What’s most striking about My Dear One (Fanatic Records) is the leaps and bounds by which the band has grown since their 2008 debut, The Red Sea. On the latest album, The Shondes have found an identity that transcends labels; instead of “queer,pro-Palestinian punk rock“, they are emerging as fine critics of the post-Riot Grrrl era. On My Dear One, the personal is the political and vice-versa. There is no trace of sloganeering aside from lead singer Louisa Solomon proclaiming “I write songs to save my life”, and you’d have to be a zombie if these songs didn’t garner some sort of reaction from you.

Sounding like early 10,000 Maniacs as a Crass Records band, The Shondes ability to blend melodic punk with the theatrical is distinctive, totally catchy and profoundly unique. This record sounds not like an album steeped in heartbreak, but a celebration of survival, and it gives me hope from the first note to the last.

The post What Becomes of the Broken Hearted: The Shondes, My Dear One appeared first on The Faster Times.

What sets Titus Andronicus apart from other bands like The Hold Steady and Arcade Fire–unabashed worshipers at the altar of The Boss–is the fact that the members have spent their lifetimes drinking the same water, and looking at the same smoggy horizon that teases a glimpse of New York City.

Maybe I’m romanticizing this, but all the people from New Jersey I’ve ever met are seemingly linked by something intangible. It is almost like their home state makes them a minority group, one that gets shit on by the New Yorkers and other East Coasters, but somehow has managed to produce some of the greatest rock n’ roll albums I’ve ever heard.

If I’m right about Jersey being some holy land of rock, then I feel like The Monitor is an extremely special occasion, as it’s a rare album that I can listen to while proclaiming that this band deserves to be huge. On Titus Andronicus’ sophomore album –the one usually reserved for “growing pains”– the band has walked up to the plate, and delivered an epic and emotionally complex home run record. It’s an obvious homage to the band’s heroes, like Billy Bragg, The Pogues, and The Boss. Somehow, the concept of living in modern New Jersey-imagined-as-the Civil War, works.

I’m in no position to comment much further. I’m not going to try and understand what makes people from New Jersey so damned special. I’m just going to listen to The Monitor, and bask in the fact that even though this band is from the state I’ve babbled about for god knows how many words, and that Titus Andronicus has given me good reasons to believe that this generation has found their answer to The Replacements.

We are honestly all better people for that. No matter where we come from.

Titus Andronicus | MySpace Music Videos

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“Cocaine’s a hell of a drug” – Rick James

My rule of thumb for musicians from the 70′s or 80′s goes like this: if you made records that had references to white lines, disco balls, or spaceships, you probably did too much cocaine. If you overdid it with the Frippertronics, made albums based on 1984, Brave New World, or I, Robot, wrote songs about snow, unicorns, or your impending insanity, you probably did too much cocaine. If you were unable to get your dick up to have sex with groupies, trashed a dressing room, hung out with trannies at Studio54, or employed a midget to be your bodyguard, you probably did too much cocaine. Also, if you hung out with David Bowie, were a member of Fleetwood Mac, are dead from a heart attack, got really into raw food diets, or have found god in any way shape or form, you probably did too much cocaine.

Yes, that may have been a bit abrupt or mean, and I don’t want you to think I’m not a nice guy, so here are some true facts about me: I’ve never put out a hit record, I’ve never ridden in a limo with a hot tub, I’ve never taken up residence in a sandbox to “fuel” my “creativity”, I don’t like cocaine, and, unfortunately, I have still not hung out with David Bowie.

Still, life isn’t so bad for me: I’ve got my health, a beautiful girlfriend, great friends, and I can breathe through my nostrils–life is pretty good. But when I watch shows like VH1′s Behind the Music and Celebrity Rehab –showcasing the supposed “road to redemption”–and listen to people go on and on about the error of their ways, and how they’ve changed, I can’t help but feel like they are totally full of shit, and if they could travel back in time, they absolutely would.

