What's Up Tommy?

Defies rating

Jay O’Donnell covers a certain high school principal.

Tommy Boy.

Black Royalty

(4.0/5.0)
Just soak your soul in this shit yo. Bronze Nazereth is as close to HOLY as any mc will ever hope to be. Like, he just preached some really obscure truth about the universe and i loved it. The trumpets are ushering the new millenium of enlightment, while Nazereth tells you to give him your guns and you he will give you these scriptures. Seriously, they should get the bloods and the crips in one room and have this guy just rap this song in like a huge white robe with like mad bitches grinding up on him and shit. Whos that wu-tang poet so graphic?

What A Wonderful Man

*4.7 out of 5*

The most victorious, fuck-yeah song off of My Morning Jacket's 2005 Z is "What A Wonderful Man", written in celebration of the band's dear friend and former band member Aaron Todovich, who took his own life. Lead singer Jim James told "Velocity Weekly" in an interview about his frustration with bands writing sad songs about dead people. He was like fuck it, I loved this guy, let's celebrate. This live version off of MMJ's powerfully full-sounding live album Okonokos is the song's best released recording.

There is no way better to honor your friend like the solo that kills at 1:16.

Walrus

4.1 / 5 Not for everybody
Boris: Sludge/Stoner/Doom/Japanese Metal
Merzbow: Japanese Feedback Whitenoise Legend
I am the Walrus: One of the Beatles most surreal songs
All together you get one hell of a cover. With Boris making the song as heavy as the possibly can and Merzbow throwing in his static edge. Sure, many may hear it and react like my sister did apon overhearing it ("it sounds like you're trying to listen to a crappy song on a broken radio), but for the few who enjoy that face melting psychedelic fuzz it's a thing of beauty. One of the highlights is at 4:14 when Takeshi takes the singing.
It's also amusing just because the guys have Japanese accents.

The Trees

4.7/5.0: i'm biased as hell, but this song is amazing.

Rush. Being a total Rush fan-boy, I was bound to mention them in an article sometime, and well, here we are. From their initial major label debut in 1974, Rush, to this year’s release more than three decades later, they have run the complete gamut in terms of popular progressive rock. Starting off as nothing more than a Zeppelin spin-off group, Rush dropped drummer John Rutsey from the lineup after their first release and added soon-to-be famous percussion virtuoso Neil Peart for their second, Caress of Steel. By the time their sixth album, Hemispheres, hit shelves in 1978, the Canadian power trio was in full rocking form, fascinating musicians and nerds everywhere with their quirky mix of fantastic musicianship and powerful lyrics (and Geddy Lee’s love-it-or-hate-it falsetto shriek).

“The Trees” is the third of four tracks on the disc. Entering with a beautifully simple acoustic introduction by guitarist Alex Lifeson followed by a brief verse softly spoken by Geddy, “The Trees” quickly turns into a rocker when Neil Peart joins the fray and Lifeson’s acoustic morphs into a characteristic electric (if you can’t tell an Alex Lifeson chord you haven’t listened to classic rock), following the vocal melody over a simple chord progression. Don’t let the absurd opening line, “There is trouble in the forest,” fool you. Lyricist Peart is onto a serious topic, here. The maples, trees in a forest, feel oppressed by the height of their oppressors, the oaks, who are stealing all of the sun’s light for themselves. Intriguing, no? After the scene is fully set, an atmospheric instrumental is lead by Lifeson’s soft guitar picking and then trades off lead to Geddy Lee’s melodic bass. This respite naturally morphs into a guitar solo and then into a strong climactic chord progression, after which the final verse is sung:

"So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw."

Blood Of The Sunworm

Blood of the Sunworm - Giant Skyflower Band (2007, Soft Abuse)

KJ_
8.8/10
Trippppy.

H_
7.4/10: a little too amorphous for me, but it's all about feeling

I can’t claim to have even seen the words Giant-Skyflower-Band in concurrence before Tony brought up this psychedelic progressive pop band. After a cursory inspection of merely the album art, one can tell that this album, Blood of the Sunworm, is the definition of low-publicity casual music. But, they say not to judge a book by its cover, and so should not the same be applicable to music?

