Le Switch announces the release of their debut LP, “And Now…Le Switch” from Autumn Tone Records.

The band’s debut LP, “And Now… Le Switch,” is being released September 30th, 2008 on Autumn Tone Records, the label-arm of popular music blog An Aquarium Drunkard.  ”And Now… Le Switch” was produced and mixed by drummer Joe Napolitano – with additional mixing conducted by head Radar Brother, Jim Putnam. The record is sure to bring to mind early-1970’s records like Ram, Nilsson Schmilsson, Muswell Hillbillies and  Leon Russell’s Carney mixed with contemporaries such as Dr. Dog. The new record puts the lyrical intensity of signer Aaron Kyle against the backdrop of the band’s well-drawn arrangements.  At times the lyrics are even sensitive and longing – but the beer and bourbon still soak the sound.

The band’s self-released debut EP, “Hello Today,” came out in early 2007. Soon, Eastside Angelinos couldn’t escape them – they played shows pretty much every week at The Echo, Spaceland, Little Radio, Silverlake Lounge, El Cid, El Rey, The Scene and the Viper Room. Those gigs led to live appearances on KXLU and Sirius Satellite Radio as well as airplay on Indie 103.1 FM and KROQ 106.7. Local bloggers like Aquarium Drunkard, LAist, You Set the Scene, Radio Free Silver Lake, Amateur Chemist, Rock Insider and Passion of the Weiss praised their EP and their passionate live performances. They all lauded the band, but couldn’t decide if Kyle’s voice was more “raspy” or “whiskey-soaked?” One even worried that Kyle might someday sing so hard that his uvula would explode. It hasn’t yet, but the old debates will surely reignite upon listening to And Now…Le Switch.

Le Switch : Tonguetied

Le Switch : Living in Another World

MC Rut at the Rickshaw, San Francisco 7/22/08

You can’t get any louder than Middle Class Rut aka MC Rut. They don’t deal with sound guys, especially those that don’t set up monitors properly. They just turn it up so that they can hear themselves. Add to that: no earplugs. Hard core.

These guys hail from Sacramento, but you’d think they were from Los Angeles or Colombia because the angst they expel is ferocious. Lead singer Zack Lopez doesn’t sing, he roars. Painful roaring. His voice, at times melodic and pop circa early 90’s Perry Farrell, but when he’s on fire he rages like another Zack, a de la Rocha. Drummer Sean Stockham first appears as the sadistic one–a ‘for sale’ sign painted or tattooed on his chest–and later pummels his drums to prove he’s not going for cheap. Is it angst I witnessed or was it pure passion? I don’t know, but their delivery was impressive and the often mellow San Franciscans in the crowd loved and feared them.

Listen to ‘em here.

Things I’ve Heard Lately

I have nothing exciting to say about these tracks except that they’ve grown on me. El Perro Del Mar is very catchy, subtle, simple, comforting. I like that Sarah Assbring, the persona behind El Perro, has such a bold name. It can’t be her real name. How many pseudonym’s can an artist have? 

Lykke Li ’s music seems to follow the same simplicity that makes El Perro’s sound so appealing. Makes sense that they’re currently touring together. There’s something almost tribal about their music. Wonder if their live shows will feature an ensemble of strings. I don’t think there’ll be much dancing. Or maybe a new kind of dance will emerge?

Ed Harcourt’s got an interesting thing going. He’s a bit Rufus Wainright, a bit Cold Play, and a bit pretty. I like that his freebie track below gives a shout out to prostitutes, taxis, and Marxists. Now that’s bold lyricism. Do the kids even know who Marx was anymore? 

And what about You, Me and Iowa you ask? Oh, you didn’t ask? Well, it’s simple: They seem to be having lots of fun with their music. And isn’t that how it should be? Why even write a song if you’re not feeling it? I think these folks are feeling it. Now you feel it. Listen below.

Lykke Li : Dance, Dance, Dance
El Perro Del Mar : Glory to the World
You, Me and Iowa : Dress the Stage
Ed Harcourt : Revolution of the Heart

Hello Tokyo : Sell The Stars

Whenever I hear the word “hello” followed by a city’s name, I am reminded of the “Hello Cleveland!” scene from This Is Spinal Tap. Who doesn’t, really?