Now, if I may add one more thing to that Jeff Foxworthy-esque list of “You might have been a coke head if…”: my educated guess is that if you were signed to Casablanca Records, or held any job at Casablanca Records in the latter-half of the 1970′s, then you did cocaine. If you need evidence to prove this to yourself, read the And Party Every Day (Backbeat Books), by Larry Harris, the guy who co-founded the label.

For those of you with minimal knowledge of the Casablanca, it was responsible for some of the the best and worst of the disco era; giving us production genius Giorgio Moroder, and the utter pile of shit known as The Village People. It was also the home of the phenom known as Kiss, has the distinction of being the label that put out some of George Clinton’s most brilliant stuff under the Parliament moniker, and while it isn’t rock n’ roll, Casablanca also put out Rodney Dangerfield’s No Respect album, a release that some would say is one of the greatest comedy records ever put out. Between Gene Simmons and Ace Freely; Donna Summers “I Need Love”, and Rodney, no record label put out a discography as impressive as Casablanca.

But while Casablanca put together a fantastic roster of diverse talent, could they have done any of it without the help of cocaine? Would there even be a book if a good chunk of it didn’t involve stories about the booger sugar? Even on the back cover, the first quote from the book is about the stuff:

“There was blow everywhere. It was like some sort of condiment that had to be brushed away by the waitstaff before the next party was seated.”

Pretty much everybody in this book does cocaine. Harris does it with radio DJ’s to get his albums played on the air, Curtis Mayfield gives Harris tens of thousands of dollars to go buy him some, and if you read between some of the lines, you get the feeling that if not for cocaine, half the records that came out in the late 70′s may have never have seen the light of day. While I’m not sure if that’s for better or for worse, and And Party Every Day isn’t exactly the most exciting music book you’re ever going to read, it at least stands as an account of the excesses that made a lot of people rich in a time so long ago.

The post When Cocaine was Fuel appeared first on The Faster Times.

While Sasha Frere-Jones might question the “authenticity” of the South African group, Die Antwoord, I’m willing to say that whatever the case, it’s early 2010, and we have a front-runner for sickest chorus of the year.

The post Is Die Antwoord a Total Joke or Totally Rad? appeared first on The Faster Times.

Yeasayer’s Odd Blood is out today, and I won’t divulge too much information about it, but I will pass along this tidbit: they’ve “matured.”

To figure out exactly how, I listened to the newest album back -to-back with the band’s 2007 debut, All Hour Cymbals, and something popped into my head: Patrick Bateman.

Yes, I mean that Patrick Bateman; the chainsaw tossing anti-hero of the book and film, American Psycho.

While I’m not sure if any of the members of Yeasayer have a lust for torture and murder (hope not), there is a line that I remember from the film where Bateman is getting ready to kill his next victim with Phil Collins as a soundtrack. He talks of Phil’s previous work, and how it was (paraphrasing here) “artsier.”

Since I know too much about music, I am going to go with my nerd hunch, and say “artsier” means his first solo album, Face Value, or maybe even his work with Genesis.

So I got to thinking, “why have I stopped meditating on Yeasayer, and turned my attention to Phil Collins and a Bret Easton Ellis character?” Then I realized that when I first heard Yeasayer’s other album, I thought it sounded like a psyched out Genesis-Does-Istanbul.

So there is the Genesis/Phil Collins-Yeasayer connection, but what does it all mean?

Here’s my guess: I see Genesis and the first Phil Collins solo album in Yeasayer’s move towards a ‘friendlier’ sound that remains elementally experimental. Whether you find that insulting, or awesome is up to you; I think it rules.

But it doesn’t end there; there are a few other artists whose work I can trace that same line from.

Human League

Yes (1973 and 1985)

O.M.D. (1980 and 1985)

Roxy Music (1972 and 1982)

Suicide and Alan Vega solo work

The post The Link Between Yeasayer’s Odd Blood, Phil Collins, and American Psycho appeared first on The Faster Times.

