The quality is pretty bad, but who cares?

Have to be brief. Sorry.


The Strange Boys | Greg Ashley's Medicine Fuck Dream | Tame...Tame And Quiet (Darkside Lounge)
Greg Ashley's Medicine Fuck Dream (some vulgar names on the list today) is a Gris Gris side project that continues in the same dark, psychedelic style of song-writing that has won Ashley comparisons to every celebrated tortured psych genius from the past forty years. The Strange Boys live in Austin now and their music has continued to evolve into a much more understated take on their sixties garage and soul fixation. Tame...Tame and Quiet are pretty different from the rest of this lineup with no obvious decade that you could point to for their inspiration, however that's also one of their many strengths.

NoMo Party (Zubar)
80's themed going away party for Zubar employee "Mo" who was instrumental in getting the Central Booking DJ's into Zubar as well as some of the better, hi-profile shows like Roxy Cottontail.

80's Night with DJ G (Hailey's)

Richard Buckner | Six Parts Seven(Dan's Silver Leaf)
Richard Buckner is consistent.

Anal Cunt | My Son, My Executioner | The Crimson Veil | Hearts Grow Dim (Red Blood Club)
I can't believe A.C. will be twenty next year. Today I was reminded of their 1997 track, "No, We Don't Want To Do A Split Seven Inch With Your Stupid Fucking Band." Classic.

Popup | Black Heart Society (Club Dada)

The split 7 inch is that much celebrated format where two artists can either highlight their differences or smugly display their similarities, but in either case, it's ultimately a show of unity no matter how philosophically different the two bands might be. The line between similarity and difference is blurred with the new split 7 inch release by Eat Avery's Bones and Koji Kondo, two bands that sometimes share a taste for busy visual aesthetic and equally busy music, but also leave subtle clues along the way that provide occasional insight into the motives behind their two willfully obscure sounds.

First of all, it's remarkable that bands still release vinyl. It's seen as a novelty by some but considered timeless and sacred by many, and no amount of gimmicky special edition Insound-only releases will ever change that for the diehards. I wonder if the shitty split Myspace Standalone player format can ever truly replace the split 7 inch as a cultural icon. My guess is that it cannot. Listening to this 7 inch on a turntable blasting through two huge analog towers instantly made me realize what you're missing when you're rocking an unintentionally distorted little file pushing through monitor speakers. I've accepted the pendulum swing of New Media and technology as they slice through the ghost of the 20th century, but I don't think the vinyl experience will ever be properly recreated or replaced. I'm sorry, but I just don't like to get down to a cell phone. The depth and dimension of music on vinyl can fill an entire room rather than settling for what usually feels more like the sound of a meek and thin advertisement clip obnoxiously being spat at you from a computer screen.

Eat Avery's Bones visually display their most telling difference with Koji Kondo by being the band in the 7 inch insert with smiles on their faces, a rather fitting pose for a group that has such a playful attitude towards everything they do. From their impossibly colorful flier art to their neon merchandise, ridiculous live antics and jittery song structures, the group has one of the most self assured senses of identity that I've ever encountered in a local group. The obvious insecurity and awkwardness that young bands often exhibit in their stage presence and general presentation is largely missing from Eat Avery's Bones, and the result is quite refreshing. Their half of the record is a perfect three song sliver of the E.A.B. sound. "Nice Ice" starts off with tentacled guitar parts crawling over a menacingly simple keyboard pattern that becomes as progressively complex as the main lick before they both begin to mock each other to climactic effect. The singing on the 7 inch is a showcase for lead singer Matt's high pitched vocal frequency, and the band somehow manages to sound even more piercing on a recording than they do live. This might be partly due to the fact that when playing live, they tend to use a telephone in lieu of a mic, or maybe its because they often have someone dressed in a wizard costume as opposed to, say, having a mic stand. This causes the vocals to be heard only part of the time in many cases, and hearing the band in such shrill clarity on this record was a good reminder that they have never had any desire to be subtle or easily digestible, though the catchiness of their memorable backing tracks will sometimes cause you to forget that. There is a purposely immature and irreverent humor that runs through their songs, and though I've heard that "Nice Ice" is possibly about meth, it's anyone's guess as to what "Vowel Sounds" or "Dike Hike" is about. Something tells me they don't care whether or not you ever figure it out.

Koji Kondo is not smiling on their half of the insert and that is no accident, a fact only reinforced by what you hear when you flip the record to their side: a brief earful of power chord distorto-sludge coupled with a screaming intro. This is intro is somewhat misleading, however, and "Bee Vomit" is a more proper example of the band's main strengths: unique semi-clean guitar splatter with a very direct singer who sounds like he's reading from an angry journal he keeps while slugging it out at some miserable day-job. I can't overstate how startlingly great Koji Kondo's guitar parts can be, by the way. I'm sometimes reminded of the extreme technical prowess of Upsilon Acrux, the avant-guitar originators in The Magic Band, or Deerhoof side project Natural Dreamers. This is high praise considering all three groups I just mentioned will make you rethink the possibilities of guitar based music. The experimental aspects of Koji Kondo's music are usually reeled in by a dedication to hardcore rhythms that break through with stampeding intensity, and the lyrics are literate without showing off, offering poignant little shards of pessimistic observation like "evading terminal diagnosis/if it doesn't kill you/it'll be with you 'til something does". Reassuring. It's little moments like these that will have you reaching for the lyric insert over and over, which is quite a rare thing in the North Texas music scene.

Koji Kondo features two thirds of The Blonde Girls, who's 7 inch we praised here last year. Koji is decidedly less experimental than The Blonde Girls, and that's a plus or a minus depending on your take on music. Whereas Blonde Girls had long instrumental parts and often performed without microphones, Koji Kondo wants every word and note to sink in as a whole, and it shows. As much as I enjoyed The Blonde Girls, I think Koji Kondo is an improvement on some of the concepts of that band, serving as a good example of how mixing a healthy amount of traditionalism with more outlandish approaches can make for a rewarding listening experience that might please gutter punk and turtle-necked indie nerd alike.

Speaking of that divide, I was told that Good Records doesn't usually carry local 7 inches, but that they did so with this one because they "liked the art". How big of them to designate what will probably amount to less than a square foot of store space, huh? I hate to criticize a brick and mortar record store in these tough times, but their dismissive attitude towards projects like this has bothered me for most of a decade. I want them to survive even if I don't agree with them, but they should hope that the last shouted lines of the Koji Kondo side of this record don't read like a prophecy: "We'll do it ourselves and put this asshole out of work".

I have about two minutes left before I have to leave my computer, so all I can do for you today is give you a couple links and send you on your way. Luckily, there doesn't appear to be a ton of stuff going on this evening. If you can think of any shows to add, throw em up in the comments, and check back with us later tonight for a local review.

First, you've got the return of This is Radio Clash with Flashlight Party at Hailey's tonight.

Second, you've got a show at Rubber Gloves featuring:

Beauxregard | Brokenizer | Fizzy Dino Pop

Throwing a fit when one doesn't get a front row seat at a fashion show is the kind of behavior that we commonly associate with royalty, celebrities, socialites, and Lenny Kravitz. But in a world where an English Prince is actually trying to fight in Iraq and Sean fucking Penn is apparently the most charismatic anti-war spokesperson that the left can drag in front of a television screen, it probably makes sense that Geordon Nicol, one of the founding members of New York's (in)famous DJ trio Misshapes, demanded the best seats in the house at a recent G Star fashion show and threatened to leave if he didn't get his way. After all, in the eyes of Madison Avenue, Nicol is one of the hippest people on the planet, and he seems to be well aware of it.

And really, why shouldn't he have a little attitude? Think about it: if you'd read a Village Voice article that compared your presence in the downtown New York scene to those of Larry Levan, Fab 5 Freddy and Andy Warhol among others, you would probably feel entitled to take full advantage of your 15 minutes too. Its undeniable that the Misshapes have had a noticeable impact on what we'll call "hipster culture" (for lack of a better term) over the past couple of years, and if comparing them to Larry Levan seems more than a bit ridiculous to you, you might want to consider the number of 18-24 year olds around the country that know who Misshapes are and compare that to the total number of people that knew who Larry Levan was during his first two years at Paradise Garage. This has everything to do with media technology and nothing to do with musical innovation to be sure, and the long term cultural significance of emo hair and Depeche Mode revivals is questionable at best, but the result is unchanged: Misshapes have built a gigantic and loyal following in one of the world's most exciting cities, and not just any hipster dumbasses can pull something like that off.

Just look at what they're up to these days if you don't believe me. After packing houses for several years with their regular DJ nights in New York, curating the music at just about every major party during New York's fashion week, and sharing decks with Madonna and a slew of other high powered celebrities over the past few months, Misshapes are cashing in on downtown cool as they embark on their first ever national tour, bringing the Lower East Side to us Red State folks just as Gawker's anti-Misshapes coup d'etat has started to drive the trio's stock price down with the Brooklyn/Houston- Ludlow hipsters that put them on the map in the first place. Of course, it would be far too easy to completely dismiss Misshapes and those that emulate them as clueless hipsters, and it would be incorrect to say that their sets aren't exciting and highly entertaining at times. But with all their lucrative corporate tie-ins and friends in high places, it also must be noted that the trio has been able to milk the current incarnation of 00's hipster cool more effectively and notoriously than almost anyone else on the face of the planet (other than Vice).

Take their upcoming set this Saturday at the Lizard Lounge in Dallas as an example. Normally, a well known DJ can pull in quite a nice cover at a large established dance venue like the Lizard Lounge, but Misshapes didn't come all the way to Dallas to take your money. No, they're just here to chill out and throw a huge free party with their ultra hip friends over at R.J. Reynolds, and if you want to go, all you have to do is get an account and RSVP (aka "track down your local rep") over at Camel's website. But wait a minute. Since when are the old southern white men that run R.J. Reynolds "ultra-hip," you ask? Well, it might surprise you to learn that they practically invented the term, at least in the parlance of our times (get it?).

