BE YOUR OWN PET BREAK UP Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! According to varioussources and the band’s own website, Cannibal Cheerleader favorite Be Your Own Pet are calling it quits! This comes after some admittedly rocky times in the band’s existence, what with the cancellation of the group’s Warped Tour dates to the censoring of three tracks off their sophomore LP Get Awkward (which of course were only released in the US later on the EPGet Damaged). This shocking announcement from the band reads:
“To all of our fans,
We are sad to bring you the news that our upcoming shows in the UK (dates below) are going to be our last as a band. We thank you for all your love and support these past few years – its been a blast but the time has come for the 4 of us to go our separate ways.”
Incredible stuff it seems and unbelievably disappointing. However, we here at Cannibal Cheerleader count ourselves as lucky because we were able to experience and celebrate the band live multiple times. In celebration of this fantastic band we bring you our top five favorite BYOP tracks of all time (read below) and a special essay at the bottom of this update chronicling the meteoric rise of this unbelievable punk act. Godspeed you kids, we know you’ll pop up soon in some other form.
5. Be Your Own Pet – “Becky” 4. Be Your Own Pet – “October, First Account” 3. Be Your Own Pet – “Black Hole” 2. Be Your Own Pet – “Hillmont Avenue” 1. Be Your Own Pet – “Girls on TV” ******************************************************************** THE VIVIAN GIRLS PREP NEW SINGLE With a tear in our eye we nonetheless forge ahead with other music news, as one of our favorite new acts the Vivian Girls have announced their first single from their self-titled debut, “Where Do You Run To”, which combines all the things we love about these ladies – their girl-group vocal trade-offs, their ramshackle and layered guitarwork, and their surfer-chic groovy vibe. Check it out below and tell us what you think!
The Vivian Girls – “Where Do You Run To” ******************************************************************** NEW BAND CHEER: THE GRATES We’ve known about the Grates for a few years now, ever since they popped onto the radar with their first LP Gravity Won’t Get You High. However, they’ve recently exploded to the forefront with their newest release Teeth Lost, Hearts Won, and it takes the patented Grates sound and pushes it into swirly new territory. The group, a trio from Australia, essentially fills the void left empty by no new Yeah Yeah Yeahs releases, what with their female lead singer, and combo guitarist and drummer rounding out the band. However, lead singer Patience Hodgson brings a unique vocal bratiness to the table and the instrumentation tends to lean towards a pop sensibility with handclaps and shout-answer choruses in place of arty guitar breakdowns. If the YYYs are rip-snarl, the Grates are kiss-backstab: just a little bit of popster-sweetness with a bloody rock tip. Here are some tracks to feed your hunger.
The Grates – “Burn Bridges” The Grates – “Storms and Fevers” ******************************************************************** TERROR THURSDAY: PRISON Oh ViggoMortensen, you steal our hearts everytime. For lack of a better description, this week’s Terror Thursday feature of Prison was horribly satisfying. Featuring several solid barbed-wire kills, enough gore to make the theater floor sticky, and our favorite hobbit-helper in his first ever starring role, Prison delivers on its simple premise and easily grabs four out of five bloody pon-poms from us. Go rent it! ******************************************************************** BE YOUR OWN PET ESSAY Here’s our special Be Your Own Pet essay written specifically for our Cannibal Cheerleader zine (out next week all around Austin!). We were gonna make it zine exclusive but given today’s sad BYOP developments we’re releasing it now. Comment people and enjoy!