Hello Tokyo is nothing like that. They’re a cool power trio from Brooklyn led by a singer/ keyboardist named Kat who’s voice I’d also describe as “cool.” Their songs are crisp and upbeat, and I’d bet they put on a good show. Guitarist John and drummer Sam (no last names given in the liner notes, and those given on their MySpace page are fake) round out the lineup ably, but for me it’s definitely Kat’s show. Her voice is a nice blend of a furious Corrin Tucker and a sultry Debbie Harry– and at times, Jeff Buckley.

Of course, just because Kat steals the show doesn’t mean that Hello Tokyo is a synth band– they’re not. Songs oscillate between power- chord Pixies rock and syncopated U2- style atmospherics. The best track on the record for me is “The Affair,” and I look forward to them coming to San Francisco.

Hello Tokyo website
Hello Tokyo on Myspace

Words by Lee

Langhorne Slim : The War Eagles

Langhorne Slim’s music reminds me of the kind I used to see on a Wednesday night for two dollars as a freshman in college back in Athens, GA– and that’s not a bad thing.  I remember the Jager shots, having crushes on all the hippie chicks in the bar, and the paralyzing fear that the doorman would retroactively figure out that I had just used the same fake ID* as my other three friends to get in.  (And of course I remember the awful, awful dancing– mine and everyone else’s.)

Which is to say that there is decidedly a time and a place for Mr. Slim, though I’m not sure that his latest, Langhorne Slim & The War Eagles, is really it.  The songs– reminiscent at times of Van Morrison, and of Exile On Main Street at others, though filtered through a David Gray- type lens– are slightly cliched, and innocuous overall.  But oh, how I long for the days when I would have paid to get drunk on shitty keg beer, play pool, and seen them live.  

~lee.

*I’ve written of this before, but it bears repeating here:  my fake ID (which was handed down to me through a tradition I am forever sworn to secrecy about) was an old ID of a guy named Justin Gage– his name and stats forever burned into my brain, you can quiz me– and he now lives in Los Angeles and runs one of the best music blogs around, An Aquarium Drunkard. I didn’t know him then, and I don’t know him now, but nonetheless I just think that this is serendipitously hilarious. 

Langhorne Slim

Words by Lee

Eric Avery : Help Wanted

I always thought it was cool that Eric Avery opted not to capitalize on the various Jane’s Addiction reunion shows over the years. I saw both tours:  the first one, with Flea, was seriously one of the live music highlights of my life. The second, with the, uh… other guy– Peter DiStefano from Porno For Pyros–was one of the worst shows still that I’ve ever seen. And so it goes.  

Yet even in the back of my early twenty- something mind I knew that Perry Farrell warbling “Cash in now, honey!“ at me was more than just a little ironic.

And speaking of cringe- inducing, “Hope- I-die-before-I-get-old” -isms, my favorite Jane’s Addiction song was always “Idiots Rule,” which of course contains the line “You know the man you hate?/ You look more like him everyday!”  And when Eric Avery’s new album, Help Wanted, came across my desk, I immediately thought of this couplet and hoped–knowing that I’d pull a Tim Russert on him here–that he wouldn’t suffer the same cliched fate as his former band mates.

He doesn’t. Instead what we have is a mostly downbeat, left- of- center, deconstructed and then reconstructed record that sits very comfortably I think in the 21st century.  

Surprisingly, it turns out that Mr. Avery’s world- weary singing voice has a lot in common with both The National’s Matt Berninger and with one Thin White Duke. Indeed, David Bowie’s influence, especially the Eno stuff and “Diamond Dogs” (though there is no “Rebel Rebel” moment), seems to be all over the record. The cover art and liner notes appear to suggest that Los Angeles has been attacked by aliens (anyone remember the television show “V”?) and many of the lyrics are about dreams, dystopia, nuclear war, flying, and falling to Earth– all very Bowie, and Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, to me, but also very Arcade Fire and Radiohead at the same time. Everything goes in cycles.  

Avery is backed up on most tracks by Taylor Hawkins (the Foo Fighters’ hard- hitting drummer), in what must be a departure for him, in that there aren’t a lot of hard- hitting, dynamic moments–the Fighters’ signature. Garbage’s Shirley Manson collaborates on one song, as does Flea, though he is on horns only.

