Green Palm Radiation

There are two kinds of blog posts you see here: Ones that I search for (take the new Super Furry Animals album for instance), and ones that search for me. The latter has some sort of introduction feeling in the post since most of them are tremendously unknown. Bands/artists pop up on my email on a daily basis. Sometimes I’m slightly reluctant to post their music on This Winki’s. Honest! Too mediocre and cliché! Though, the guys are nice enough to share their efforts with us so I just can’t let them all down. But once in a while I’m moved by some new talents and here’s one of them.

Imagine Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices) doing his best to stick with his lo-fi four-track roots but being dazzled by a glittering light on a Wednesday night, caused his brain to generate even more colors. Now Robert seeks variations. That’s how Green Palm Radiation has turned out. These vibrations are the psych-pop musings of a band led (almost thoroughly) by Jay Newberry of Ontario, Canada with likes of Yo La Tengo, Mazarin, Flying Saucer Attack, Husker Du, Apples in Stereo, Akron/Family and if you ask me, Guided By Voices. The self titled debut was out in April 09. The 12 song LP is filled with diverse lo-fi interpretations of Jay Newberry, sometimes abundant with noise and sometimes circa-60s psych-pop. It’s quite a roller coaster ride and won’t let you down because each single work has its own ride. Even the closing “Rachel Brook” surprises you with a semi-ambient noise experience while “Condemnation” is a fun ride in a Tokyo theme park and “Cured By Reason” goes Sonic Youth-ly too far. I love the sci-fi comic behind it all!

[mp3] Green Palm Radiation "With You There"
[mp3] Green Palm Radiation "Condemnation"

Thanks to Jay N for sending his music.
Mini-comic “Son of Volare” by Rich Perkins

Holiday Singer Jens Lekman & Swine Flu

You never know when it hits you. But you may become more alert when you see even Michael Jackson can be gone. But this guy is fortunately still with us. He's just caught a Swine Flu. Jens Lekman sings the most tender romantic holiday songs ever. He makes you want to re-pack, even when you've just returned from a three month vacation to the Caribbean. That's how good he is on holidays. But reading his small talks on his (mid-90s design) website. He has locked himself up. On his recent, post he claims:

"I picked home one last souvenir from South America, it's called the H1N1 virus. Wrongfully known as the Swine flu.

I was crossing the Atlantic when things started getting really bad, the fever was hallucinogenic and shaking me like a leaf and I grabbed the sleeve of the Air France steward. "I'm not feeling well, I should see a doctor" I said and the reply came as a brilliant mix of death anxiety and french rudeness: "Uh, yes... Terminal D... go there maybe... when we land". After that the stewards and stewardesses took long detours. A ring of empty seats formed around me. Peoples eyes were kind but determined, they read "Poor you, I really wish you all the best but if you come near me or my kid I will have to stab you with this plastic fork". I got up and went to the bathroom where I fainted.

Now I'm in quarantine for ten days. I can see the summer through my window and it's just perfect. Summer is always best through a window. "

Let's just hope he recovers soon. We're losing lots of talents lately. What's wrong with mother earth these days? I'm not eating pork for a time to come. I'll eat bacon maybe!

[mp3] Jens Lekman "The Opposite of Hallelujah"
[mp3] Jens Lekman "A Sweet Summernight On Hammer Hill"

John Frusciante - The Empyrean

Behind all those stadium-sized Red Hot Chili Peppers hits, Flea dancing like a lunatic, Anthony jumping around as if he’s still 16 and sometimes taking a free-fall, I have always this zest for John Frusciante's guitar melody galore and backing vocals. These two key elements are probably the reasons I can still connect to “Otherside” or “Scar Tissue” or other RHCP list makers. Though it’s interesting to know that John is even more workaholic than you ever thought. He’s back with his 11th studio album, what appears to be a real deep mind journey for just one guitar player. He starts revealing the dark sides of this concept thing fairly openly and honest the way he always has.