While doubtless may be punk’s indelible spirit of cavalier attitudes and ramshackle musicality, pinning down the exactitudes and definitions of the genre in an admittedly gray area like rock music can at best be described as difficult given the myriad of styles present in the modern scene. Punk, for better or for worse, has been mixed, misshapen, turned, torn, revitalized, revived, and reborn innumerable times under an infinite number of monikers, effectively declaring the word, in its original use, null and void. However, let it be known Nashville’s Be your Own Pet are punk rock. Not pop-punk, not emo, not post-punk, or punk-retro, or what have you. Be Your Own Pet are Buzzcocks punk rock, Sex Pistols punk rock, phoenix from the ashes of punk rock, so punk rock as to remind us what we were missing that whole time punk was trying to change it up, not realizing it had a good thing the whole time. Fronted by spazztasticJemina Pearl and populated by a ragtag band of high-school-aged losers and vagrants, Be Your Own Pet and their library of fuzzy, fury-filled tracks fit just as well into the aesthetic of ’77 as any of the best bands from that era, and their penchant for artistic reference and an intelligently formed sound draw strong correlations to the Situationist movement that inspired the likes of Malcolm McClarren in punk’s heyday. The poem “Kubla Khan” speaks to the unfettered beauty of the written word, with it alliterative prose and inspiring language, and so it seems fitting that Be Your Own Pet would title the first song on their first album, “Thresher’s Flail”, after a line in the masterwork, given the foursome’s adherence to punk inspiration and naked rock ambition. Perhaps most refreshing about the group is its talent for making an admittedly basic set of riffs and hooks sound so unbelievably original and creative, speaking to both the watered-down weakness of modern punk and the firm musical foundation that the punk genre is built upon. Be Your Own Pet have seemingly managed to recapture the essence of what made punk great in the first place, and they’ve done so without sounding derivative or unoriginal but instead blazing forth with a newfound sound that utilizes rudimentary instrumentation, begets virtuosity, and replaces it with energy and a powerful delivery. The earliest of punk groups were populated by artists and poets, art school dropouts and UK record store owners. This Nashville foursome, heirs to families well-entrenched in their local independent music scene and blessed with more smarts than guitar-licks, began the Be Your Own Pet odyssey with some limited 7’’s, such as the excellent Damn Damn Leash before they landed in the lap of one Thurston Moore, who was quick to identify their youthful exhuberance as a sign of artistic integrity. With the release of Be Your Own Pet, the group’s self-title debut, press began to take notice, most notably with the age of the performers, all under 21 and most still in high-school, and the quality of music they’d amassed in their short lives. Strangely it might seem that to be young is a detriment when it comes to creativity, that somehow the more information taken in the more creative the output. However, there still remains much to be said about he influence of less influence, how a band might come to be in a bubble, how the youthful naiveté of a band like Be Your Own Pet might translate into a wildly creative force, given their unspoiled psyches. America’s culture seems obsessed with disenfranchising one of their most important and intelligent assets, that of men and women under the age of 18 or 21, believing that arbitrary numbers determine level of maturity or capability in today’s modern world. Kids fight the wars, make the changes, clean up the shit, so it would only make sense that the most outspoken and unhinged art forms come from the youth as well, and Be Your Own Pet is a prime example of this, culminating in their sophomore album Get Awkward, a seeming concept album about the reality of high school life and the mixture of maturity and madness in which adolescents live. With tracks bouncing between the subjects of knifing your best friend to blowing your brains out in a rage, Get Awkward remains a spectacular testament to the violence of youth, all the while celebrating the silliness of the mundane and the humdrum, obsessing over a breakup in “Creepy Crawl” and cheating on a lover in “Twisted Nerve”. However the crowning achievement of Get Awkward might just be the track “Food Fight” which summates the BYOP world perfectly, a combination of innocent youthful expression, violent outburst, and Situationist-referencing social commentary. The boredom and resulting expression of a nation’s young is reflective of a world of convenience become a world of sameness, and the signal of the food fight, a much storied and even cliche action, becomes a tirade against the norm in the hands of Be Your Own Pet. BYOP break convention at every turn, whether it be with rhyming structure, song length, lyrical content, or even stage presence. The simplicity in which the Nashville foursome approach their music comes across as a furious whirlwind of rawness in live form, with guitars crunching out wall-of-sound, atonal chunks of power over the heads of an astonished and often confused audience. Indeed, this often marks BYOP shows, a level of nervousness and tepidness in an otherwise engaged audience, many of whom seem shocked at the level of intensity presented before them. The approved ‘metal-head’ signals, the ‘now would be okay to mosh’ signs are not present but the music feels fast and hard. The crowd seems pretty evenly mixed in terms of sex and race and the jock machismo of modern punk bands seems mysteriously absent, replaced by hipster hesitation. Therefore, at a Be your Own pt show one can expect to be filled with an unquenchable thirst to spaz about as peers all around refuse to move for fear of being the only one to have read the signals of the moment wrong. Clearly though Jemina Pearl and co. delight in their audiences’ surprise, playing to their shocked sentiments with vomiting on stage and guitar juggling antics. The level of disconnect between audience and band reflects the forward-thinking musicality of BYOP as well as the regressive state of modern punk music. This isn’t packaged punk, punk rock made by the companies buying and selling rebellion, this is out and out revolution in simple form. Not revolution with guns and knives and blood and anarchy, but loud guitars and frenetic shrieks. BYOP stand atop a precipice of punk and are at the helm of a zeitgeist in the musical movement, championing a real return to form long since promised but rarely delivered upon, and they’ve done so by returning to the ethos of original punk while refusing to cheaply mimic their sound. In the battle against corporate rock, waging war on Warped, Be Your Own Pet lead the charge and we here at Cannibal Cheerleader are throwing all of weight behind them.