Flea’s inclusion brings me to the only pointed criticism of the album I really have, besides that lyrically the album isn’t very varied: Where the hell is the bass?  Jane’s Addiction’s bass lines were some of the most memorable in all of late 80’s/ early 90’s rock n’ roll (“Mountain Song,” “Three Days,” “Summertime Rolls,”) and on Help Wanted there seems to be more discernible xylophone than bass. Call me crazy, but doesn’t that seem like a grand, or gross, misappropriation?

Nevertheless Help Wanted is a cool record whether you prefer 70’s Bowie, Disintegration-era Cure, Love & Rockets, or The National. Just don’t buy it if you’re expecting “Mountain Song” or “Idiots Rule”–there may have been a time, but Eric Avery is comfortably saying “none like now.”

Words by Lee

Dawn Landes : Fireproof

“Bodyguard,” the first song on Dawn Landes‘ latest album, was written as a reaction to her Brooklyn apartment being burglarized. The ensuing theft saw a hard drive, containing the only copy of her ready- to- go second album, vanish. “I never looked back or tried to recreate those songs, never played them, nothing. I just started over from scratch,” she says.

The album “Fireproof” is the fruit of that labor. The title, obviously, suggests both vulnerability and indestructibility: I’m sure Ms. Landes is much more protective of all the things in her life following her home invasion. “Now you know what you want/ You want what you had/ But you can’t have that/ You can’t go back,” she sings in “Private Little Hell.” A sad lesson learned, indeed.

The songs that comprise “Fireproof” are reminiscent to me both of Athens, GA band Azure Ray, and of Sub Pop recording artist and Seattle native Rosie Thomas (that’s to say only that they all seem to synthesize the same influences). Lyrically, I’m not always with her– “La la la la Life’s a gag/ La la la la You’re a fag” doesn’t exactly have the air of high- mindedness, though it’s probably simply an inside joke– but musically, color me impressed. Ms. Landes isn’t reinventing the wheel here, yet she seems right in her wheelhouse when it comes to some of the more offbeat Waits-ian instrumentation offered here (optigan, banjo, toy piano).

And at the end of the day, who can argue with the lines, “When it’s hard to breathe in the city/ It’s easier to drink”? Not I, said the fly (drunkenly).

All in all, I’m glad this album came across my desk. Not just for me, but for my wife– who I only think agreed to marry me as a thanks for introducing her to Azure Ray and to Ms. Chan (Cat Power) Marshall. This is a good one to have on while cooking dinner, with a bottle of Biodynamic Oregon Pinot open next to the stove. Be sure to look out for the hidden Tom Petty cover (“I Won’t Back Down,” at the end of album closer “You Alone”), and, finally, be sure to heed “Fireproof”’s cautionary tale– that while, of course, you should look out for and guard steadfastly what’s most important to you, everything ultimately is just like what Bob Dylan once said: “It’s not the experience that matters, it’s the attitude towards the experience.”

Available on Cooking Vinyl USA

Dawn Landes on Myspace

Words by Lee Henderson

Strangers Die Every Day : Aperture For Departure

When I read, in the accompanying press release for Portland’s Strangers Die Every Day’s debut album, that they had previously opened up for Thurston Moore, I was immediately seized by an intuition telling me that I was not going to like this album at all. I saw Thurston (one of my absolute all- time musical heroes) at the Great American Music Hall back in October and the group (not SDED) that opened for him… well, suffice it to say they just weren’t my thing* and I was afraid it was going to be more of the same here.

I was so heartened to be wrong. “Aperture For Departure” is a cool record, something I’d much sooner classify as left- field chamber music than I would Indie Rock.  It’s entirely instrumental, and some of the tracks don’t even incorporate a drummer– and for a guy who spends just as much time these days listening to Gershwin and Glenn Gould as he does Gogol Bordello and Grizzly Bear, that’s a welcome thing.

Fans of Tortoise and Godspeed You! Black Emperor will really enjoy “Aperture.”  In fact, I’d just about recommend it to anyone who enjoys a bit of both “Rite Of Spring” and “Real Emotional Trash” in their same- day repertoire.  2 out of 3 stars.

Available on the This Generation Tapes label. 

