BREAKING (UP) NEWS: BLADES DO THE SPLITS

HEY PASADENA! THERE ARE LIKE FOUR REALLY REALLY GOOD DUDES IN YOUR TOWN WITHOUT A BAND. No. We’re not talking about Cop Warmth (are there even four of them anymore? Does Bryan Jackson count?), were talking about the dudes formerly known as Blades. Details are as sketchy as an envelope found in the Numbers’ bathroom at this point, but our insider source is able to reveal that they recently moved out of their practice space and “some of them just got tired of it and wanted to do something different.” Something different that rock out the sweet jams? Further investigation is merited.

Blades came into their own last year with the release of the Skyline Network-acclaimed workout ep Who’s the Creampuff Now. Now that, their Grey Ghost release and the nearly floor shattering performance as the Foo Fighters at the Hootenanny are all that remains of what was once the most promising Houston instrumental rock band not named By The End of Tonight. We will miss their angular jocularism nearly as much as we will making up what their tite jams were about. Be well, oh former Blades, and start new bands soon.

THE SKYLINE 50: PART TWO

Part two of our all week series of the best tracks to come out this year

Eight For Eight - The Dimes
Wires and Buttons (Grey Ghost #47)
We love the Dimes. We love this song. We love the man who recorded it. But treading as gently as possible on the feelings of all those involved, a much tighter version of it is begging to exist. The springing and sprightlyness of the guitar lead, which screams, “we may have developed a new form of cowboy rock” plays along like saddle soap with the souza march of the snare, both flowing well into the sort of SEND UP THE ROCK breakdowns we’ve come to expect from this soon to be differently-named foursome. But secrets – re-record soon.


Everyone is Gay – Black Math Experiment
All You Need is Blood
We hope that you never find yourself wandering aimlessly through the falling snow on the grounds of an empty ski resort in the Utah mountains, asking yourself if you have made the right relationship decisions and if maybe burying things in the snow to try and find later was a good idea. Never question yourself like that. You made the right decision. Put this song on repeat, go wander around in the woods for awhile and feel better. It’s so catchy and fun you’ll completely overlook the fact that it’s bemoaning how much other people do not rule, but you rule even less. But isn’t that the job of a good pop song? To confront you with temporary truths of your life and make you feel better about them?


Exist – Papermoons
Papermoons 7”
This is such a delicately beautiful song on such a delicately beautiful ep. Timid little guitar strokes and drums low in the mix, with vocals telephoned and dialed down to being barely audible during the breaks. On record, this perfect little warbler is a bird in the nest, asking why we can’t just live. On the stage, Papermoons are a rockier and a rollier, and this song tells you unequivocally that you are living, and that this is one of the best expressions of it you’ve heard all year.


Fire For Wings – Gretchen Schmaltz
Laced Up Tightly
Sometimes we wonder if the brushes in the opening verses of this song are on a drum, or maybe a little bit of percussive time-keeping a loathed step-daughter makes as she sweeps the cold and foot-worn wood floors; wanting release, wanting to let go, wanting to go to the ball. Making an afternoon of mope and the way the light filters through the blinds and dust into her own private waltz, Gretchen’s voice Huck Fins you into her chores with equal parts husk, soult and unknowing.


Goodnight, Goodluck, Godspeed and Goodbye – Listen Listen
Listen Listen
The Listen Listen formula for (whips!) songwriting is to start with an instrument raid on the store-room of the Grande Old Oprey. Make a getawy in an olde time medicine huckster’s covered wagon/traveling stage horse-drawn contraption. Trot lazily through the night, drinking every brown bottle of snake oil rattling on the shelves until you fall asleep. Pick up an extra few wandering musicians by the side of the road. Stop at a revival tent near dawn. Be forgiven. Sleep through the day in the light of the Lord.


Goons, Hired Goons – Blades
Who’s the Creampuff Now
Quick! Make for the exits! Lock the doors! Watch out for snakes! Beware the CBS Saturday Murder Mystery! This empire is not Holy, or Roman, or even an empire! Who’s the center square! Stay out of Wollworths! This song has a way of running its riffs through your memory bands, connecting one thought to another in ways unaccustomed. It’s a hard one to concentrate on any one thread throughout it. Presumably, it’s about goons – but there’s nothing particularly menacing about it. Neither does it lumber and disappoint like so many Homers. BEHOLD, THE FACE OF HELEN!