Our old pal Annie Hardy of our favorite shoegazey solo-act Giant Drag has been staying busy, what with recording her new Swan Song EP and all (by the way check out the new version of “Swan Song” up on the band’s Myspace, it’s absolutely haunting and gorgeous). Recently Annie
hooked up with Joe from the Icarus Line to perform a DJ set under the moniker Mister and Misses Howl, which will hopefully speak to more collaborations between the two bands soon.
Additionally Giant Drag have added their new song “Stuff to Live For” to a short film by photographer Bella Howard which you can check out at this website. We’re waiting with bated
breath for Annie’s new EP, so remember to buy stuff from her Ebay Store so she has the money to put it out already!
Local chamber-poppers Southern Drama are playing the Beauty Bar here in the ATX Monday July 21st with fellow awesome Austinites Death Is Not A Joyride. Definitely go and check these ladies out, their music is killer! Check out this music video for a taste of their tracks.
Speaking of killer, last night’s Terror Thursday featured one of the most gruesome and satisfying flicks to date: Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn is an old fashioned monster movie gorefest, complete with slimy, non-CGI creatures, decapitations, face-ripping,
explosions, and chewed-up grandmothers. Near perfection in my book, definitely deserving of four and a half out of five bloody pon-poms. Check out this unbelievably cool trailer if you don’t believe the hype about this movie – go rent it NOW. ******************************************************************** VIVIAN GIRLS REVEAL NEW 7″
We can’t seem to get enough of the infectious Vivian Girls here at Cannibal Cheerleader, and with good reason as their jangly, whispery rock is as unique as it is listenable. The Girls have put up a new track entitled “I Can’t Stay” up on their Myspace, and it’s not on the streets until September on vinyl so this is the last bone we’re being thrown for a while. Also their sold out self-titled debut is getting a re-release in the fall, good news for those of us who didn’t hear about these ladies until too late! Here’s a jam to spin this weekend.
FRIGHTENED RABBIT/OXFORD COLLAPSE IN AUSTIN Last night at Mohawk here in Austin audiences were treated to the indie-rock equivalent of the 0ne-two punch, with Scottish crooners Frightened Rabbit teaming up with poppy-punksters Oxford Collapse for an evening of scorching numbers, all played with such effortlessness the boys in the bands made it look easy. Oxford Collapse opened and by the time lead guitarist Michael Pace’s amp blew out in mid-song we knew we were in for a good set. Playing loose and cavalier the trio bounced around the stage with an energy that even got the much-maligned Austin hipster crowd to shake their hips. Frightened Rabbit’s music, while definitely more reserved, nonetheless sounded equally bombastic with the band ripping through tracks from their newest LP the Midnight Organ Fight with ease. Tracks like “The Modern Leper” and Cannibal Cheerleader favorite “The Twist” got us to our feet in no time flat, and frontman Scott Hutchison sings each tune with the grit and fervor of a man holding back years of tears with each word. Both bands provided for an emotional experience that won’t soon be forgotten here in Austin. Great double bill and kudos to OC, FR, and especially Mohawk. Here are some more pics from last night:
Frightened Rabbit Oxford Collapse ******************************************************************** NEW STARS “BITCHES IN TOKYO” VIDEO One of our favorite releases of last year (as you can read from our first post ever) was Stars‘ In Our Bedroom After the War. It combined our love of well-honed and perfectly executed pop music with our penchant for subversive politics, all wrapped up with a little bit of rock and roll to boot. One of the best songs from that album was undeniably “Bitches In Tokyo” so it’s awesome to see that even a year after the album was released we have the band’s new video for this standout track. Check it out below and be sure and pick up the entire Stars’ discography (if you like music that is). Bitches In Tokyo ******************************************************************** NEW BAND CHEER – PONYTAIL We’ve heard the rumblings about Baltimore’s Ponytail for a while now. From their recent Pitchfork review all the way back to mixtapes circling the Internet from radio stations in Maryland. But it wasn’t until we heard the band’s newest LP Ice Cream Spiritual, a bricolage of pop-punkery and noise-rock mashed into a rainbow cataclysm of sound and fury, that we decided to throw our full weight behind this great act. Truth be told Ponytail is one of our favorite new bands of the year bar-none and we’ll be impressed to see what they’ve got in store as the year progresses. Word on the street is they’re one of the best live acts around so here’s hoping they swing through Austin! MP3s are sadly still down but here’s a video to tide you over and introduce you to their fantastic sound. ******************************************************************** TERROR THURSDAY – CREEPERS One of the weirdest Terror Thursdays yet, Dario Argento’s Creepers (the American edit of Phenomena) stars Jennifer Connelly as the new girl in an all-female boarding school when murder mysteriously star occurring. Seemingly missing massive chunks of the plot due to perhaps a poor quality film print or bad editing (perhaps Phenomena is more complete?) the film nonetheless impresses with the Italian master’s signature artful kills and enough disgusting gore (pool of body parts and maggots anyone?) to impress even the most jaded horror fans. I give this one 3 out of 4 bloody pon-poms though it might get more when I rent the full version of the film. Look for the review in the future!
That’s it for this week folks! Hopefully mp3s will be back next week! Any comments?
NEW MY MORNING JACKET VIDEOS Our favorite country-fried rockers My Morning Jacket were on Conan last night and their performance of “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream (Pt. 2)” rang to high heavens. We also have a video here of MMJ at Bonnaroo with Kirk Hammett from Metallica, so check it folks!
My Morning Jacket on Conan
My Morning Jacket meets Metallica
MMJ = Fucking Metal. ******************************************************************** NEW HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR VIDEOGod’s gift to disco-lovers everywhere, Hercules and Love Affair have released a video for their single “You Belong” off their self-titled debut. Check it peoples! You Belong
******************************************************************** TERROR THURSDAY – EATEN ALIVE Terror Thursday is back at Cannibal Cheerleader! This week’s screen-gem is from the twisted brain of Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s overseer Tobe Hooper. Eaten Alive is the story of an insane hotel owner and his penchant for murdering his tenants and feeding them to his pet crocodile. Ridiculously bizarre acting styles by all involved in the film and enough gore and guts to keep the audience on their toes. Definitely a weird one, but deserving of four out of five bloody pon-poms nonetheless. ******************************************************************** FEED THE WIKILast off today we have a funny little phenom – seems as if people on Wikipedia are trying to decipher all the samples from Girl Talk’s new mashup Feed the Animals. From the looks of it seems like they’re being pretty successful so far, but does anyone know what they’re missing? Comment and let me know! See everyone next week!
It’s no surprise that Dallas, Texas’ Beach House’s second LP Devotion which came out at the beginning of the year still receives spins on a regular basis here at the Cannibal Cheerleader headquarters. A collection of some of the best dream-pop in ages, Beach House is really coming into their own and Devotion remains one of our favorite releases of the year.