*Think Yoko Ono meets “Metal Music Machine.” Even though I had recently (and quite begrudgingly) quit smoking cigarettes after almost twenty years– and the cravings were still killing me– I boycotted their set and stood outside with the smokers until it was over.

Words by Lee

John Peel is Better Than God and Chocolate

My life is pretty good.  I have a long way to go to get to where I want and I’m sure even when I get there, I won’t be satisfied–probably because I’m never content with anything. My point being, as each year slips by, there are a few people in my life, both private and public persons, who I never got a chance to meet because they died. Some I wanted to head-butt with a steel spike, others, dine with over some wine and Moroccan food. But when I was in a band my DREAM, my GOAL IN LIFE, was to be invited to perform on BBC Radio 1 Peel Sessions.

What John Peel did was and continues to be my structure for integrity, vision, contemporary actualization (keeping up to date and exposing it). Mr. Peel (died of a heart attack while traveling in Peru) was an English disc jockey, radio, and print journalist who worked at the BBC from 1967 to 2004. The man had great musical taste and never stopped keeping his ear to the pavement to showcase unknown bands to the rest of the world. Peel, in a boiled down version of his life, introduced BBC listeners to punk, reggae, hip-hop, and electronic dance music.

For those of you who want to probe deeper into the Peel Session bands and the songs they played go here and on the BBC here. (They have tracks you can stream and listen to for only 30 seconds…like, what’s the fucking point there?) Anyway if you know what’s up with Bit Torrent, then I suggest you search for Peel Sessions through that since the only Peel I’ve found is on vinyl (I know there’s more but vinyl is the best way to find Peel’s recordings besides online Torrent).

My favorite aspect about the Peel Sessions is how well recorded they are. In addition to getting great performances he could be one caustic son of a bitch, which I love, when he felt that a performance was lacking or the artist was shit.

Here are a few examples:

Smog : I Break Horses
Mudhoney : The Straight Life
Pretty Girls Make Graves : More Sweet Soul
The Damned : Neat Neat Neat
Yeah Yeah Yeahs : Tick
Yeah Yeah Yeahs : Maps
Interpol : The New 
Interpol : Hands Away

And one of Peel’s favorite bands, The Undertones, have lyrics from their song Teenage Kicks, on Peel’s headstone.

Life is too short to live. Ya know? So, here’s to John Peel. (I’m drinking a Guiness with a shot of Jameson’s in my mind)

Words by FJP

Applied Communications : Heavenly Gospel by Lee Henderson

It is raining outside, and I am in kind of a bad mood. I’ve been trying to work on music all day andówhat can I say, there’s just no blood going there at all like hanging upside- down in a meat locker.

I want to get something done today, though, and thankfully I have a couple of reviews due. So I reach for Heavenly Gospel, the second album from Applied Communications, and am immediately struck by the albumís layout–hand-bound with string, the CD cover is nothing more than a folded, color-copied piece of high gloss paper. Inside it is another folded, color-copied piece of high gloss paper, this time with lyrics (or something). I like it. It’s econo. It’s punk rock.

It’s absolutely the only thing about this album that I like.

Weird for the sake of being weird (or for no reason at all) has never sat very well with me. I can spot these guys’ influences, if you can call them that, within the first thirty seconds, though I do sit through the whole album: Beck (when he was selling tapes out of the trunk of his car), “Revolution #9,” Lard, the Descendants, video games, and lysergic acid diethylamide (or maybe just Robitussin). And masturbation–ólots and lots of masturbation. Brutal, uncompromising, I’m- going-wind-up-with-Carpal-Tunnel-Syndrome masturbation.

I really hope that these guys are thirteen, but they have a website better than I could pull off so I’m kind-of doubting it.

Suffice it to say, yes this album is just that bad, and yes it has made my bad mood that much worse. It should have been called something like “Thirty-Five Migraine-Inducing Minutes, and Other Assorted Love Songs.” Except that nothing on this CD can be actually classified as a song*. So I’d go with “Worse Than The Holocaust,” and call it a day.

~lee.

*Just in case you were wondering, Heavenly Gospel is made up entirely of sound snippets like truncated (or otherwise irregular) drumbeats, keyboard, um, melodies, and, finally, what can only be charitably described as somebody using a dictaphone to record a television (or something). There is nothing avant-garde at work here. The ACLU wouldn’t defend this CD.