If you care to go by the Wikipedia definition, power pop is:

“a popular musical genre that draws its inspiration from 1960s British and American pop and rock music. It typically incorporates a combination of musical devices such as strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs.”

Power pop is, for all intents and purposes, underdog rock. It’s music that speaks to the loser in all of us. It’s sappy remembrance of times past. It’s Big Star’s “Thirteen” or The Replacements “Bastards of Young”, and it’s anthems for kids with nothing to do like The Exploding Hearts wrote, or the lyrics in the Cheap Trick song, “Surrender”.

Right now, there are two perfect examples of classic power pop available, the first being Conquest by The Scruffs — a band that’s been kicking around in one form or another since the 70′s, and this album is a perfect example of power pop past it’s due date. There are one or two alright tracks on the album, but another thing about power pop is that it’s hard to forget. The songs on Conquest are neither of those things, and at this point, the band sounds like they are trying to relive whatever past glory they may have experienced in the late 70′s.

The other example is the band Free Energy, who I caught for the first time last October. I was immediately impressed by their slacker/stoned vibe, and imitation stadium rock sound. They wowed me live, and also caught the attention of the folks over at DFA, which is somewhat shocking considering the label is known for releasing stuff like LCD Soundsystem.

Whatever the case, somebody saw something in Free Energy, and in March, it seems the world is going to start seeing a lot of them.

Is that a good thing? Time will tell.

The post This is Pop/This is Power Pop appeared first on The Faster Times.

1. Mission of Burma (pictured above) are one of the few bands that I can think of who put out some of the best music of the early 80′s, broke up, then came back to (pretty much) pick up where they left off. They played the other night at Bowery Ballroom with one of my favorite Brooklyn bands, Freshkills, and Jackie Roman was there to snap photos.

2. Impose defends and bashes Pitchfork at the same time.

3. The Dengue Fever curated, Electric Cambodia is intriguing. I know Sublime Frequencies has put out stuff like this in the past, but this album has a better chance of reaching people that would otherwise not get a chance to discover the wonders of Cambodian pop music that was nearly erased by the terrors of the Pol Pot regime. My only issue (and this was backed up by my friend Matthew who has much more knowledge on the subject than I do) is that most of these songs are already available on the fantastic, “Cambodian Rocks” compilations.

4. Los Campesinos! are the guest editors over at Magnet Magazine this week. They take some time to talk about a very bookish town in their homeland of Wales.

5. I’m excited about the re-release of the film Blank Generation. Are you?

The post Top 5: Mission of Burma,Cambodian Pop Music, Los Camesinos! Talking Bookstores, and More appeared first on The Faster Times.

Dear Peter Gabriel,

I know Rod Stewart has been making a killing covering pop standards written in the 1930′s, and your old bandmate Phil Collins sold out a long time ago (even though Face Value is a pretty good album), but dude, this new album of covers you have coming out, Scratch My Back, makes me want to slit my wrists.

You cover “The Book of Love” by The Magnetic Fields, and you manage to suck every ounce of Stephin Merritt’s dry humor out of it, and make it sound like cliffs notes for the Necrocomicon.

You cover “Heros” by David Bowie, and frankly, you make me never want to succeed.

If I were Paul Simon, I’d sue you for all the suicides you are going to cause with your cover of “The Boy in the Bubble”.

Then you cover Arcade Fire. I hate Arcade Fire.

Listen, Pete, bro, I love you. I respect you. Somehow you made this transition from prog-art-rock weirdo in the 70′s to guy who’s song was blaring out of the boombox hoisted over John Cusack’s head in Say Anything. Meanwhile, your contemporaries were getting in touch with “blue eyed soul”. You kept it real as a motherfucker, and now, 2010, you are getting loopy and making Bon Iver even more depressing.

I want you to get back in touch with the real Peter Gabriel and bring back the following.:

The post Peter Gabriel Covers a Bunch of Indie Rock, and it Makes Me Want to Kill Myself appeared first on The Faster Times.

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