A sim­ple fast and fun two piece band from Van­cou­ver, BC. Their first album “Post Noth­ing” runs just over 30 min­utes with the 8 tracks on the record­ing. They have two pre­vi­ous EPs “All Lies” & “Lul­laby
Death Jams”. The offi­cial genre for this band is Noise Pop which is very sim­i­lar to shoegaze.

The band uses highly effect dri­ven gui­tar with a lot of noise and feed­back. Their lyrics seem sim­ple but still have depth in the whole mean­ing. “Young Hearts Spark Fire” seems to be about finally
real­iz­ing you have grown up with the line, “We used to dream but now we worry about dying”. But undoubtably our favorite lyric is “We run the gaunt­let, let’s get to France, so we can French Kiss
some French girls.”

Lis­ten to: Young Hearts Spark Fire | Wet Hair

This album seemed to be a major player in the 2003 Pro­gres­sive music move­ment. Although very polit­i­cal sound­ing this was about the time when I feel that the music com­mu­nity finally recov­ered from the Post Alter­na­tive and Grunge styles and these new gen­er­a­tion of bands grew out of their pop punk youth into a more mature and stu­dious approach to music. Pos­si­bly because by this time with excess tour­ing, rela­tion­ship trou­bles, and what­ever else ails these musi­cians it all goes with a say­ing, “Mis­ery is inspirational”.

The tran­si­tion that Radiohead’s went through from Ok Com­puter to Kid A is sim­i­lar, in a sense. With their respec­tive lyri­cists hav­ing the end­less road as fuel for lyrics. As for the album it is 12 tracks (in the full ver­sion). The album starts qui­etly and then segues from quiet and serene to loud and even rau­cous at times. They pro­duced two music videos that can give you a proper feel of how dark this album is.

The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows
Sic Tran­sit Glo­ria (Glory Fades) — One of my favorite music videos.

A punk rock Christmas

I usu­ally quickly become tired of older Christ­mas songs (unless the name of the vocals comes from the throat of Sina­tra). The first of the two part CD came out some years ago. Boast­ing many “punk” but more alter­na­tive Christ­mas tracks. Some orig­i­nal but mostly revamped and amped up ver­sions of the clas­sics (some with very satri­cal lyric changes like “I saw Daddy Kiss­ing Santa Claus”). But best of all some of the sales for “A Santa Cause” went to a charity.

Grow­ing up we used to always lis­ten to the “A Very Spe­cial Christ­mas”  albums which was my intro­duc­tion to a more rock and roll Christ­mas. But if you are a Dr. M grow­ing up in the Mama Z house­hold, not rock­ing just isn’t an option.

Boast­ing a 44track col­lec­tion from many indie, alter­na­tive, punk, and even hard­core bands. Such as Blink 182, The For­mat, Saosin, and my fel­low Belle Ver­non PA alumni Punchline.

Check out some of our favorite Christ­mas songs:

Christ­mas in Hol­lis (The Orig­i­nal Ver­sion) The AKA’s cover this in the album.
I Saw Daddy Kiss­ing Santa Claus
Decem­ber Is For Cyn­ics — The Matches

and Dr. M’s favorite Christ­mas movie:

Ace Enders & A Mil­lion Dif­fer­ent People

It has been almost a life time ago since I last encoun­tered  the Jer­sey born Enders. In my  sim­plis­tic yet mechan­i­cal youth when I always seemed to be float­ing down­stream instead of my ever present fight of the cur­rents of adult­hood. This was before any­one really knew of Ace and his band Early Novem­ber. They were tour­ing small West­ern Penn­syl­van­ian fire halls on their first EP. We knew all the songs. They played really good. Ser­gio (on bass) of T.E.N. ended the set by throw­ing his bass gui­tar into a micro­phone stand and then dove half over and half through the drum set. Jeff (on drums) nar­rowly avoided the tackle that would of made a defen­sive line­man proud.

Ser­gio quickly dis­ap­peared and the rest of the band opted to clean up their gear and go to the local Denny’s. The old Wings of Azrael / VFW crew joined them and we spent what­ever change we had on a meal we did not need. Years later I see his name pop up and he has a (kind of) solo album and a new moniker of Ace Enders & A Mil­lion Dif­fer­ent People.

