Goddamn. Has it been that long since we had new Ultimate Fakebook tunes? Download this, post-haste. I’ve had to wait through a morning of work and lunch with Thing 2 to get this, and it can’t download fast enough.
A copy of It Is What It Is, the new album from Philadelphia’s Dirty Tactics showed up in my mailbox a few weeks ago, and it kind of got set aside in favor of the new Gatorface album, which had come in the same package.
That might have been a bit of a mistake. As much as I like that Gatorface record (Wasted Monuments, out now on No Idea), It Is What It Is is so much more a summer album. While structurally kind of weird - sounding more like a label comp of like-minded bands than a cohesive, coherent release from one act - the mix of Killers sing-along choruses, Drive Like Jehu / Hot Snakes style garage guitar, and pop-punk’s sense of fun make this an exuberant record.
The album’s second track, “Baltimore,” is exactly the sort of song that I would expect to blow up modern rock radio this summer. It’s catchy as all hell, with a powerful chorus. It’s a song of longing and wanting to be somewhere else, but stuck in a job you have to do because you need the money - something to which everyone who’s spent a summer apart from their honey can relate.
It Is What It Is is out now on Say-10 Records.
Holy hell. DJ Jazzy Jeff and Mick Boogie dropped their Summertime mixtape earlier this week, and I’ve listened to it every day since I downloaded it. It’s both on my iPod and burned off to CD for easy playing in the boombox, stereo, and car. This is officially a billion times better than any of the comps I’ve made myself and thrown in the car over the past few weeks.
Seriously - while segueing from James Brown’s “The Payback” into “Never Gonna Get It” by En Vogue is obvious as all get out, it still sounds fucking awesome. There’s also Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day,” the Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By,” 2PAC, and Seals & Croft. It’s an hour of chilled-out, sippin’ on vodka and lemonade, stone-solid fucking jams. Go over to UNDRCRWN and download that sucker.
Lawrence label Solid Melts put up their summer comp this week, too. It’s also a giant, featuring quite a few bands that you ought to know (Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, Expo 70), and a ton of acts that are totally unknown. It’s called Empire of Fun, and you can get it direct from Solid Melts.
If you’re a little leery of downloading a 125 meg file, the Rathaus is streaming six of their favorite tracks, and you can get a pretty good idea of what to expect. That Cloud Nothing track is very much worth your time.
Earlier this week, the Onion’s AV Club put up “Praise, then crucify: 25 anti-music-journalist songs.” This is so relevant to this blog, it hurts. When you consider our focus is writing about books and magazines that are written about music, we’re already fairly meta.
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Many apologies for not getting this out there sooner, but the holiday pretty much slowed everything to a crawl around the Nuthouse.
Congrats are in order to the winners of out two soundtracks for The Last Airbender: Dan Rathbun and Paul Serena. Thanks again to Lakeshore Records.
Stay tuned for our next contest.
I’ve started tweeting reviews of books I read that aren’t musically related. The music books will always see full reviews here, but I read scads of other stuff (graphic novels, memoirs, whatever else happens to seem interesting at the library), and want to clue folks in on the dross and the gold.
If you’d like to know what I think about the other stuff that ends up on the coffee table, just check out the Twitter feed to the right, or follow me via @nuthousepunks. I may end up collecting them here on Fridays, as well.
After last week’s repeat podcast, we’re back this week with a roar. Lots and lots of hardcore from groups both old and new. Granted, there’s a bit of a pop buffer at the beginning and end, but the middle nine tunes are fairly much abrasive.
The weather’s been crap around the Nuthouse lately, so it’s only natural to try and work out some of the crankiness built up. Having the spend the one nice day of the past week mowing my lawn only added to everything nasty.
So just picture a grown man stomping around his basement like a toddler deprived of a cookie, and you’ll get the image of what went on down here in the basement while recording this week’s podcast.
Due to a massive week at the day job while one of my co-workers is out of town getting hitched, I’m totally unable to keep up with my work on Wayward Blog, keep my household running, and do a new podcast this week.
Have no fear, however. We’re going to run a podcast I did for Wayward Blog back in January. It’s a focus on the book Hollywood Hi-Fi (you can read my review here), and it was the template for the Sunglasses After Dark podcast. It’s a little rough, but I think you’ll enjoy it. We’ll be back with podcast #5 next week, and it’s going to be a heavy-hitter.
So, we’re getting off to a rocky start.
However, the link to the podcast is FIXED.
Sorry to break the news, but while the site’s going to stay up, and I may or may not do something with it, I’ve taken a job wherein I get paid to do EXACTLY what I’ve been doing here for the past four years or so.
Kansas City’s The Pitch, the long-running free weekly that I’ve been reading since I was in high school (if not junior high) hired me on a couple weeks ago to write for their Wayward Blog.
I’m going to miss this site, and I hope I can find a way to keep something going here that doesn’t conflict with Wayward Blog. Until then - stay cool, everybody.