Monday, March 27, 2006

Show Your Bones


The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs disc

Karen O is weirdly awesome to the extreme. Nick Zinner is an indie guitarist to the max. As for drummer, Brian Chase, well… he is just cool, in his own way. To lay it down smoothly, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs rock. They rock hard. All three of the members are very independent in all of their own ways. Karen O lent her vocals for the awesome Nike shoe commercial song with Squeak E. Clean called “Hello”. Zinner has been a guitarist with Bright Eyes for a while, helping Conor Oberst with guitars in the studio and also touring with him at times, besides Zinner's other side projects, such as a completely different band he heads and a photo album he published.

Fever to Tell, Yeah Yeah Yeahs 2003 debut, was a great record. It's got to suck when these great indie-garage-rock-post-punk-revival-whatever-the-freakin’-hell-you-wanna-call-‘em bands release debuts so good that none of their new records can top (i.e. The Strokes genius 2001’s 'Is This It?' album in comparison to their suck-ass 2006’s 'First Impressions Of Earth'). Getting back to the point, the new YYYs isn’t bad. Quite the contrary, it did what 'Room on Fire' (2003 Strokes) did for me. It gave me 5 out of 12 songs to dance too. I’m still trying to find Show Your Bone’s “Under Control” (the best song off of ‘Room on Fire’) but some early contenders are Honeybear, Way Out, Warrior and even their single that hasn’t gotten old to me yet, Gold Lion. Too bad songs like Fancy and Mysteries get too weird with the Zinner warp guitar, Chase back-to-basics snare drum and cymbal crashes and Karen O’s sometime amusing, sometime utterly annoying trademark yelps, oohs, ahhs, shrieks, and whatever weird noise she feels like making.

Over all I would give Show Your Bones about a 3&1/2 to 4 on a 5 scale. I think Karen O is cool in her own deranged way but sometimes even I think some people throw themselves out there too much. Some of the howls have to stop. Along with those weird haircuts of hers. I thoroughly enjoyed this album. On a side note I really like the video for Gold Lion. A lot better than the ‘Maps’ video. As another reviewer said, Fever To Tell was the falling in love album, and Show Your Bones is the break up. Sometimes it helps to have a large (still with room for improvement) viewpoint on love. Listen to Honeybear or Phenomena.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Pandora's Jukebox

For music lovers

‘The Music Genome Project’. That’s what they’re calling this crazy-hip new thing. The incredibly self-explanatory www.pandora.com is a site all about music. All about spreading "the know" of music. It’s not even one of those things that you get sucked into and then have to pay for (you only pay unless you want to subscribe). The music keeps going and going. You type in a band or a song and BAM, you have your own radio station. Circling around what you typed in. For instance, I typed in the Stills. Within seconds a Stills song was playing, streamed, through my Internet browser with the best sound quality I have ever heard online. It sounded just as if it were pounding right out of my iTunes. After the Stills song is finished another contender comes up, very similar to the Stills. “Pool Song” by Longwave starts beating throughout my speakers. The site explains that this song has similar characteristics to any Stills material such as the electric guitar and vocal harmonies and experimental tonality. Then soon after that, Pandora churns out songs by Interpol and The Walkmen on my new "Stills Radio". The site almost never stoppes, only halting you once to ask you to make an account (to continue to listen for free or to subscribe for money) and then you might eventually get stopped again, the site saying that you have to stop skipping songs for a while because their music license demands it. After about 5 minutes (at least for my Mac) I was able to type in another radio station. Kasabian is now being produced through my Kaiser Chiefs station. Great, stuff. Good quality music for free. Pandora.com is seemingly too good to be true, but as of right now it is still free. This site is genius and besides being a great way to discover new bands (a fantastic hobby of mine) and hear awesome music, it is great fun. And not to mention, again, it is free, with a capital “hell yes”. Check it out.

www.pandora.com

-Adam Fitzgerald

Monday, March 20, 2006

My Sudden Interest In Motown

I have been listening to a lot of R&B lately. I don’t like rap (strongly dislike it at most times) and I consider myself a rock and roll guy. I fancy blues and jazz and I have been digging some Rhythm & blues lately. I have been listening to a lot of newcomers to the R&B scene lately. Such as John Legend, Common and my favorite of the bunch, Anthony Hamilton. And then I started to dig deeper into the roots of this great music that became its own culture. And I found the very origin of my new genre was in my own Great Lakes State of Michigan. The Supremes, The Temptations and my very, very, most favorite, Marvin Gaye. Marvin is simply one of the best musicians I have ever heard in my entire life. Do you know how Marvin Gaye died? His own father shot him. Which is horrible and somewhat ironic due to the fact that one of the very first lyrics of the title & opening track of arguably his best album (What’s Going On) is “Father father/ we don’t need to escalate/ see war is not the answer/ for only love can come of hate”. Marvin Gaye is one of those John Lennon type characters. The perfect image of peace too soon in life silhouetted by their own death. Men that also bestowed some of the best music to have ever been made upon us. With the voice of a god that seemingly poured the heavens through your ears when they opened their mouths and their minds to us. Listen to Marvin Gaye. Life will seem to make more sense. Or at least seem better.

-Adam Fitzgerald

Saturday, March 11, 2006

It's My Right

It’s My Right

When we met everyone said
‘It wouldn’t work’
And going into it we thought,
‘What could it hurt?’

I love you so much
I’ll figure it out
I love you too much
Because it’s my right

We see our problems
Through and through

Past every fight
We stay true

When I first saw you,
I knew

I love you so much
We can make this work
I love you so much
It almost hurts

At the end of the night
My love stays the same
Because its my right

I think this might be the first real "song" I have written. Maybe just a poem now or somethin but, I really think I can (or at least I want to) put some good music behind it cause I can sing it in my head. How do you think it sounds? Could these be good lyrics or what? Lets hope.