Of course not an orig­i­nal song but a very heart­felt Verve cover and like Billy Shears, he got by with a lit­tle help from his friends. The album 14 tracks long sounds like an expan­sion of the later Early Novem­ber sound and style. Soft and soul­ful but still not afraid to turn his amp up to “11” when needed to get some heads nod­ding. The title track of “When I Hit the Ground” and the next song “Reac­tion” should give you a good feel of the album.

Fif­teen songs strong, Armistice was mainly cre­ated in the three years on the road Mute Math spent while tour­ing. Appar­ently the effort required to not only out do but “embar­rass” their sucess­ful self titled album cause quite a rift in the stu­dio. The New Orleans four piece almost called it quits but luck­ily they kept it togther and pro­duced an album that is noth­ing short of amazing.

Armistice, the lat­est album from Mute Math

They def­i­nitely (cliche word) matured with this album. With their refined sound they seem to play nice with Man­ches­ter Orches­tra, Sil­ver­sun Pick­ups, and Minus the Bear. We actu­ally dis­cov­ered this album from the Minus the Bear sta­tion on Pan­dora (kudos for the Music Genome Project).

Music video for Spot­light.

Our per­sonal favorite the title track Armistice which isn’t avail­ble for stream. Also, we couldn’t dig up any free pre­view tracks either. But here is one from their last effort:

Stall Out from the self titled album.

Scar­lett Jo’s cover album was impres­sive to say the least and we all know that Pete Yorn is well accom­plished in music. Who would have thought they were friends and after a dream they opted to write a duet album.

Pete Yorn and Scar­lett Johansson

How does it sound?  Well Pete Yorn’s clas­sic softer rock vibe with some folk influ­ence mixed in with Scarlett’s very sur­pris­ing bluesy voice. The duet almost sounds like some­thing you would hear from the 50’s or even some­thing like Sonny and Cher. You can see for your­self by watch­ing the video for the first track “Rela­tor”.

Also lucky for us it just hap­pens that both par­ties are pretty much insanely rich. Of course most would know that but how does it affect the album. Well for now they are sell­ing it for $2.99 off of Ama­zon (fol­low the link from the albums web­site).

I think whether or not you just have a high school crush on Scar­lett or Pete or even like their pre­vi­ous work, this album def­i­nitely holds its own. We highly rec­om­mend this one.

Ok so there are no first or sec­ond week posted since I SNAFU’d my old site and switched to WordPress.

1) Por­tu­gal the Man: “The Satanic Satanist” (6/6) | 21songs — 66mins | Watch & Lis­ten
The Alaskan native yet Port­land based group puts out a soul­ful and bluesy influ­ence on top of their unique sound. They take a seem­ingly polit­i­cal approach as John Gour­ley sings about mod­ern Amer­i­cana.
Get the deluxe album that has an acoustic bonus disc.  Chill out to this one.

2) Phoenix: “Wolf­gang Amadeus Phoenix” (5/6) | 10songs — 36mins | Watch & Lis­ten
A very fun, fast paced, sing-a-long album. Yet with very heart­felt lyrics. Party to this one
Cur­rently tour­ing with Met­ric. Also check out remixes of their song “Lisz­to­ma­nia” on the sin­gle disc.

3) Met­ric: “Fan­tasies” (4/6) | 10songs — 42mins | Watch & Lis­ten
Another great Cana­dian import. A lot of things can be said about Emily Haines. Think some excel­lent indie pop with a lit­tle bit of a Riot Grrl atti­tude. Rock out to this one.
On tour with Phoenix. Check out the remix and acoustic ver­sion of “Help I’m Alive”.

4) Man­ches­ter Orches­tra: “Mean Every­thing to Noth­ing” (3/6)  | 11songs — 53mins | Watch & Lis­ten
A very deep, dark, and pow­er­ful album.  Though very ambi­ent and well orches­trated (like their name says) but they also do crank up the amps in most of their songs. Drive to this one.