Recently the band traveled through Norway by train and were apparently asked by a Norwegian film crew if they would write a song impromptu for the trip. What the film crew captured was an inspired, transcendent sing-a-long worthy of inclusion on their next, sure to be excellent LP. Check it out, straight from Stereogum: Stereogum comes this report of a video done by a Norwegian film crew following the band as they rode a train through the country. What follows is a transcendent little singalong that you can check here: Beach House – “Wedding Bell” (from the Devotion LP)
******************************************************************** NEW BAND CHEER – THE ROLLER
Austin, Texas’ own black-metal act The Roller have just come onto the Cannibal Cheerleader radar and we’re sorry we didn’t know about these guys earlier. With a dirgey, brutal delivery and instrumental experimentalism both reminiscent of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room, true Norwegian darkness has finally landed in Texas. Check out this tune and swing by their Myspace.
******************************************************************** THE HORROR, THE HORROR – THE STRANGERS
Here’s a new feature for Cannibal Cheerleader – The Horror, The Horror, where we preview new horror movies coming out. The inaugural flick is The Strangers, starring Liv Tyler, seems like a blast from a suspenseful past. Check the trailer.
Promises to have a low body-count but will undoubtedly have some wicked scares to make up for it. Reminiscent of my favorite movie of ‘08 thus far, Funny Games, in that it seems obsessed with how Americans no longer feel safe in their own homes, trapped in the prison of suburbia. On Monday I’ll post up a review! Sorry to have skipped Terror Thursday for the past few weeks, and sorry for the small update yesterday. Comment folks and see you next week!
Remember when we told you earlier in the week that there was no news on that 3-song EP featuring the tracks that were left off the US version of Be Your Own Pet’s sophomore LP Get Awkward because of a record label dispute? Well turns out there IS news and it’s in the form of Get Damaged, an EP (or two 7″ records) that feature all three missing songs (”Becky”, “Blow Your Mind”, “Black Hole”). The EP is due out June 3rd (smokes that’s soon!). Read here for all the details and check out that completely rad cover up there! Here’s an obscure BYOP track as well for the newly converted.
******************************************************************** NEW BORIS MUSIC VIDEO – “STATEMENT”
Here’s the new Boris music video for their single “Statement” off of the excellent Smile LP. Remember, these guys are playing Saturday June 28th at the Mohawk right here in Austin. You know Cannibal Cheerleader will be there, sporting our rad Boris hoodies!
******************************************************************** GUESS WHOSE BIRTHDAY IT IS?
It’s John B.’s! Thanks to everyone for reading my blog the past few months – the best kind of birthday present is having people enjoy your work. If you know me and live in Austin, hit me up – we’re having a pool party before we hit up Terror Thursday tomorrow. See you there!
With a playlist cut mainly from their excellent sophomore LP Get Awkward, Nashville’s Be Your Own Pet ripped Austin a new one last night at Stubb’s. Their wiry punk instrumentation took great liberties with the venue’s sound system, morphing their jangly high-school vignettes into wall-of-sound monsters of terror and woe. The last time I saw these guys was in 2006 at Emo’s here in Austin and while the crowds have certainly gotten bigger the band’s sound has kept up in one way – getting louder. Check out more pictures below. Also check out openers the Switches and the Virgins (both great bands). In an act of protest and in the name of preserving good music everywhere, I left the venue before headliners the terrible She Wants Revenge took the stage. The Virgins
******************************************************************** DID YOU SURVIVE THE AUSTIN STORM?
Check out the view from my apartment complex! If you were in Austin on Thursday night this is what you woke up to, if you didn’t wake up due to the torrential hail and wind.
This news tidbit is actually here to mark a change in the blog’s structure. For too long has this blog tried to be a national act when instead Cannibal Cheerleader should be concentrating on what it does best: reporting on the happenings of Austin, the live music capital of the world. From now on most if not all stories about bands will have some sort of Austin tie-in if they are to be reported here. I want this to be the official blog of Austin! ******************************************************************** LADYTRON – “GHOSTS” VIDEO
Here’s the video from Velocifero standout “Ghosts” from electro-poppers Ladytron, who will be making a jaunt through Austin Friday June 6th. You know we’ll be there with spurs on.
******************************************************************** TERROR THURSDAY – DERANGED
This week’s movie at Terror Thursday was a gorey doozey, combining sick humor with even sicker violence. Skinning girls, vomiting blood, bashing heads in, digging up the dead, Deranged pretty much ruled. Weird beyond imagination this was one of the few Terror Thursdays that was genuinely unsettling for me. Definitely deserving of four out of five bloody pon-poms.
