Not to keep dwelling on music from the other side of the pond but my interest was peaked when a friend from Earache Records had told me they signed a tremendous new band but that it was not the kind of music we had grown to expect from them. Them being a record label that has released music by the likes of Carcass, Entombed, and Morbid Angel. He went on to say that I should have a listen and hear for myself why they had to sign them. I get it, I really do.
Kagoule is not a traditional metal band but they are still very heavy. They ka-chug-a-chug-a-chug with a bounce some of us old geezers might recognize from the '90s indie Mid-West scene with Albini at the helm. It takes a special band to blur genre boundaries of a well established heavy metal label roster and special they are.
Urth, the debut by this Nottingham, England trio reminds me of so many great non-traditional heavy bands that are also chunky and technical. Bands like Poster Children, Smashing Pumpkins, Hum, PJ Harvey (early years), and Failure are at the top that list. For those who enjoy weighty, highly volatile Pop songs, this is the band for you.
It has taken me decades to find a band that gives me that same kind of feeling in my chest that I had the first time I heard The Smiths. Desperate Journalist are a 4 piece band from London that features two women and two men and are named after a legendary Peel Session where The Cure sound off about a member of the press who gave them a less than positive review.
I have watched this video for 'Eulogy" ten times already today and I am excited to discover they are as good live as they are on record.
SQUEEEE! You can stream her whole new album Divers right now via NPR. I liken this to reading a choose your own adventure book that has no definitive plot (no two listener take aways will be the same!) and may require a dictionary to understand all the words she uses to spin her delicately orchestrated webs. It is as if Kate Bush and Björk (who apparently has been a singing coach of sorts to her) has created a chamber Pop opera and given birth to a star whose voice flits like a sprite through a maze of tall grass and mushroom caps houses. If you hate reading but love a good story, this is the gift you have been waiting for. Her vocabulary and use of language is a thing to behold. I am not sure I am smart enough to grasp and unravel all of the thematic layers found on this new record but I feel like a better person for at least trying. Prepare to be awed and English majors, there are a good 100 thesis papers to be found in her body of work.
Not recommended - playing Scrabble against her. I am 100% certain Newsom would win. Apparently Slate agrees.
There is site called Many Many Women that documents the women in the avant-garde / experimental music scene. It is the ultimate go-to resource of those interested in listening to, booking, or educating themselves to the ladies of this genre pool. Spoiler alert, there are a way more than you probably thought!
Here is a quote from the site about what they do: "The focus of this index is on women in contemporary/post-classic composition, free improvisation and avant jazz, electronic/electroacoustic music, sound art, sound installations, radio art, etc. A few of these artists may also work within relatively mainstream forms (rock, singer-songwriter, folk, dance music), but they are included here because of their other work that is more experimental. I’ve also included some classical composers who lived and worked in the early part of the 20th century; while their music may be more conventional by current standards, they deserve recognition as pioneers in their own right. "
One of my favorite bands the Blake Babies. They were a trio from Boston that made music from 1986 to 1993 with a brief reunion stint in the late '90s / early 2000s that I somehow totally missed.
A pseudo-interesting side note to the band is that Evan Dando of The Lemonheads fame was an early band member but the remaining three members : Juliana Hatfield, John Strohm, and Freda Love have more than enough talent to make up for his exit. Their songwriting style is complicated, highly melodic Pop. According to this new interview with the band, their long out of print catalog will be reissued next year (YAY!) and drummer Freda has a brand new memoir out called Red Velvet Underground.
If you are like me and didn't catch the Blake Babies live, you can download for free a radio performance from 1989 here in exchange for your email address.
As you might have guessed, the band members have been in various other projects that include : Antenna, Some Girls (not to be confused with the San Diego band with the same name), Velo-Deluxe, Strohm drummed in The Lemonheads for a stint and Julianna played with them as well for a bit too, The Juliana Hatfield Three (I bet you can guess whose band that was), and Minor Alps.
When a member of Rainer Maria recommends a band to check out, I gladly oblige. Petal as it turns out sounds very much like Rainer Maria and that is A-OK by me. Their new album entitled Shame comes out on Run for Cover Records on 10/23 but you can pre-order it now. You can also stream the whole record here, right now.
Once upon a time Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, Body/Head) and Daisy Von Furth started a clothing line called X-Girl that was a ying of sorts to X-Large's yang (one of the original X-Large owners was Mike D of the Beastie Boys).
Their small store opened in the early '90s on Lafayette Street in New York City's SoHo neighborhood and across the street from X-Large. One of the highlights to the X-Girl brand was that artist Mike Mills created much if not all of X-Girl's iconic graphics and shirt designs. Limited posters of his gorgeous brand work were also available for purchase and I think of anything I regret not purchasing back in the day, it is these pieces of art.
The general look of the X-Girl clothing line was androgynous and simple. The idea was to produce timeless classics that featured clean lines and were form fitting compared to that time period's grungy counterpart. To be as accurate as possible, it was practically the Mac store of '90s fashion. The business was short lived as the shop closed at the end of the '90s and then the line was sold to Japanese company that still produced it to this day.
I would be lying if I said X-Girl clothes fit anyone above a size 10 but that is a different story all together. This believe it or not brings us to the subject of French Pop musiccalled yé-yé sung by girls and young women in the 1960s.
This genre of music was said to be inspired by The Beatles and their hooky line "She loves me YEAH YEAH YEAH". The fashion sense of these yé-yé girls (tasteful Euro-mod) were also said to be an influence on the X-Girl fashion line and often playing on the small TV inside the store was a video compilation of these original yé-yé music videos. I had several friends that worked there, including my then boyfriend. As they were closing up the shop some nights, I would sit on the bench waiting and watching these campy and totally intoxicating videos. This was my introduction to French Pop and I have collected it obsessively ever since.
It should be noted that this genre of music spread like wildfire all over the world so there a are ton of groovy girl records from the '60s to check out from many other countries too.
Here are the kind of videos that were on the X-Girl VHS collection:
