Question
by The Scene on May 27th, 2008
Listen to the new Sigur Ros track.
Question: When did the boys from Iceland become Animal Collective?
Listen Forever
by The Scene on May 22nd, 2008
One day a while back our younger brother played World of Warcraft for 12 hours straight, all the while listening to the self-titled Ratatat album over and over again on infinite repeat. When we asked him about his monotonous music choice he only them seemed to realize that he had been rocking out the same album 20 straight times. The moral of this story is that Ratatat is the perfect music to listen to while grinding for gold, raiding high level dungeons and doing other stuff that we have a slightly incriminating familiarity with.
While this new track, entitled “Shiller”, from the band is more ambient and Sgt. Peppery (with a bit of the soundtrack to Final Fantasy III mixed in) than their previous work, we have been listening to it non-stop for about an hour and it isn’t even starting to get old. Not even a little.
Treasure Island
by The Scene on May 21st, 2008
Ok, picture this: it’s August 25th, the day after the Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park just rocked your socks off and you’re dutifully combing the Northern California countryside looking for them and you suddenly think to yourself, "I hope I don’t have to wait more than month before I get to go to another huge music festival." Don’t worry, APE is way ahead of you, which is why the second annual Treasure Island Music Festival is happening on September 20th and 21st. Justice and the Raconteurs are headlining with TV On The Radio, Hot Chip, Aesop Rock, Tegan and Sara, Vampire Weekend (!), Spiritualized, The Dodos (!!), Fleet Foxes, John Vanderslice (!!!) and more.
San Francisco Values
by The Scene on May 21st, 2008
Sam Graves is a House representative from the great state of Missouri. He is a Republican running for reelection against Kay Barnes, the former mayor of Kansas City. This is his attack ad against her.
We’ve all heard the term "San Francisco Values" tossed about the political arena now and again but usually it’s usually just code for "teh gay" and how certain sections of the population don’t care for them. This ad though, is interesting because it pretty much takes the entire SF everything and attempts to use it as a weapon against Barnes, who apparently went to a party there once. Yes, it talks about "teh gay" but it shows video of a three people dancing, which we guess is also taboo (actually we’re being coy, the male dancer is black and the female dancers are white so the implication here is miscegenation. Also the black dude is wearing a cowboy hat, which he’s likely doing ironically so the other terrifying part of "San Francisco Values" is an appreciation of irony). The other shot is of a couple wearing sunglasses on a cable car. This is either a knock on public transportation or sunglasses, the jury is still out.
Being San Franciscans ourselves, our natural inclination would be to say "fuck you, politicians out here don’t show ads ripping on Kansas City, Missouri. Leave us the fuck alone and start preparing for the electoral bloodbath you’re going to suffer in November." We thought about saying that, but we decided that it would be better to just suggest to Mr. Graves that the next time he wants scare people about San Francisco, he should just show them this.
If you were wondering, here is Barnes’s response to Graves’s ad.
Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Britpop
by The Scene on May 20th, 2008
The new Spiritualized album, Songs In A & E, is streaming from their MySpace page for a week. It didn’t instantly grab us as hard as their masterpiece Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, which for our money has the best opening of any album in the history of ever, but it’s quality nonetheless. The sound is an interesting amalgamation of Britpop and shoegaze. It’s like the band couldn’t tell if they want to be Blur or Oasis and it stressed them out so much that they just got really really high.
Islands - Arm’s Way
by The Scene on May 20th, 2008
Up until now, the new album that we’ve spent the most time with this year is the self-titled Vampire Weekend hype-a-palooza. There have been albums that have knocked us on our asses harder than that one, The Mars Volta’s Bedlam In Goliath comes to mind, however the heavily blogged-about Columbia grads had a hold on us that we thought was going to be unbreakalbe until, signing heavily with the realization of how fucking cliche we are, we placed it atop our best of 2008 list.
This is a roundabout way of saying that when we poppped Arm’s Way, the sophmore release by the Islands, into our player we were in no way prepared for how completely our minds were about to be blown. It’s not that we’re weren’t aware our the album’s pedigree, their first album ,Return to the Sea, we really enjoyed and, well, there’s the Unicorns. When Vice Magazine called them "the greatest band in the world," we, at the time, were not inclined to disagree. That being said, we’ve seen firsthand how touchy a subject the Unicorns are. In our younger and more impressionable days, we saw the Islands on their very first ever cross-country tour and someone in the audience yelled a request for "Tough Ghost" - a Unicorns song. This was apparantly a bad idea because it caused frontman Nick Thorburn to get very angry, go off on a five minute rant on how much better the Islands were than the Unicorns, and refuse to play any more songs until the offending requester left. Yeah, it was a bit a awkward.
Whereas Return to the Sea seemed to have the specter of the Unicorns hovering right above it, heck it even started with a riff off a Unicorns lyric, Arm’s Way is the sound of a band coming completely into its own. It’s the sound of a band figuring out how to integrate every element of its sound into one cohesive musical aesthetic. It’s the sound of a band realizing that they can sound like Primus one minute, like Paul Simon the next and yet always sounds a little like Rush - and be totally okay with that. The Rush influence is interesting becase the prog elements that were hinted at in Return to the Sea are in full bloom here. With eight songs topping the five minute mark, the band is not afrid to take their songs whereever they feel like going. That being said, most songs wear out their welcome a bit but not in the bad way. Its like having a houseguest that’s supposed to only crash on your couch for a comple of days end up staying for a month but, after the fifth day, start selling you top-notch weed a huge discount. If you can find some way in which the previous sentence made sense, that’s how these songs feel.
Our favorite tracks are "Pieces of You", "Creeper" and "I Feel Evil Creeping In".