Being a little bit different from other Frusciante works and leaning towards more 70s rock side of his ever-creative mind, The Empyrean is seemingly a non-physical experience the way John puts it into words on his official page:

“It all takes place in one persons mind throughout his life. The only other character is someone who does not live in the physical world but is inside it, in the sense that he exists in people’s minds.”

So is this a reincarnation fairy tale or what? Apparently Frusciante likes to share more as he’d rather make a list of words in form of a pseudo-poem to familiarize the listener with what he truly means behind all those curves and riffs:

“The following words vaguely express the lyrical and musical form: From within confusion and darkness, Reaching up to the source of light, Trying, Giving up, Climbing, Resting, Going up, Going down, Dying, Being reborn, Darkness becomes lighter, Confusion becomes clearer, Up,up,up.”

Now I hope these wordsmith minor elements help you through but at the same time Frusciante does not insist on the concept that much. He likes you to HEAR his words. He merely wanted to tell you what he has made this record sound the way it does. Therefore I take the whole story as an experimental project that will be appropriate in a nightly mood (it’s still a rock album, honest!).

Starts out with an extremely distracting 9-min opener and a Tim Buckley cover of “Song To the Siren” follows it up. It’s quite a long and exhausting journey if you ask me. Frusciante was marvelously crafty when it came to simple acoustic songs about pain, apathy and torture. But as a solo guru telling stories, he might not be as successful. The Empyrean is filled with stretching moments of thought and reflection. Sometimes too stretching. However, the record has its moments. “Unreachable” earns a melodic section very RHCP-wise and a chorus that reminds me of The Doves “M62 Song”. Therefore the experience was all worthwhile. You might never find an experimental RHCP record. This is a pure blend of Frusciante’s memory abundant with melodies he tries to put to use. “Heaven” is another soulful serene song that builds itself higher as time grows; another top song on the album. I can’t firmly state there’s a bad song on The Empyrean. This is probably just how Frusciante wanted it to turn out. I don’t know what was in his mind finding a semi-Gothic album art but The Empyrean can easily become a favorite after repeated plays. Not a record you want to dismiss for a while to come. There’s just more instrumentation than any other Frusciante album. So let your ears make the best out of it while you all know it may not defy anything modern all throughout the disk. Tranquil 70s rock, you might wonder. And you're right.

[mp3] John Frusciante "Unreachable"

Spoon - Got Nuffin EP

Lacking Gimme Fiction’s coherence and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s groove and Kill the Moonlight or Girls Can Tell’s hit potentials and just before Spoon prepares itself for an album that will probably surface the US mag/tabloid covers, they come up with probably the worst thing they have recorded since their mid-90s heyday a.k.a Got Nuffin, an EP with the potentials of a mediocre single. The four track extended play starts out with the self-titled song that shows Britt Daniels and friends summing up their thought balloons on a totally ordinary Spoon song that fails to reach any of the band’s previous efforts. That’s just fine, enough to know it’s just a single or a rarity that the band was obliged to record.

The rest is least likely to be tried even once. “Tweakers” – which gets a pointless remix on track four, just tell me why – I get the feeling like Tom Waits is rehearsing on his Real Gone’s basement lo-fi arrangements and not coming up with a single bright idea. Then comes the disastrous “Stroke Their Brains”, a near 8 minute track that is void of music halfway through and it’s not even the final track on the EP! A hopeless effort! Better off being a single than any other thing! Still looking forward to hearing what this pure indie-rockers will come up on their next big thing. Meanwhile don’t waste your time with this. It’s got absolutely nuffin to wash away your agony.

[mp3] Spoon "Got Nuffin"

Radioboxer from Miami / Alice In Chains Will Return

Not exactly a Latin rock band rather something trapped between Latin sounds and indie rock, the Miami based newcomers Radioboxer will release their debut called Radio Drama and getting ready to record a follow up with great power pop songs and a fresh sound. Radioboxer was selected as "reader's choice" as Miami Best Band of 2009 by Miami New Times Magazine. Vanessa Dazza fronts the band with her indie Shakira-ish vocals that brings a pop atmosphere to a band that doesn’t mind spreading its noise despite its pop-style front woman. They are proud of their energetic live shows due to Vanessa’s multiple personality according to the bassist J. And I believe they have shared one of those split-personality noise-pop tunes with us plus their DeVotchka style intro that might come in quite handy. “Placebo Effect” sounds lush and abundant and Vanessa is a bit all over the place but it’s totally alright for the first effort.

[mp3] Radioboxer "Placebo Effect"
[mp3] Radioboxer "Run Away From Home and Join the Traveling Band"

*****

Yeah, fourteen years since the last Alice In Chains riff ever, while Jerry Cantrell carried on with his solo recordings and Seattle grunge scene lost one of his iconic figures in 2002 with Layne Staley’s speedball overdose, Aic is back. Staley's death was so sad for me cause asfar as I remember, Alice In Chains had two different egos, a metal one (as you heard all throughout their early Facelift years with tunes such as “Man In the Box”, “Would?” and “Them Bones”) and a blessed mellower ego that elevated the band’s black melancholy with melodic rock songs with the likes of “Brother”, “Heaven Beside You”, “Got Me Wrong” and “Nutshell” among many others. Seven years after Staley’s death, his stand-in is Atlanta singer William DuVall, previously part of the touring band for Cantrell's last solo album. Drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Inez (from the original line-up) will also accompany Jerry on the new AiC album coming in September 09 called Black Gives Way To Blue according to AiC's official place. Meanwhile, the band shares a quick (but 7 min) taste of the work with “A Looking In View”. Can DuVall truly replace Staley’s heroin vocals or will they become just the next INXS running completely out of ideas? Here's a sap!

[mp3] Alice In Chains "A Looking In View"

Prefuse 73 - Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian

As Thom York was aimlessly passing out being intoxicated with carbon monoxide on the backseat of a Buick (?) on “Karma Police” he somehow heard some of Scott Herren’s samples (before he got the idea of torn comic books for the song lyrics), so he suddenly uttered: “…he talks in math, he buzzes like a fridge, he’s like a detuned radio.” Some twelve years later, we are having a close encounter with the detuned man himself. On his 6th proper long play magnificently called Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, Herren stepped out of his hip-hop boundaries and decided to lay his burden on his electronic side of brain. Wise choice!

The album more or less reminds me of Flying Lotus’ Los Angeles (a record that made it to my top 10 of the year). Ampexian comes close. It even crosses many thresholds: there are 29 tracks on the album. Most track lengths do not exceed 2 minutes and majority of them are left undone and unfinished, they are just thoughtfully glued. Ampexian is not as lo-fi as Flying Lotus but on the tracks that involve a settled down groove and defined beat (take “Four Reels Collide” for instance), they badly remind me of The Avalanches sampling the 50s and 60s cinema on 2001’s timeless Since I Left You. But Ampexian is supposed to sound more futuristic. And frankly announcing the verdict for the whole disk, it surely does. Asides from the tunes that cross the time limit border, the rest of the work leaves you dry as you almost will not hear the same melodies twice. It might be the hardest part trying to define a genre for this record but let’s just assume it’s experimental electronic and forget about that.

AllMusic might have the best definition out of this album’s unique sound: “The flavor of a spinning radio dial has never been stronger, especially as Herren stirs in nods to more types of music, like glimpses of Japanese and Spanish forms that are ever so brief (naturally).” And there are some genuine Aphex Twin moments as well, but the beats are just not as randomly composed so it makes more sense I suppose. Oops! I'm suddenly rhyming!

[mp3] Prefuse 73 "DEC. Machine Funk All ERA's"
[mp3] Prefuse 73 "Violent Bathroom Exchange"

p.s. The album art badly brings me back to Halo (a.k.a Ped's xbox years).

What If I Need A Post With No Title?