Not to get all "truth.com" on your ass, but a 1994 internal document produced by Camel's marketing department has been cited by Naomi Klein and others as the first document of its kind to make use of the contemporary idea of a "hipster" to describe a marketing demographic that the brand was having trouble reaching. In this rather humorous report, the marketers describe scenes of urban young adults scoring smokes at cool bars as they talk all cool and do various other cool things. Here's an example of one of the scenarios the document lays out:

Saturday night. Smoke filled night club. 1am. Nirvana blares through the sound system. The cigarette machine is broken. Lisa's looking to bum a smoke. She saunters up to the bar in her ripped Levi's and vintage motorcycle jacket and looks at the bartender. "Manny, got an extra cigarette?" Manny reaches into the chest pocket of his black tee shirt and pulls out a Camel.

You get the idea. And if you think it sounds like they were way off on what was hip in 1994, all you have to do is go rent a copy of Clerks in order to see that RJR was pretty much right on the money with this one. As the document goes on to state, Camel started an aggressive campaign 13 years ago to get to these cool kids and link the Camel brand image to whatever happens to be hip at any given time. One look at their Website (or a quick flashback of the Camel sponsored Ladytron show at Hailey's a couple months ago) reveals that they've been pretty successful at doing just that. They currently sponsor all kinds of events all over the country that deliver consumable hipster culture to people in all kinds of famously unhip locations with little or no direct sales pitch involved, other than a friendly reminder that Joe Camel is the motherfucker that told you about all this cool stuff in the first place, dipshit.

What does this all mean? Who knows. The ideas behind branding and its effects on target markets are certainly debatable and mostly immeasurable, and we're certainly not going to sit here and lecture you about corporations and society and why its so wrong to dance. After all, the Misshapes party will probably be pretty fun, and we might even show up to it ourselves (I've already contacted MY Camel rep, have you?) It just seems funny that Misshapes, who have become a perfect example of savvy hipster self-marketers, are teaming up with Camel, the people that just might have invented the modern hipster marketing demographic in the first place. If nothing else, this connection might pop into your mind five years from now, during the middle of the inevitable grunge revival, when you're sitting at a bar in your ripped Levi's and motorcycle jacket, laughing about the bad clothes in that old issue of Fader and desperately searching your pockets for that one last delicious cigarette. That damn Manny might have moved on to another job at that point, but rest assured, your local Camel rep might just be sitting at the other end of the bar doing something cool. And you know he'll probably hook you up.

Misshapes play this Saturday at Lizard Lounge with our friend Justin V (formerly of High Society) opening.

You know how we always say "coming up this week blah blah" and then whatever we say is going to happen doesn't actually happen until way after we say its supposed to? Well this week, you can actually expect good stuff, so stay tuned. We've all been a little busy lately, but you'll see things getting back in gear within the next day or two. We've got a couple new writers that will hopefully add to our ability to cover more ground each week, so we're looking forward to it. And so are you.

Church of the Snake | Clipd Beaks | Chief Death Rage (Rubber Gloves)
I don't know anything about all the personal shit that people have been throwing back and forth around here concerning Rubber Gloves and it's owner, but the phrase "pick your battles" certainly comes to mind every time I read an overly negative comment directed towards one of the best all around commercial venues in either Denton or Dallas. In any event, tonight's show promises to be a can't miss in this music expert's mind, and I'll tell you why. First, Chief Death Rage. You already know why they're good. Second, Tigerbeat 6's Clipd Beaks, whose spaced out noisy industrial psychedelic rock has the potential to destroy Rubber Gloves much the same way that Indian Jewelry did a few months ago. A near perfect blend of so much that I like (and not your normal Tigerbeat 6 thing either), I'd be willing to bet the price of admission that they'll be more than worth seeing, and anyone thats into Deerhunter, Liars or the Black Angels will probably agree with me. Third, Church of the Snake. I admittedly don't know a whole lot about this band, but shit: the few things I have heard from them are quite exciting. Listen to the little snip on their Myspace page if you'd like further proof. I usually try not to be so reckless with making a recommendation about a band I don't know, but their brutal songs make them seem worth the risk to me.



And if you're down Dallas way and feeling a bit adveturous, you can head over to Club Dada (strange sequence of words, no?) to see the supremely strange Danielle & Thomas play what I believe is their first show. Head over to their Myspace page and imagine the number of directions that this show might take. Could be great, could be terrible. Who know? I'd listen to "Thomas Meeting Danielle," which is actually a pretty great little track. They appear to be opening, so I'd get there early if you feel like giving it a shot.

There is nothing going on in your town tonight. And it's your fault.

1. Voot Cha Index - The Talking House/Cradle 7"
2. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Ever Sank
3. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
4. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
5. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
6. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
7. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Ever Sank (Deluxe)
8. Low - Drums and Guns
9. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Living with the Living
10. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
11. !!! - Myth Takes (2CD)
12. Beirut - Lon Gisland
13. J Dilla - Ruff Draft
14. Air - Pocket Symphony
15. Peter Bjorn & John - Writer's Block
16. Lily Allen - Alright, Still
17. Menomena - Friend and For
18. Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
19. Shins - Wincing the Night Away
20. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (Deluxe)