is super badass. Whether or not the cult-y stuff and the mystery is off-putting, you really need to check out the songs.  These guys are really on to something, despite the terrible name.  Also apparently if you buy the album from them, you get a bandana with all their weirdo cult images screen-printed on it.  If that’s not brilliant marketing, I don’t know what is.

WU LYF – Spitting Blood
WU LYF – We Bros
WU LYF – Heavy Pop

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Lots of bands draw influence from the titans This Heat, but not many bands can claim to be anywhere close to their talent.  Haunted Horses is a band that really gets what made This Heat so exciting; they are funky and beat-driven, bizarre and experimental, with a sense of humor (but not in a novelty, jokey way). Above all, Haunted Horses sound genuine in their experimentation, separating them from so many bands doing “weird shit” just for the hell of it. The guttural screams that punctuate the drum-driven groove sections sound primal and the heavy reverb on the vocals set the perfect dark atmosphere. These guys deserve the same attention and accolades as Lightning Bolt, so we should all see them at small, wild shows while we can. You get an extra point if you see them at a house party and 10 more bonus points if the party is in a basement.

Haunted Horses – Medusan Sky
Haunted Horses – Desmond
Haunted Horses – Horizons

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Night Manager is a lo-fi, surfy, garage-rock band with a pop sensibility usually reserved for bands without a sense of humor.  The melodies are instantly catchy, but the (really) lo-fi sound lends the songs a harder edge than contemporaries like Best Coast or Ariel Pink.  This is garage for real, as in “sounds like it was recorded in a garage on a tape deck,” which is pretty badass and definitely suitable for their sound.  The vocal lines are throwback 60′s style, but the heavy distortion makes them sound almost inhuman, like an alien synthesizer.  I’m not normally a “lo-fi” kind of guy, so it’s great to hear a band just going for it, all-in.

“Pizza Pasta” is the title track off the new 7-inch, out now on Fire Talk.  You can grab it here. You can also get the last EP from their Bandcamp, it’s a “name your price no minimum” download, so you can’t beat that.

Night Manager -  Pizza Pasta
Night Manager – Blackout Sex
Night Manager – Do I

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Here we stand, on the teeter-totter of indie internet fame.  These dark, lo-fi wizards have the potential to blow up on some Ariel Pink / GLASS CANDY type shit, warming the hearts and headphones of every kid in the country. Or they could just as easily release some great stuff out the gate and then turn out to be a one-trick pony like Sleigh Bells.  I’m really rooting for these guys, since I’ve been enjoying a lot of similar goth-influenced bands like Soft Moon and Tearist – and Raw Moans is on a path to join these modern synth-goth heroes. Even though they are a little hit or miss for now, it’s forgivable since they have everything for free on their Bandcamp site.  Let’s hope they can come out with a killer proper full-length sometime soon, or a bunch of insanely awesome and super-rare vinyl singles!

Also, I’m hoping that when they finally get a website, it’s an incomprehensible mess of terrible, pixelated MS paint images and dead links.  Let’s go!!

Raw Moans – rose bath [MOON RMX]
Raw Moans – Lightning Strikes
Raw Moans – never ending [THE BEAUTY]
Raw Moans – you’ve got mail

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Bonus:
Raw Moans – Aqua Net (Video – NSFW)

This nautical themed little gem by Orange County’s Fever B hit me like a ton of bricks, bricks made of pedal-to-the metal fuzzed out power-pop. Released as a limited edition 12″ on Orange County’s Burger Records, Fever B is a solo project by a dude in a bunch of local bands I’ve never heard of. With a one-man show this solid, I hope “B” kicks it into gear with a full band sometime this year.

Fever B – This Sea Is My Life
Fever B – Words That Make Your Heart Sing

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I know this track from San Francisco’s Royal Baths has been getting around a lot lately, and its probably kind of lame to post it again, but it smokes so I’m going to do it anyway. This has got me juiced for their upcoming LP, due to come out sometime next month. Word on the street is that they’re hot live, and by “street” I mean “friends I trust”, not some crackhead in a pair of stolen Ray Bans with one lens missing telling me “yeah motherfucka they hot, hey you gay? that scarf makes you look gay.”

Royal Baths – Nikki Don’t

//photo by virginia weatherby

San Francisco based Art Museums has pretty much dialed the sound of the early Television Personalities records (as well as some classics from the late 80s Flying Nun Records catalog and a smidge of the best of Guided By Voices) with their debut Rough Frame. This LP is a quirky, simplistic art-pop romp set to primitive drum machine beats, toy-ish keys and guitars, all captured on a Tascam 4-track to high-bias cassette. A favorite classic from yester-year or this month’s favorite new release? The roomy, reverby vocal treatment adds a layer of timelessness that could make it either.

Art Museums – We Can’t Handle It
Art Museums – Sculpture Gardens