After a few quick listens (the album doesn’t even break the half hour mark), Blood of the Sunworm feels like the set list that an American folk/pop band would play in an opium den in India. The general mood and primordial palpation of the closing instrumental track, “Meditations on Christ and the Magi,” is an excellent example. Listening to that track makes me feel like I’m lying down on a couch in someone’s obfuscated basement, while light sneaks through soupy windows and I pass a hookah around with people I don’t even know.

The rest of the album isn’t quite so specifically atmospheric, distinguished by an almost perpetual primitively played guitar and acid-afflicted drums. For me, the disc’s highlight is the brief instrumental “All of Us (You and Me)”. The undeniable inebriated vocals of Glenn Donaldson vacate the premises for a while, and the group sits down to compose, an aspect evidently exigent on the rest of the album. The result really is beautiful, ineffably so.

In summation, Blood of the Sunworm presents nothing more than an exceptionally trippy jam session from the brainchild of strange pop. It’s immediately intangible, but equally infectious at times; I think it will warrant a few summer listens. Don’t expect Pink Floyd just because I mentioned psychedelic and progressive in the opening paragraph; this one’s peregrine in every sense of the word.

_Schantz
6.7 / 10

It has all the right components: a laid back lo-fi sound, a vocalist with a really interesting voice, some acoustic guitars and drums with exotic instruments mixed in, and a name like “Giant Skyflower Band”. The opening track starts out very solid. Distant strumming slowly comes together into a twanging echoing sitar soaked backdrop to Glenn Donaldson’s lovable crooning. But then the next track comes on and it’s the same pieces used in the exact same way. And again. And again.

Sure there have been several great bands where every song sounded the exact same (Galaxie 500, the Strokes, Guitar Wolf), but this album just didn’t strike me that way. All of the songs drift along slowly propelled by some soft acoustic guitar and sitar strumming.

Don’t get me wrong, it has it’s moments of glory, and they’re pretty glorious. The opening track is a perfectly crafted piece of psych-folk-pop that sounds like Donovan just rolled out of bed. The closing track Meditations on Christ and the Magi drifts along for several minuets of lush sitar drone with just the right touch of ambient noise thrown in. Feast of Blood finally brings an organ into the mix and the result is that variety that is greatly needed and the chorus “don’t be afraid of the feast of blood” happily juxtaposed against a lazy sunshine brigade of music.

Blood of the Sunworm has a great vibe to it, but so many of the tracks sound recycled versions of one another. Perhaps I’m just spoiled by the great variety of the Elephant 6 bands in the same vein that used three times as many instruments, but I was really expecting more (think Olivia Tremor Control). The band was created when “ Donaldson quickly invited multi-instrumentalist Shayde Sartin to ‘smoke marijuana & make up strange pop songs,’ and thus the band was born.”, and it’s a bummer when that’s all the band sounds like. The album has its gems, but those nuggets of bliss are sewn together with sadly forgettable psych-pop songs that are one step away from being great.

Deerhunter - Fluorescent Grey

(4.4/5.0)
Yo this song creeps me out, and so does the band. The singer is like 65 pounds and seven feet tall, he isn't even on herione or anything, but you wouldn't deny it after listening to his band's new EP. This song, same name as the EP, is fucking scary. It starts with this pensive piano loop, adds some bass drum, and then that 7 foot tall guy...Jesus these lyrics are fucking weird. I wouldn't be suprised if people would be turned off by them, i mean he is talking about a kid he knew in high school (a dude, yeah i know, homosexual references omg!) and about how he dreams alot about the kids body, a body that will, in his words "will be fluorescent grey". So the band is obsessed with Sex and Death, pretty cool. The song is aight, ?acoustic? guitars scurry over the piano loop, and then they talk about the kid being a god, oh FUCK, Then it hits 2:06: An insane psychedelic MBV-ish drone-ish something-ish things just ejaculates all over the track and it sounds oh so pretty. The vocals do that whole shoegazer thing, the drums play the same simple rhythm and it just rocks out for the rest of the track until it cools back down into the piano loop at about 4:15. Alright, so we have a song about kid's body decaying, and the singer says patiently alot, and there is that amazing psych break down that kind of sounds like what heaven should feel like. Anyway, this song is ill and i can't wait to see these dudes in NYC, they better play this song, and when that break down hits im prolly gonna be crying peacefully or banging my head against an amp. Whatever, Deerhunter have mad potential to be the next MBV/Sonic Youth/...fuck it they could be great.