Archive for August, 2009

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Girls

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GirlsArtist: Girls

Hails from: San Francisco, CA

Musical Style: Garage Rock, Indie, Pop

For Fans of: Elvis Costello, Everly Brothers, Beach Boys

 

Why you should check them out:

San Francisco’s garage rock extraordinaire Girls is a hard band to track down, much less pin down. Choosing their moniker in defiance of search engine accessibility and varying their sound in a myriad of directions, the duo of Christopher Owens and Chet “JR” White are directly responsible for any impending slacker rock explosions in the near future.

Background Check:

After playing in bands like Holy Shit and Curls, vocalist Christopher Owens teamed up with bassist Chet “JR” White to put together the San Francisco based Girls. While a duo at the core, they can often be found recruiting a slew of fellow Bay Area musicians to join in on their care free and compelling pop rock.

Excelling at the nostalgia laden pop of yesteryear, Owens and White readily borrow from sources both new and old.  In their seemingly simple formulas one will find an affection for Beach Boys guitar pop, early 90’s shoegaze, and angsty 80’s teen pop. Their impossibly liberating and invigorating single “Lust for Life” makes heads sway, beach blanket vintage vernacular on full alert, while the rockabilly heartbreaker “Hellhole Ratrace” sounds like Elvis Costello filtered through a slow motion psychedelic strainer.

Their debut, simply titled Album, drops late September and promises to be one of the catchiest and most eclectic offerings of the year. Expect Girls to be a well known pronoun in the music world, once word of this pair’s perfect indie pop starts swelling, it’s no doubt the ambiguity of their name won’t keep them hidden for long.

Where you can find them in cyberspace:
MySpace
TurnStile Music

Where you can find them on tour:
JamBase

Posted in Alternative, Indie Pop, Pop/Rock, Rock | No Comments »

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

The Dead Weather

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The Dead WeatherArtist: The Dead Weather

Hails From: Michigan; Florida

Musical Style: Pop/Rock; Garage Rock; Alternative Rock

For Fans of: White Stripes, Raconteurs, Black Keys


 

Why you should check them out:

Don’t be frightened by the specter of yet another supergroup: The Dead Weather manages to sound more like a group of pals jamming in the garage late into the night, messing around with deep groves and trading off freestyling, heartfelt lyrics. Kind of like your old high school band on steroids.

Background Check:

The Dead Weather is like an improvised recipe: throw in a pinch of White Stripes bluesiness (Jack White on drums), a skosh of Kills punk (singer Alison Mosshart), a healthy portion of Raconteurs swagger (bassist Jack Lawrence), and a dash of Queens of the Stone Age riffage (guitarist Dean Fertita), and see what shakes out.

 

For the most part, the experiment works. The band’s recently-released debut, Horehounds, contains some tasty moments of real symmetry, as on the dark, writhing “Hang You from the Heavens” or the album’s energized lead track, “60 Feet Tall.” Other times, things come off a little bland, as on instrumental track “3 Birds.” Jack White’s propulsive drumming (he returned to his original instrument for this project) and Mosshart’s primal, guttural vocals take the lead on many of the eleven cuts.

 

Overall, The Dead Weather manages to kick out the jams pretty effectively, and their early output never betrays a sense that the collective is not thoroughly whole-hog into the project. The band gets it done through incorporating the best bits of their record collections—from garage and psychedelia to punk and blues—and by having a blast doing it.

Where you can find them in cyberspace:

Thedeadweather.com 

On Tour: 

JamBase

Posted in Alternative Pop/Rock, Pop/Rock | No Comments »

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Little Boots

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Little BootsArtist: Little Boots

Hails From: Blackpool, England

Musical Style: Electropop, Electronica, Alternative/Dance

For Fans of: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Lady Gaga, Hot Chip

 

 Why you should check her out:

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Little Boots is quickly emerging as a queen of dance floor hooks. Her collection of finely-crafted, Electropop tunes are rife with super-saccharine earworms, earning her a spot on Esquire Magazine’s list of “60 Brilliant Brits for 2009.”

Background Check:

At the tender age of five, Blackpool, England-born Victoria Hesketh lobbied her family for a piano. Her kindly uncle procured one from a local pub, and she’s been making music ever since. After competing—and losing—in the UK television show “Pop Idol” at 16, Hesketh served time as singer in a jazz trio before settling in with indie pop band Death Disco. She then struck out on her own after deciding she needed to follow her own dance-oriented electronic muse—and Little Boots was born.

 

Hesketh began posting her raved-up covers of artists like Wham and Miley Cyrus to YouTube and MySpace before recording her proper debut album, 2009’s Hands. Cavity-inducing hooks abound, combined with simple instrumentation and infectious grooves aided by the likes of Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard and Greg Kurstin of The Bird and the Bee. Hesketh herself plays keyboards, piano, stylophone and the Tenori-on—a Japanese electronic instrument that looks like a Lite-Brite.

 

Little Boots is currently peddling her sonic wares and unicorn-fantasy-Dayglo imagery across the globe in a mind-bending tour set to tackle over 30 festivals this calendar year alone.
Where you can find her in cyberspace:
On Tour:

Posted in Alternative, Dance, Electronic, Electronica | No Comments »

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