******************************************************************** NEW BAND CHEER – PINK NASTY In keep with our efforts to keep the blog local, here’s a gal we haven’t genuinely reported on yet who nonetheless rocks my socks off – Pink Nasty. A combination of singer-songwriter a-la Cat Power with a lo-fi, rocker grrrl twang, all wrapped up in an attitude and pop sensibility that’s both defiant and listenable. You know we’ll be hitting up her show this Saturday at Mohawk, but for a taste, check out this track from her excellent LP Mold the Gold.
I spent much of this week looking for new and different bands, all the while considering putting them up on this site. Coming up empty I began to get discouraged. “Will anyone even read this post? Will people even care what new artist I put up? Does anyone read Cannibal Cheerleader?” I thought to myself. Through this depressing haze came the low, Pacific-Northwest strum of an old friend, Seattle’s long dead legends Carissa’s Wierd.
Carissa’s Wierd is a reminder of why I love music, why I love writing about music, and why I’m doing what I’m doing. When I was a lonely indie kid growing up in small town Texas poking around Limewire looking for friends to filter through the expensive headphones I bought to keep the world out I found the lonely keyboard clinks and male-female change-off vocals of Carissa’s Wierd. The perfect indie-rock group, with modernist, soulful leanings, obscure instrumentation, and heartfelt emotion to spare. Since their breakup members of the group have gone on to found great but lesser groups (Band of Horses, Jenn Ghetto’s solo project S) and their demise saddened many.
Last night I found the band’s Myspace, or not really the band’s per say, but a fan page featuring their songs created by “a Colorado boy with nothing better to do with his time”. The page itself is not unlike the band itself. A seemingly thrown-together, simplistic piece with nonetheless a great depth of emotion and caring for its subject manner. The picture up there is the guy’s choice for the profile picture on the Myspace and it seems fitting for their sound. Under the ‘Sounds Like” section the Colorado boy writes “Punk kids grown up and gone sad.” Nothing could be more apt. Check them out if you like this crazy thing we call music. Here’s a live video by them.
******************************************************************** TERROR THURSDAY – ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH
To end the week off I’ll post about to of my favorite things: My Morning Jacket and Austin. Check out this Google video version of their Austin City Limits performance. See you next week and please comment if you like what you see!
Although Kanye West’s “Glow in the Dark” tour is purported to be probably the biggest, most earth-shaking tour of 2008, I’ve yet to see any pictures of the shows on any blogs. Here’s a few my friend Taylor Y. snapped at West’s show at the Frank Erwin Center last night! While I sadly couldn’t attend I heard the show definitely lived up to West’s reputation. The pictures show a massive screen, a wild array of lights, and a line of DJs in front of the stage. Looks like quite the production, check it out. ******************************************************************** TIMES NEW VIKING COMING TO AUSTIN
Our favorite lo-fi fuzzers Times New Viking are heading to Austin on their summer track so says this article. Definitely check out this band and their newest release Rip It Off. You’ll be reminded why listening to albums on cassette tapes was so much damn fun. ******************************************************************** TERROR THURSDAY: THE BEAST WITHIN
This week’s Terror Thursday movie The Beast Within at the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin was a definite improvement over last week’s. The sheer amount of gore and grossness in the movie was more than enough to ratchet it up my nerdy-horror film scale. However, the film also features not just one but two creature rapes. That’s right. Raped. By a monster. Nice. Because of this I have to give The Beast Within four out of five bloody pon-poms. It would be five based on grossness and cool-effects/acting/direction/gore alone, but if you took a date to this movie you’ll never speak with her again. Seriously though, check out the trailer below and you’ll still only get a hint of the grossness in this movie. It really takes the time to show the agonizing details of person to monster transformation, yikes!
PS. Yes I did stay during the last thirty minutes and yes, it was nasty. ******************************************************************** VIDEO FOR THE WEEKEND: DYNAMITE BOY Ending the week here’s another video I did for Austin legends Dynamite Boy. Here’s “Guide to Living Dead”, the first song off the band’s new bsides album Time Flies. Check it.