Granny Clampet’s Pure Grain Know-it-All – Dizzy Pilot
**** Out the Bones
ROCK YEAH! Lest the last few tracks make you think otherwise, we are into things that get the heart a pumping and fist a shakin’. We can’t make word-one out of the vocals on this banger, but we’re totally content with any song where the don’t put down the phone and spell things out to us. The perfect soundtrack for sketchy 80 mph cab rides down the back-streets of Lafayette, Louisiana in a car whose head-liner is being ripped away by the pummeling gust-stink from the open windows and which hasn’t been washed since the meter stopped working four years ago.


The Grey Call – benjamindavismurphy
Grey Ghost #43
One of the best things about the Grey Ghost series (there could be no one best thing, cause it’s about as whips an idea as soup in a breadbowl) is all the old tracks clamoring around on people’s four-track tapes that wouldn’t otherwise see the light of day. Like this minute and a half jangler from friend of the Skyline Ben Murphy, for example. It’s a reminder that the best chicken is nuggets, and that it’s generally pretty chell to go ahead and put your stuff out there.


The Guards – Gretchen Schmaltz
Laced Up Tightly
Were it not for this track (and, in fairness Elaine Greer as of late), you wouldn’t be able to ever convince us that there are any solo-flying songstresses out there that weren’t on the sad train to bummersville. Not that this sort of expression doesn’t have it’s place, but just like every rose has it’s thorn, so too must it want nuthin but a good time (and it don’t get better than this).


He’s Home With Bones that Grow the Way They’re Supposed to – By The End of Tonight
He’s Home With Bones that Grow the Way They’re Supposed To
To paraphrase our own review, it’s like a bunch of miscreant school-yard jump-ropers from planet Angry Purple Sun got together and tried to tell the story of the Bayeux Tapestry through a combination of freaking you out and stealing your lunch money to buy you pomegranates they later hide under your pillow. If this song was accidentally swapped out with whatever was on the phonograph record they put on the Voyager spacecrafts, an entire terrified universe is going to preemptively invade us just so their children can sleep at night.

HOOTENANNY! UPDATES: AWESOME! WEEZES! BLADES FIGHT FOO! SATIN HOOKS WIPE UP!

YUSS. We've got more exciting news about January's HOOTENANNY! First off, Blades have confirmed that they are playing as the Foo Fighters. Minds are blown. Minds are collected into little plastic bags and poured, via funnel, back into cranial cavity. Not to be outdone, beloved defenders of the realm, AWESOME!, will re-unite yet again to play a set as Weezer. Leave your brain on the floor this time, cause it's in too many pieces to try and pick back up and put together. While you're standing there looking at it, all pink and spaghetti looking, perhaps wrap it around the fact that Satin Hooks are going to be playing as The Wipers, who, more authoritative sources than us insist, are an actual band (and one that Nirvana covered, no less - so BAM - 90'S IN YOUR FACE, KID). These aficionados of Alternative Nation and all that was good about it are joining a lineup that includes:

Fatal Flying Guilloteens as Jesus Lizard
Indian Jewelry as Depeche Mode
The Dimes as The Pixies
The Mathletes as The Flaming Lips
Paper Moons as Pedro the Lion
John Sears as Sam Cooke

We're still waiting to tease out the news as to who specifically Something Fierce, Bring Back the Guns, Satin Hooks and The Jonx will be playing as - plus who knows what surprise announcements we may have hidden up our flannel and silk-lined sleeves. As we previously reported, the whole HOOTENANNY! will go down the night of January 5th at The Mink's Backroom. Yusss.

UPDATE: This is why it is good that other people are involved in the organization of this event, because they tend to remember things that we just simply forget cause we're getting long in the tooth and short in the mind. Yep, we compeltely spaced on the fact that The Jonx has, in fact, already confirmed that they will be playing as (drumroll.....) nomeansno! LUCKY YOU! THANKS JONX!

