24. June 2014
Things You Can Buy Today 24 June 2014
This week’s Things You Can Buy is short and sweet with music from a band that will grab you by the throat and tickle and tweak your nipples, Jennifer Herrema is back funkier and strikingly wild and a band of country-soul-punks that may or may not have an album coming out.
So, lets crack a cold one, grease the ole fingertips and take a look at what we’re listening to this week and dig into some thoughts from around the web…
Mastodon – ‘Once More ‘Round The Sun‘ (Warner Bros.)
It is scientifically proven or at least it should be that Southern Prog-Metal Gods Mastodon have one of the most stable album catalogs in this the modern age of RAWK! Not a fan, time to get with the program. Mastodon’s One More ‘Round the Sun is poised to cement their reign as epic thunder Gods. Jackin’ up the harmonies and loosening up on the experimentation a bit. This is a band that is more and more comfortable being comfortable in their own sonic greatness.
Back in February of this year, Mastodon’s Brann Dailor told Loudwire’s ‘Gruhamed’ Hartmann, “Yeah, in regards that a lot of the stuff on the new record is very verse / chorus based. A lot of it was built as ‘less is more.’ We’ve done our really complex, mathy and even proggy records, but I think we write our best stuff when we strip it away from there. We focus on clear verses and choruses and add the proggy stuff in — salt and pepper it. I feel like we’ve done that in the past, where something wasn’t complicated enough, so let’s make it more complicated. It’s like, no, let’s make the song simpler. It took us a while to sound as good as I feel like it does. It’s very clean sounding and with a lot of really catchy verses and choruses going on.” he goes on ” It has some elements from all the albums in there, but then there’s lots of new stuff that I don’t recognize at all. That’s usually what we are really looking for, you know? There’s more of a surprise for ourselves and for fans. I, sort of, imagine people listening to it and either being absolutely horrified or absolutely loving it. Like, “Oh my god, what is this?!”
This is now and Once More ‘Round The Sun is out and Greg Kot writes in the Chicago Tribune; “For Mastodon diehards it may come across as a little too simplistic, a little too pop. The experiments or distinguishing touches are more contained. Some transform the songs for the better: the slide guitar that circles before fragmenting around the title track, the way the guitars chime, unify and then break loose in the almost-pretty “Asleep in the Deep.” Other left turns feel tacked on: the female cheerleader vocals in “Aunt Lisa” command, “Hey! Ho! Let’s get up and rock and roll!” That’s the kind of cliché Mastodon once routinely avoided.”
Avoided? Perhaps but we all need to accept for what we cannot change…The band’s evolution is fine by us. No matter what form it devours.
Black Bananas – ‘Electric Brick Wall‘ (Drag City)
From the ashes of too many fires to respectively go into Jennifer Herrema is back with her second Black Bananas effort. A mix and match basket of sounds in an almost too hipterish to want to bother with effort Electric Brick Wall but facts are usually facts and there is intrigue in what BB are up to. Mixing everything Herrema has learned and done with Royal Trux and RTX and adding some funked up additives to rattle your roll and worth a spin around the ole sound machine.
Ben Ratliff (NYT) said it best, “Black Bananas has both deranged and refined its concept. It’s grown weirder, funkier and more imposing.”
Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs – ‘Gates Of Hell‘ (Southpaw)
One of the best nuggets we’ve discovered on the Internets; Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs find themselves in a sonic universe nearly all alone. Country power-pop barbed with punk touches and a hard to nail down history creating a somewhat irritating situation but our interest levels run high.
We have no idea when this album comes out or if it is out or the band even cares if you can find it or not. I suppose we could ask them directly but that would make too much sense…
Shake it off, we can happily say that Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs are killer in the mixed breed music arena. Absolutely fresh for the ears and you’ll find the band taking their position on the corner of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and Warm Soda.
Best thing to do is offer up this track for you to decide…
What Are You Buying This Week…