Robin Pecknold turns up at BBC6 studios to perform a new Fleet Foxes tune called “Blue Spotted Nail”. Surprisingly he does not sound as content as he is on Fleet Foxes. I heard it on the radio, I couldn’t help but smile. It’s a short acoustic folk tune having far away similarities with the full band’s epic works. Robin is a bit weary I guess. But it’s live, so blame it on the weather.

[mp3] Fleet Foxes "Blue Spotted Nail (Live on BBC6)"

It’s the globe-wide download of the week as P. Diddy updates his Mohammad Ali decorated twitter page with a new song he collaborated with his fellow hip-hop mainstreamers. It’s a tribute to Michael Jackson. The Game, Chris Brown, Polow Da Don, Mario Winans, Usher and Boyz II Men accompany the big Puff. The song desperately fails to reach an MJ-Standard but as an all-star tribute, it’s just fine in a mediocre manner. Michael wouldn’t have been proud if he was alive, but he sure would have been grateful.

[mp3] Various Artists "Better On the Other Side (Tribute to MJ)"

The Armed Forces release their first power-pop single from their album The Rest Is Noise. According to the press, starting July 4, the band's forthcoming full-length, The Rest Is Noise, will be released track-by-track, one song per month, 12 months in a row. Of the release strategy, Brandon Jazz – ARMED FORCES mastermind, musical auteur, and the last person on the planet anyone wants to be stuck with on a long car ride with if he wants to hear himself think – explains: "There's a way things were in the ’60s with 45 rpm singles up until the concept album ruined everything, and it went back to being that way once people were able to download their favorite tracks instead of listening to a whole album, or an album written to fill in the blanks around 1 or 2 singles. Attention spans are increasingly short as it becomes increasingly easy for everyone to express themselves digitally." And in case you forgot what is Rest: the 'Rest' can be viewed as a musical term referring to a beat in which there is no music. The song has its Cure tendencies.

[mp3] The Armed Forces "Savages (Back Out In the Streets)"

p.s. Don’t mistake The Armed Forces with Armed Forces, the 80s metal junk band.

Farewell Michael

I was born in 1982, the year Thriller was released. I grew up with Michael Jackson. He was my childhood hero and I have always admired his irreplaceable talent as a musician. Today is a sad day! Just like the day Elvis died, or the day Bob Marley died or the day Kurt Cobain died. But I guess we just have to cope with the fact that his legacy lives on. I'm all out of words!

See my top 10 Michael songs

The Lampshades

Formed in early 2003 by Jaren Love in Pennsylvania and coming up with their third release, The Lampshades are a three piece indie rock/power pop band compared to the likes of Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. They have played with bands such as Deerhunter, Headlights, Love of Diagrams, Joe Lally (Fugazi), Travis Morrison Hellfighters, etc. They are also having a 7” released later this summer on Fan Death Records.

Having Chris Kibler on bass and Dane Adelman on drums, “Police Scanner” is a multi-section semi-punk tune you don’t want to miss and they also don’t mind sharing four songs out of their new album called The Landshades Are All Right (buy through CDBaby) with you. And if you check their webjoint, there’s even more.

So here’s the 7” offer. They may not have mentioned it but this one has its own Interpol-ish aura, props!

[mp3] The Lampshades "Police Scanner"

And if you’re a customer, here are some others coming straight from the new album:

[mp3] The Lampshades "Scotland"
[mp3] The Lampshades "Yenlo"
[mp3] The Lampshades "I'm So Different"
[mp3] The Lampshades "My Boyfriend's Band"

ZirGround: Interview w/ Sami Akbari

Sami Akbari, the gifted NYC resident singer/songwriter plays pop as a breath of fresh air after a long hard working day. She’s currently promoting her new EP called Somebody Else’s Stranger which was selected as a Best Buy's Indie Pick of the Week, and has been described as, "moody pop songs that vibe Dido, Tori Amos and Fiona Apple," by the highly regarded Village Voice as well as "a shimmering alt-pop coup. A complex palette of sounds [that create] the perfect backdrop to showcase her smooth, sultry vocals. These well-crafted, lovingly produced songs successfully bridge several genres," by Jessi Robertson of New York City's Local Correspondents and the blog, "Are You Drawing Pretty Things".



So, the next thing we did was a friendly short interview with Sami. Without further talk, this was how it turned out.

TW: Hit us with your state on today's Iranian pop/rock music. Does it have a place out there in 5 years time?
SA: To be honest, living in the U.S., I don't know much about Iranian pop music, but I was over there in October and my cousins are friends with and big fans of this band called 127. I've listened to them and think they are pretty awesome. I also know that they have toured in the U.S. and seem to be doing really well. I think that it definitely has a place out there in 5 years. If everything goes well in Iran, I think the world will get to hear more and more from them. I also grew up listening to Googoosh who was actually a family friend. She has huge success around the world. If she can do it, I don't see why other Iranian bands can't.

TW: Is it the simplicity of piano-driven pop that moves you or have you chosen it as an easier approach to a wider audience?
SA: When I write songs I let the music guide me to the lyrics. So sometimes I'll be inspired by the piano, sometimes the guitar, and sometimes a micro-korg synthesizer. All kinds of different sounds inspire me and my music. A simple song on the piano or guitar, or any instrument can be totally powerful to audiences, but I don't ever really write songs thinking about who it's going to effect or how many people it's going to effect. When I write a song and I feel strongly about it, and I personally really like it, I know that others will connect with it as well.

TW: In "Somebody Else's Stranger" you discuss a need to prove yourself and you're apparently not happy with that. Is this "You" someone special or it could be a pedestrian who shares a moment with you on the street.
SA: "Somebody Else's Stranger" was written about someone in particular but could be a few people that I have dated over the past few years. It's about how strange it is how you can feel so close to someone, have everything fall apart and then some time later feel like you don't even know that person anymore. You're a stranger to that person now, and they to you. Put simply, it's about disappointments with different relationships. However, I would like to think that my songs mean different things to whoever the listener may be and if they relate to it by thinking that the "you" in the song is a pedestrian they share a moment with on the street, then that is what the song is about and means to them.

TW: How are the live shows going?
SA: The live shows are going through some changes right now! For the first time in over a year and a half I don't have a band so it's been an interesting challenge to create a show that is still as entertaining to the audience with just me playing. I was definitely a bit nervous about it at first but I have been really enjoying playing by myself and coming up with different ideas to keep things interesting. For example, this Saturday, June 20th [three days before this post], I have a show at The Living Room in NYC at 8 pm, and it's a bigger room that usually caters to bands, so I decided to invite a few of my friends who are also musicians to come join me for different songs, some my own, some covers. I need to keep having new things during shows because if I don't, it gets boring, and nobody wants to go to a boring performance. I'm not satisfied unless I know that my performance is thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end and all the little parts in between. That's why my shows are part sad love songs, part stand up comedy. You've gotta keep it fresh!

TW: How have you decided to choose English as your musical language?
SA: This one is easy! I was born and raised in the U.S. and still live here. My Farsi is ok. I thought I was at least fluent with understanding it until I went there in October and so much was going in one ear and out the other. My father speaks to me in Farsi and I understand him, but I think it's because he speaks a lot slower than most Iranians! :) So using English as my musical language was a no brainer. I would, however, love to do a cover of a Googoosh song at some point. Maybe "Gole goldoon". I'm sure I spelled that wrong!

TW: Share three of your favorite post-millennium albums with us.
SA: Three of my favorite post millennium albums? That's a tough one! Let me think . . . it's hard to narrow it down to three but I will try!

In no particular order . . .
1. Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird and The Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005)

2. Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (2005)

3. Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)

Links:
Sami Akbari Official
Sami Akbari on MySpace
Sami Akbari on Facebook
Sami Akbari on Pure Volume