1) Kevin Is Gay – Hearts And Unicorns – Giant Drag

Giant Drag’s Annie Hardy can be quite childish, from the schoolyard taunt of the title to her drummer to the goofing off at the end of the track.

2) Red Receiver – The Repulsion Box – Sons and Daughters

It sounds like Nick Cave singing a Violent Femmes song for a little bit. Oh, did I mention handclaps?

3) Sons of Cain – B-Sides and Rarities – Ted Leo / Pharmacists

New Ted Leo, is a mix of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and some ska dub breakdowns in the bridge. Typical Leo, but if feels like it’s missing just a little something to really blow the doors off. Recorded live.

4) City Pavement – Young For Eternity - Subways

Pip pip, we’re the British Von Bondies. Cor!

5) Walking With A Ghost – B-Sides and Rarities – The White Stripes

The Stripes covered Tegan and Sara by fucking up the entire song. Love it.

6) Grown So Ugly – Black Keys Live – Black Keys

This Robert Pete Williams cover just rips live… it’s so damn unruly! Yoinked from the live DVD that came out recently.

7) Biology – Chemistry – Girls Aloud

I swear UK pop is miles ahead of us. This starts off like Karen O and ends like a disco remix of an 80′s sitcom theme.

8) Inside And Out – Let It Die – Feist

I was never that big of a Broken Social Scene fan, but BSS never did Bee-Gees covers.

9) The Power Is On – Thunder Lightning Strike – The Go! Team

This popped up on random, and it’s hilarious. Imagine “Bring it On” as a 70s cop show, and this would be the theme song.

10) Silver Lining – The Coast Is Never Clear – Beulah

Their recent DVD release reminded me how much I miss Beulah. “Silver Lining’s” love letter to punk rock is strangely unpunk, but so catchy.

11) Could We – The Greatest – Cat Power

Chan Marshall’s newest material has her reinvented as a blue-eyed soul singer, complete Memphis session players from both Hi and Stax Records. It’s an odd fit, but it’s lovely nonetheless.

12) Handle with Care – Rabbit Furcoat – Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins

twisted credit time: the Jenny Lewis “solo” record includes a credit with the Watson Twins, but this track is a Traveling Wilburys cover, with Ben Gibbard (Deathcab), Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) filling in for Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan. Got all that?

13) Toxic – B-Sides and Rarities – The Chapin Sisters

Just like there was a rash of “Baby, One More Time” covers, there’s quite a few covers for “Toxic.” Both the Local H and Nickel Creek versions are campy fun, but the Chapin Sisters strip out that hypnotic violin line and play it some sort of folky murder ballad. I love the way the vocals swoon, as if they were on the verge of passing out on every line.

14) Streets Of Fire – New Pornographers – Twin Cinema

This must be what it’s like when the New Pornographers go camping and sit around a fire and sing. It’s better than “Kumbaya”, no? The harmonies are absolutely killer.

Posted in Mixtape No Comments »

PS2 Guitar Hero Bundle

by REDOCTANE

There have been tons of rhythm games, but they are almost all uniformly dorky. Not that Guitar Hero is hip… you get a 3/4 scale Gibson SG as your controller that’s closer to ukelele sized than anything truly axe-worthy. But manoman is it fun. The guitar has five frets, a strumming switch and a whammy bar and you click the buttons to the corresponding on screen graphics. Pretty simple, dangerously addicitive.

The song selection is key, with a strong mix of classic rock, blues, metal and alternative. Yes, you expect Cream and Hendrix and Megadeth and Ozzy, but Guitar Hero tosses in some Donnas, Queens of the Stone Age and Boston too. There’s an Incubus song and a Sum41 song, both of which I cannot play for the life of me. Because of the limited control scheme, it’s actually harder to play a lot of songs in guitar hero than on an actual guitar. You tend to do a lot more fretboard stretching and no real pick work to speak of. Arpeggios end up playing like fast descending riffs, and hammerons and pulloffs have a weird timing to them that I can’t quite get a hold of. All these little hitches aside, you really just want to play more and more.

The bad part for me, is that I can’t really play for long. The ergonomics of the guitar are pretty crap compared to playing a full size one, and more importantly, the constant incoming scroll of notes causes some pretty bad eyestrain for me after prolonged gaming. This differs from person to person, but objects tended to vibrate in and out of focus after I stopped staring at the TV.

Yes, this game may cause seizures and repetitive stress disorder and you’ll keep playing anyway. At least, you will if you have any rock n roll in your heart.

Posted in From Blown Speakers 3 Comments »

Trapped in the Closet Chapters 1-12 (Unrated Version)

by Jive

BWAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

*cough*

MIDGET MIDGET Midget midget …

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

Posted in From Blown Speakers 1 Comment »

Walk the Line

Biopics tend to be pretty hit or miss for me, because great lives tend to lack the strong narrative structure required to make a great film. Films that focus around historical events tend to be tighter, while bios tend to sprawl all over and bore me. James Mangold, harhar, walks that line with Walk the Line, pulling the big story of Johnny Cash and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in around the personal story of Johnny Cash and June Carter, a fabled love that could be denied… or so the story goes.

I haven’t liked Reese Witherspoon since Election, and I’m not sure I’ve ever really liked Joaquin Phoenix in anything, but they both do the heavy lifting here, including the singing(!). The performances, both acting and musical carry the film, as the actual story tends to get a little repetitive. The story of sex, drugs and rock’n'roll gets a chaste twist here, as Cash pursues Carter for FUCKING FOREVER. They never do quite explain why Carter likes Johnny Cash at all, as he’s a bit of a druggie stalker jackass most of the time.

I forgave most of this because of the musical storytelling, which works wonders. Pretty much every stage performance tells a specific story, most of the time better than the previous 10 minutes of exposition. When Carter and Cash perform Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” while Cash’s wife and children look on? Love, God and Murder, right there.

Posted in Moving Pictures No Comments »

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter 4)

OK, I haven’t read one single Harry Potter book. When I walk into a theater full of people with the colored scarves and the lightning bolts carved in their foreheads, I feel like I may be the only one. The general concensus for those crazy reader people is that this is a downgrade from Potter 3, but better than Potters 1+2. Since I haven’t read the source material, maybe I’m less sensitive to the changes, but Goblet of Fire worked a lot more than Azkaban.

There are clearly things getting dropped, the kids relationships being the most apparent, but for the most part it’s an intelligible straight-line plot that’s easy enough to follow. The cuts that feel the worst are the events that get built up and then get shuffled offscreen. I’m thinking mostly of the Quidditch World Cup and the first three champion’s dragon trials, which I doubt were even filmed due to cost and time issues. Still, the set pieces work, the cute character stuff is there and the adults are fine all around, from Brendan Gleeson and his wacky eye to Ralph Fiennes’ scene stealing reprise of Ultimate Evil. So hammy and awesome and he doesn’t even have a nose.

One thing that I am sort of tired of, which admittedly is the whole point of Harry Potter, are the moments where he stumbles across something, scoffs, and then shown that it is magic. "What’s with this boot?" "It’s a MAGIC BOOT." "This tent sucks." "It’s a MAGIC TENT." I don’t have a problem with people finding awe in magic, but mix up the beats a little bit.

Posted in Moving Pictures No Comments »