Leave some “feedback” folks over the weekend! Seeya Monday!
Japanese metal gods Boris are set to tour the US again this summer, riding the wave of their awesome (if bizarre) new LP Smile. Check out the dates here and notice that they’ll be coming to Mohawk here in Austin June 28th. You know we’ll be there. ******************************************************************** EVIL URGES LEAKS
It’s official, My Morning Jacket’s latest LP Evil Urges is on the Internet in its entirety. So how is it? The best description I can give is imagine attending the Church of Jim James and him playing the character of an eccentric Baptist preacher wailing to the ceiling. Except he’s evil. VERY evil. I am reminded of the Flaming Lips is they were to take on R&B and soul music. This album’s going to be contentious but let me be one of the first to say this album rules, it’s a natural progression from Z, and no one can touch Jim James. Five out of five bloody pon-poms. ******************************************************************** TERROR THURSDAY: ONE DARK NIGHT
Yet another Terror Thursday this week and it was the hilarious One Dark Night (comes with like fifty different titles there according to IMDB, yikes). You can definitely tell this was made during the height of 80s fashion and despite its PG rating it had some pretty serious gore going on with the walking dead. Not really gorey enough though at parts and groan-inducing with its bad dialogue/acting through most of the movie. Overall, two out of five bloody pon-poms. Maybe worth the rental if they don’t have The Car from last week! ******************************************************************** HEARTSREVOLUTION SWITCHBLADE EP OUT NOW
Our last ‘cheered band’, Heartsrevolution, is finally releasing their Switchblade EP and check out how cool that thing looks up there. Pick up a copy right now at the band’s Myspace. This EP includes one of my favorite tracks of the year “Wolves and Libertines” so give it a whirl if you’re into the Crystal Castles-like artists we’re always talking about here. ******************************************************************** NEW BAND CHEER: TINY VIPERS
While not necessarily ‘new’, I was reminded of Seattle female singer-songwriter Tiny Vipers by my friend Michael of Balmorhea recently and just how awesome she is. Mike recommends everyone view this YouTube video that features Vipers on the Burn to Shine DVD collection. Check it out and swing by her Myspace for more info.
Sorry about the sporadic updates this week. What with Internet troubles it’s hard to find the solution at 5 in the morning. Next week will be more on time though. Hope everyone has a good weekend and stay tuned for Cruiserweight and Dynamite Boy videos next week!
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
With a tear in our eye we nonetheless forge ahead with other music news, as one of our favorite new acts the Vivian Girls have announced their first single from their self-titled debut, “Where Do You Run To”, which combines all the things we love about these ladies – their girl-group vocal trade-offs, their ramshackle and layered guitarwork, and their surfer-chic groovy vibe. Check it out below and tell us what you think!
We’ve known about the Grates for a few years now, ever since they popped onto the radar with their first LP Gravity Won’t Get You High. However, they’ve recently exploded to the forefront with their newest release Teeth Lost, Hearts Won, and it takes the patented Grates sound and pushes it into swirly new territory. The group, a trio from Australia, essentially fills the void left empty by no new Yeah Yeah Yeahs releases, what with their female lead singer, and combo guitarist and drummer rounding out the band. However, lead singer Patience Hodgson brings a unique vocal bratiness to the table and the instrumentation tends to lean towards a pop sensibility with handclaps and shout-answer choruses in place of arty guitar breakdowns. If the YYYs are rip-snarl, the Grates are kiss-backstab: just a little bit of popster-sweetness with a bloody rock tip. Here are some tracks to feed your hunger.
Oh Viggo Mortensen, you steal our hearts everytime. For lack of a better description, this week’s Terror Thursday feature of Prison was horribly satisfying. Featuring several solid barbed-wire kills, enough gore to make the theater floor sticky, and our favorite hobbit-helper in his first ever starring role, Prison delivers on its simple premise and easily grabs four out of five bloody pon-poms from us. Go rent it!
Here’s our special Be Your Own Pet essay written specifically for our Cannibal Cheerleader zine (out next week all around Austin!). We were gonna make it zine exclusive but given today’s sad BYOP developments we’re releasing it now. Comment people and enjoy!
