Snow’s still falling as I write this and I curse this fickle month. This is why no one writes songs about March. May wins.
To warm things up, I could listen to the new single, “Burn” by Detroit-bred garage gods The Stooges (streaming here – http://soundcloud.com/fatpossum/iggy-and-the-stooges-burn). They don’t sound Ready To Die at all, despite the title of their forthcoming LP. Original Stooge James Williamson comes back to provide what every other blogger/music-journo has already described as “scorching” lead-guitar storms.
Or I could lift my spirits with NY-bred arty/gothy-punk pop trio’s take on gospel hymns – as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs stream their latest, “Sacrilege” – here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_dw3TZNIGE).
But, really, all I want to do is re-watch Ray Wise (beloved Twin Peaks villain) lip-synching to the wispy lullabies of Beach House in a happily/horrifically-day-glo-splattered, lens-flare-dazzled music video directed by Eric Wareheim. And then re-watch. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS6duOoxctw)
But no. Truly, it’s about time I stopped writing about all this indie/artsy esoterika -
It’s about time I wrote about some rap, again. Been a bit. One can’t survive on punk-frayed, melody-digging indie-rock forever… Not when this winter seems as though it’s never ending. I need more vim, vigor, verve. More snark, more style, more spit, …Ro Spit!… to rattle up the doldrums of this fizzling March. Give me syrupy synth loops, warmly fuzzed piano samples and spilling drum fills, give me gritty, grooving beats, give me a ferocity, give me a flustering – give me some rap.
The metro-area emcees Ro Spit and One Be Lo rapped their seals of approval upon the up-and-coming Ann Arbor-based hip-hop phenom Gameboi (a.k.a. Isaac Castor) for a track from the full length he dropped last fall. Alex Goose produced this jam, just one of many fine beatmakers/producers and local remixers who bolstered this third major release for the already well-traveled, widely-acclaimed rap wunderkind whose been writing music since he was nine and isn’t even old enough to vote, yet.
Gameboi’s part of the local crew of openers for next week’s Blind Pig concert headlined by Fly Union and Fowl. Note: Detroit-based hip-hop quartet Clear Soul Forces are also on that bill. They recently started streaming a new single online with Kooley High – “Freq Freq” (listen at: http://clearsoulforces.bandcamp.com/). Their very latest, though, is streaming below – an impassioned comic-book tinged half-elegiac / half-anthemic nocturne that paints their hometown as the tragic, falling (super)-hero they hope to raise-back up.
Thursday – March 28th – Fly Union and Fowl w/Clear Soul Forces, Gameboi, Metal Apes, Up In The Sky and DaG – a Fusion Shows Presentation.
Meanwhile…
“The thing with this band is that there’s really no perfect “scene” for us to play in.”
Okay. I got back to some of that punk-ish indie-rock. Or whatever you wanna call this: That quote comes from Disinformants singer/guitarist Anthony Gentile, sharing some closing thoughts on the eve of what should be his band’s proper coming out party, their exclamatory introduction, their mission statement, a debut E.P. (March 22nd –at Woodruffs in Ypsi).
“(Disinformants aren’t) as heavy as our heavyweight friends like Nice Hooves, Golden Torso, Easy Action, Child Bite… and we’re not as weird as other friends like the Loco Gnosis inspired and related bands like Pink Lightning and other friends like Pat Elkins and other weirdos in Ypsilanti and Ferndale,” Gentile said.
They’re heavy-er… and they’re “screamier,” as he puts it, than their weirdo art-pop friends. And, they probably sound like wimps compared to their more “agro-inspired companions.” But that balance, that restraint, can be a benefit. “We have a greater pool of good bands we can play with, then and we aren’t expected to be anything that we’re not by the bands we play with…”
We’ll see what happens. Drummer Larry Johnson and bassist Jheremie Jacque provide the moderately-raucous rhythms to the more focused sear of Gentile’s shredding string (and characteristically throaty howls).
They’re joined, Saturday night, by Congress, Nice Hooves and Golden Torso. 9 pm. Woodruff’s –in Depot Town. You know the place.
Sounds like?
…….
Damn it all. The blogger-demon in me can’t help but share this!!
Happy Spring, everybody!
