Music War!

Song of the Day: May 26, 2012

Killer Mike: “Jo-Jo’s Chillin’”

In a surprise entry for my album of year (so far), Killer Mike’s “RAP Music” feels like a little bit of a throwback, when storytelling was more important than coming up with multiple ways to describe your watch collection or your imaginary mansions. El-P (whose own awesome  highly anticipated, um, LP, has just come out) produced all the songs, and the combination of his beats with Mike’s Southern drawl, is a great and unexpected combination. The best comparison I’ve read relates it to when Bomb Squad flew out West to produce Cube’s “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted”—two great tastes that taste great together. 

Mike is a political and engaging social commentator, and tracks like “Ronald Reagan” about the beginning of the war of drugs and it’s consequences on black youth; or “Don’t Die”, talking about crooked cops are more indicative of the album as a whole. But today’s post, is just good, fun, clever storytelling. (mize)

Song of the Day: May 24, 2012

Dee Dee Ramone, “I Am Seeing UFO’s”

If it were possible to make a Ramones joke that they hadn’t already done better in earnest it might sound like this: Didja hear about the good Dee Dee solo song?  Joey sang on it.

Happy belated birthday, Joey. (J-Rock)

Song of the Day: May 21, 2012

POND: Elegant Design

‘All I’m trying to do is find some elegant design’

Pond is pretty much Tame Impala switching up instruments and songwriting duties. However, with this band their psychedelic outlook gazes to the past rather than the future. Elegant Design is another tune I can’t get enough of. Listen, repeat. Listen, repeat. Listen, repeat. etc. etc. etc. (CB).

Song of the Day: May 18, 2012

Sleep: “Dopesmoker”

In 1996, newly signed to a major label, a trio of waste-oids in San Jose, came together to record what would be perhaps the pinnacle of sludgy stoner metal. What Sleep finally delivered to London/MCA records nearly a year later was never released. Why not, you might ask? Maybe the fact that it was a single 63 minute track that the band was unwilling to edit for radio or video? Maybe it was because the track was called “Dopesmoker”? Maybe it was because it was about a mythical race of nomadic desert bong-rippers called the ‘Weedians’? Hard to tell. It was eventually released on Tee Pee in 2000 or so, but the great Southern Lord records have just remastered and remixed it and it sounds better than ever. The above video is from Tee Pee which sounds fine but click over to the Music War Spotify feed for the better mix. Also the new cover is just about the coolest thing ever and sums up the Weedians and Sleep for that matter better than any stupid blog post ever could. (mize)

Song of the Day: May 16, 2012

Kindness, “Swingin’ Party”

The knee-jerk reaction here is abject horror that someone would attempt a downtempo Replacements cover, but once your inner college radio music director circa 1987 stops gagging all over his Volcano Suns LPs you slowly yield to the fact that most of Westerberg’s songs from this period exist on a rarified plane where their charms can be sustained across both blackout drunk bar rock and, say, painfully hip Moshi Moshi cold/synth/whateverthefuck-wave with more than a little mascara. (J-Rock)

Flats - “Never Again”

Song of the Day, May 13, 2012

The best ripoff of eighties punk and hardcore you will hear today.

First heard this band as they were referenced as sounding like 80’s skateboard video music. Weird trivia: only recently (like, right now) found out that they their lead singer Daniel McGee aka Daniel Devine, is the son of a Creation Records founder Alan McGee. Unfortunately, the band is on hiatus while Daniel is serving a drug addiction sentence / rehabilitation at Pentonville Prison, London. (witz)

SONG OF THE DAY: May 10, 2012

PULLED APART BY HORSES: Bromance Ain’t Dead

‘They say you can do anything with four heads’

OK Mize, rawk it is. PABH new record ‘Tough Love’ will be on my Top 10 of 2012 list. I must see this band live again. Fierce. Also, check out the cool video for first single V.E.N.O.M.  (CB)

Song of the Day: May 9, 2012

S*M*A*S*H: “Real Surreal”

Okay, enough of this sad sack shit, lets get back to the rawk. (mize)

annnnnnnnnnnd DROP!

“I once was lost but now I’m found

The music washes over and you’re one with the sound”

Sleep well, Adam Yauch

aka MCA

aka MC Adam

aka King of the Ave

aka Nathaniel Hornblower

aka Leroy

aka The High Plains Drifter

aka The Most Jacksonest B-boy

namaste, Music War!

“Hey Jane” - Spiritualized

Song of the Day, May 3 2012

The official video for the first single off Spiritualized new record is entirely too long and NSFW-ish for me to post here, but feel free to peruse on your own time.

I can start blathering about the history of Jason Pierce, Spacemen 3, etc, but since I’m preaching to the converted I’ll spare you a string of adjectives. “Sweet Heart, Sweet Light”, where this comes from, might be one of the best albums of the year - it’s certainly Spiritualized’s best since “Let it Come Down”. Enjoy. (Witz)

SONG OF THE DAY: May 1, 2012

SILVERSUN PICKUPS: Lazy Eye (Jason Bentley Remix)

‘That’s why I said I relate, I said we relate, it’s so fun to relate’

I’m back after an brief hiatus while off to Coachella. Last year I came back with some new favorite bands (see Tame Impala and The Foals), this year, not so much, but still a blast. Highlights: Arctic Monkeys (always at the top of their game), Black Lips (with Biggie Smalls faux-hologram guest spot), Kasabian (witz it right, they killed it with Fire), Pulp (nostalgia) and Refused (punk!). This Friday, I’m checking out Silversun Pickups here in the OC. Can’t wait to hear their new tunes, but really hoping for this track off their debut album Caravan. Love this Jason Bentley remix. (CB).

Song of the Day: April 25, 2012

Daughn Gibson: “Tiffany Lou”

“James Blake with a cowboy hat” or”Johnny Cash inspired electronica” sounds terrible on paper, doesn’t it? And yet…..some how it works. Daughn Gibson has one of those tumbleweed baritones you just don’t hear anymore in country music anymore. (Especially when lowest common denominator bullshit like this tops the country charts). 

This track might actually be the least Cash-like on the album, but I really like the glitchy stutters on the vocal track and the pretty final third…Check out the track “Dandelions” though and you’ll think Rick Rubin exhumed the Man in Black (or maybe George Jones?) for another round of American Recordings. Gibson’s new record “All Hell” is fun, check it out. (mize)