AFTER FRIDAY, THERE’S EVEN MORE CHILL STUFF TO ENJOY

So, once Friday has finished destroying you and you’ve had your traditional Saturday breakfast of coffee and Steak-N-Eggs, what are you going to do with yourself?! Well, if you’re like us, you’re totally on top of everything and don’t even remotely need the weekend to accomplish such man-tasks as gardening, re-paving the driveway or dredging the moat. So, for those of you rudderless scooners out there, we’re more than happy to provide a keel and a compass for how the weekend should go down. Dig:

SATURDAY AFTERNOON: SECRET SATURDAY SHOW
This weekend is the first of what we are told by the mystery organizer (who, rumor and IP address has it, is none-other than local solo-rocker Broman) will be a weekly series of shows on Saturday afternoons at the Shady Tavern, a total neighborhood ice-house of a spot in the Heights. Every week they’ll be DJs (starting at noon) and 3-4 bands (starting at 2pm) – but who they are will remain a mystery until they hit the stage. Indeed, the bands themselves won’t even know who else is playing. The shows are free and 21+. We would say check out their MySpace page for more information, but not having any is kind of the point.

EARLY EVENING: PUNK HOUSE @ DOMY BOOKS
Writer/photographer Abby Banks brings her book and movie Punkhouse to Domy. Punkhouse, which was edited by Thurston Moore, “features anarchist warehouses, feminist collectives, tree houses, workshops, artists’ studios, self-sufficient farms, hobo squats, community centers, basement bike shops, speakeasies, and all varieties of communal living spaces.” So, sort of like if someone made a coffee table book about Nevada Street, Lamar House and Faegen House. They’ll also be acoustic sets from Tim Finden and Pat the Bunny. Good opportunity to pick up the next Grey Ghost release too(which is 13 new freaking tracks from Golden Axe!!!!). 7pm. Free.

NITE TIME: DON CABELLERO, BLADES, ANIMAL @ THE PROLETARIAT
Betcha thought we were gonna suggest the Bodog Battle of the Bands! You know us so well.

SUNDAY: FOG, LISTEN LISTEN, THE DIMES @ THE PROLETARIAT
The reason why The Dimes make sense on this bill: They are bad ass. Same for Listen Listen.

REVIEW: BLADES - WHO'S THE CREAMPUFF NOW?

For most of us, the extent to which any weekly output of aerobic exercise can be attributed is generally the tertiary effects of other activities: running from the bar to the car in the rain; pushing a shopping cart around Specs; taming the ouchpony. Granted, there are some (many, actually) who have found both joy and transport in the bicycle, and if you can believe what you read on calorie-count.com, even riding one’s scooter burns more calories than sitting around writing record reviews. However, there does come an unfortunate time when each of us must take a look at the mirror and recognize that we are not interesting or renaissance-man enough to score a life partner who won’t first have to be wrest from the monogamous emotional clutches of a cat.

And so – off to the Y! Whether you favor the parking tickets downtown or the chill of 34th street, it’s time to start working of the Sparks and the entropy of age. For this, however, you’ll need quite a few sweatbands, shorts and Property of XXX Athletics t-shirts. You’ll also need sweet jams to help fumble you along and keep your mind off what it is that you are actually doing. If you’re just starting off (and trust our leg muscles and sizable man-pouch – we are just starting out), you’re going to have to take it chelada style for a while: lime and salt and slow and easy. Indeed, the first few times you may not want to much more than just get on the treadmill and walk with the quickness of making a connecting flight. Sure, we’d all like to get on one of those stair-master thingeys right off the bat and move our legs with the quickness of a Golden Axe double-kick, but let’s be real about this: you’re gonna need to ease in like the ocean. Also, you’re kidding yourself if you think you’re going to lose any weight working out to Menace of a Heartless Monster.

There are many reasons why Blades’ Who’s the Creampuff Now? EP is the perfect set for getting started in the curve-ditching business. For one, it’s got the word Creampuff in the title, which is obviously what our fat little double chin craves to be working out on instead. Also, like all instrumental rock albums, it has no words, and therefore you’re free to make up your own little motivating lyrics to them, such as “Laughing Cow, Laughing Cow – cha cha cha; ten more minutes I’ve burned you off” (that was the dumbest sentence we have ever written on so many beautiful levels). Further, it clocks in at about 28 minutes, which is a good amount of exercise for people who haven’t gotten around to upgrading their footwear past the slip-on stage. But for us, what really works is the deliberate pacing of Blades’ songs, especially on this release. It’s as comfortable to walk to as it is to pick up the pace with. And there are bursts (but not outbursts, mind you), of speed and increased intensity where you’re fat ass just might want to hit the SPEED UP button a few times and earn some sweat for a change. Mercifully too, there are moments where things slow down a bit.

For a local debut, Creampuff has many hallmarks that set it at contrast with the live experience: production that doesn’t quite capture the sheer sheerness of sweating alongside them; a suite of songs that make sense together, but don’t quite form the complete picture; pacing that’s just a weeee to slow. These things are neither here nor there – and much of it can be chalked up the typical recording pratfalls of a ‘young’ band (as even a cursory listening to their recent Grey Ghost release reveals the increased prowess that comes with time). There are more instrumental bands in this scene than we can ever recall at this moment, servicing nearly every particular sub-taste of record-collection association. If moments of triumph, goof, dissonance and murk all pushed along with maniacal-free sense of urgency are your cup of Gatorade, we recommend picking this gem up (available at Sound Exchange) and adding it to the soundtrack in your personal chariot of fire.

Stream: Blades - Various Tracks

BECAUSE WE WERE BORED: Episode #1

Are podcasts lame? Prolly. Are they the product of people with as much time as ego on their hands? likely. Which is why The Skyline Network is pleased to announce our occasional podcast series, Because We Were Bored. We have no idea how this stuff works, so just download it below and pretend like you got it from the iTunes store or something.

Click here to download

In this episode of BWWB, we're taking a look at that whole 'bands in outer-space' thing we talked about a little bit ago. Here's what you'll hear excerpts of and asinine commentary on:

Hemyah - A Silent Visit
Margot - T Minus 120
By The End of Tonight - Setting Sail in April
Blades - Thickass Cable
Tambersauro - One Picture Frame and One Half of a Picture
Storms Threaten to Destroy - Intelligent Ape
Sharks and Sailors - Topple the Pillar
The Nautical Mile - The Air Over
Antarctica Starts Here - Shannon
Co-Pilot - Low Earth Orbit

Everyone you Know to play Noise and Smoke Fest

The weekend before you and your mates will be trying to figure out how to foist one another over the wall at Stubbs, Emos and other SXSW venues for which you will not have the proper credentials, the two day Noise and Smoke festival will be underway here in Houston. For an insultingly low $8/day, you’ll spend Friday (at Notsuoh) and Saturday (at Walter’s The Axiom) seeing just about every act in Houston not signed to French Kiss records. From the cryptically entertaining Cop Warmth to the Pitchfork Mix-tape appearing Indian Jewelry to an apparently drummer-only incarnation of God’s Temple of Family Deliverance, the weekend promises to be an all out race to the finish for livers and eardrums alike. Lineup time:

Friday, March 9th – Notsuoh
Ume, The Ka-Nives, Satin Hooks, Bring Back the Guns, Finally Punk, Jana Hunter, Eat Grapes and Cop Warmth

Saturday, March 10th – Walter’s on Washington The Axiom
Indian Jewelry, Something Fierce, Skullening, God’s Temple of Family Deliverance, The Wiggins, Blades and The Dimes The Sporatics.

Update: word now coming from festival co-organizer and recent brain-drain encourager Joey Promahoney that Noise and Smoke will not only be an annual event, larger in size and scope, but that they anticipate it will include other, smaller, events during the year as well.

CTRL+C; CTRL+V: "Future festivals will more likely not be in a bar setting. ex. Outdoors, a larger hall, or possibly in the middle of nowhere. In addition to the festival, Noise and Smoke will be hosting smaller events, for example, we will be announcing a show seperate from the festival very soon"


More Info: Noise and Smoke Festival