Blast From The Past
by The Scene on May 15th, 2008
People often remember the 60’s as an era that contained amazing music and/or too much acid. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of artistically viable yet extremely popular music helped cause some real big talent from ever making it past the B-List. So it goes when you compete against the Beatles. One of these B-List bands was a wonderful little group known as Spirit. Let’s talk about some cool things that Spirit did:
1. Their frontman was named Randy California, but surprisingly we don’t think we’ve ever bought drugs from him
2. They opened for Led Zeppelin’s tour in ‘68-’69, and the Zep regularly covered and borrowed from Spirit. Most notably, the opening chords to Stairway To Heaven are a direct lift from Spirit’s “Taurus”. Randy California may have also turned Jimmy Page onto touching (or not touching) a Theremin.
3. They released a concept album in 1970 called “Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus”. How BADASS is that??
Spirit’s sound sits somewhere between the Kinks and the Zombies, learning more heavily to the former, and their Dr. Sardonicus album is a true work of art. One of rock’s first concept albums (alongside Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds, Tommy, and Dark Side of the Moon), it stands as a soulful analysis of our (then) modern isolation and growing detachment from a state of nature. Sound familiar to half of the concept albums you’ve ever heard?
Here’s a song by them. It’s called Animal Zoo, and it will kick your ass.
Drink and Run
by The Scene on May 13th, 2008
This Sunday is one of SF’s most special days. It is a day for public drunkenness, moderate physical activity and all the gratuitous male nudity that the city’s motley collection of creepy 50-year old men think is appropriate (note: a lot). Yes, it’s Bay to Breakers - the only marathon you’re encouraged to do drunk and dressed in a silly costume.
We’re looking for a good ideas for costumes. The best ones we’ve heard so far are Hip-Hop Nativity, Teen Wolf and Creepy, Old Naked Guy. Put it in the comments.
Friday Rock City
by The Scene on May 10th, 2008
OMG? OMG???! OH MY FUCKING LOVE SHACK!!!
That’s right the B52’s are in town tonight, this wonderful Friday the 9th of May. They’ll be playing at The Independent starting at 9pm, and as far as city venues go by us snobs at The Scene, the Indie is a pretty swell place.
Let’s take just one moment to appreciate the B52’s. Some people might give you a funny look if you were to refer to these dude-O’s as “absolute geniuses”, but I ask you this: could you shoot to international fame on the crest of songs like Love Shack and Rock Lobster?? Could you maintain artistic credibility by writing the theme song to Rocko’s Modern Life?? This is REALLY, REALLY weird music, people!
And now they’re trying to stage a comeback. New album ain’t too shabby actually, but maybe “geniuses” is too strong a strong word. How about “crotch-mavens”? There, are you happy now, Scenesters?
The weekend cometh. We’re out like the dude singer in the B52’s after he had that long serious “I have to be me” talk with his parents back when he was 16″.
We Bought A Second Copy Of Pinkerton When Our First One Got Lost
by The Scene on May 8th, 2008
SFTS: This will make you sad about how bad Weezer has gotten. The first half of this song could have been done by Limp Bizkit
WVA: i kind of like pork and beans
SFTS: I kinda of did too, but listen to this. It killed all of my liking of that song
WVA: Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. This is fucking awful. This is why terrorists hate us.
SFTS: I don’t understand it, this song doesn’t make any sense. Are they fucking with us?
WVA: I just don’t know anymore. I was hoping that “Pork n Beans” was a return to the early days, at least it was humble. All the recent weezer shit has been big and annoying. Like a fat kid trying to fit in with the cool kids by eating things he’s not supposed to eat.
SFTS: I’m listening to their myspace right now and “Pork n Beans” just segued into “Say It Ain’t So”
WVA: Ha
SFTS: “Say It Ain’t So” makes that song just sound embarrassing. It kind of feels like the problem a lot of rappers have. It’s like their first album is full of real experiences on the street and it feels real and authentic and then they get big and successful and there’s no more authentic experience; the early Weezer albums are all about pain and real emotional heft. Then they got all successful after their comeback and now they having nothing to write songs about.
WVA: Well, it’s the awful situation in which, after the first album, you start feeling like you’re making a product and while any album is in fact a product, it’s the job of the artist to not treat it that way. Unlike any other business, songwriters AREN’T supposed to think about their customers until AFTER the songs are written.
SFTS: With weezer, I’m not sure if it’s even that. It feels more like they’re trying to stuff themselves into a mold into which they don’t really fit. They’re trying to be big stadium rockers without really altering their formula significantly
WVA: That’s exactly it; they’re trying to make a mass market product when they always worked best for that loser listening in his bedroom. The thing is, most people who actually pay for music are losers in their bedrooms, so by trying to get a mass audience they’ve abandoned anyone who’d connected and paid for their music
SFTS: Which is probably one reason why the guitars in all their new stuff sound fucking awful. Honestly that’s my biggest problem with new all the new Weezer songs. That last crime against nature / song excluded.
WVA: The guitars? Naw for me it’s River’s vocal delivery. There’s no interesting melody or chords either.
SFTS: It’s kind of a combination. It’s just like they think that putting vocals with really simple melodies in front of a wall of distorted power-chord fuzz is interesting. And it ain’t.
WVA: Well it’s what people did from 98-2003 and it worked then, they’ve just gotten out of touch
SFTS: Although, all the hate now getting thrown Weezer’s way is probably why they make songs like that
WVA: well less hate would come to them if they stopped sucking my ballsac
SFTS: I knew this chick that lived next to him in the dorms at harvard and used to blast weezer all the time. It really pissed him off. I thought that was a pretty awesome thing to do. She also used to sing along really loudly so he could hear her through the wall. I have no idea if this is true or not. I hope it is though because it would make the world a better place, same reason I believe in unicorns.
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