Posts tagged Two Star Symphony

The second installment in our look at the 50 songs that, to us, were Houston this year.

Dawn Dipple – Two Star Symphony
Love and Other Demons (Self Released)
Most of Demons is a superb specter, a chamber quartet of violins, cello and viola that covers the sounds of monsters stealing into the rooms of children afright under their covers. “Dawn Dipple” especially is pure fear. Horror of an old man’s memories, on a park bench alone in his garden, collar turned up to the cold spending too many moments trying to remember if the leaves on his crepe myrtles turned so decayed a pallet of peach and pink last December. Losing his key, locked out of his home, scaling a fence he cannot survive a fall from. Teetering flat footed on the presipice, a thin sail of might-have been at the mercy of winds and the pull of Issac’s apple. Horror.

Don’t Tell Me, I Know – Born Liars
Don’t Tell Me, I Know 7″ (Ditchwater Records)
We know it’s only rock and roll – but we like it. We love rock and roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby. We wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day. Everybody’s talking bout that new sound, funny – it’s still rock and roll to us. We wanna rock. ROCK OF AGES. Even if there are a million rock-related chicklets that pulse-pound a horse to death with a stomp of the kick pedal, we’ll still never get tired of straight-up straight-on straight-through rock anthems.

Fear the CIA – No Talk
Invade Iran 7″ (Rescued from Life/Psychowolf/AG82 Records)
When we were kids, we used to watch hella episodes of the Cosby Show, and had a distinct memory of Cliff’s character having a nickname from his days as a track and field athlete: Combustable Huxtable. We imagined his lanky form rushing so quickly around the track that his feet literally burst into flames. It gave us an enduring chuckle, and was a visual image that carried us through much the poor decision making later in his career. Dear lord, is Leonard really using special meats acquired from a gypsy to fight an evil vegetarian overlord? Feet on fire. Another pudding commercial? Feet on fire. Do kids really say the darnedest things, or are they just kinda annoying? Feet on fire. Recently, a whiskeyed night fever caused us to dream out a supposed Leonard VII in which, finally, his feet did indeed catch on fire. There he was, dancing around a castle made of legos and occasionally high-kicking a mischievous intelligence goon while “Fear the CIA” played in the background. Go Leonard, Go!

Feed the Ghost – The Wiggins
Feed the Ghost 7″ (Dull Knife Records)
There’s a distance to The Wiggins. Be it the ubiquity of Jonny Reeves’ darkened spectacles, the fact that he enjoys the company of no others in his retinue of rock, the sheer performance volume that necessitates a spectator’s distance, or even the affectation of his voice – there is always something that is keeping you apart from the man, the music and the performance. “Feed the Ghost” sounds of another time (maybe past, maybe future), but certainly not the one you’re experiencing it in. And yet, it feels completely of this place. A town that relishes in the bizarre; that birthed to the world the world its Jandek and Daniel Johnson and Rusted Shut and Pain Teens and Indian Jewelry and Jana Hunter and Richard Ramirez and Insect Warfare and DJ Screw. What’s surprising is only that The Wiggins sometimes seem like a smaller fish in this pond than they should be. Feed the Ghost may seem otherworldly and distant to others, but it sounds like the very heart of home to us.

Follow the Sun – Papermoons
New Tales (Team Science Records)
There aren’t enough good songs about giving in to love anymore. Thank blog for the Papermoons and this slow tempest of a temptress that has us roaring west towards mountains and the purples and pinks and reds of a dusty sunset with the windows down shouting GIVE INTO LOVE in blissful unknowingly ironic aping of a behavior we’re probably too chicken shit to even attempt again but fuck the torpedoes we’re no Hesseian steppenwolf and are living in this moment like it’s the last and dear God please put a stalled semi into our path so we can die with this smile on our face and these perfectly interwoven gentle three guitar parts and midas drums in our ears. We give in. To Love. This song is so beautiful that it shifts our whole aesthetic and makes us feel like whores with hotels for hearts.

Genocide – Teenage Kicks
Aesthetic vs Substance (Self Released)
This is a teenage anthem, though best we we can tell it isn’t about Darfur or the Eastern Congo or north Niger or any other people or place in the hells of Africa specifically (just the teenage nation. Teenajistan?). It’s not that we think Teenage Kicks can’t or shouldn’t follow in the footsteps of punks who melded social consciousness into catchy riffs. But frankly, it’s just as well in this case because we would totally feel Simpson guilty if we were all “Yeah Yeah Rock Rock Dance Dance” and this song was about the use of rape as a military tactic or something horrific like that.

GG249 – Alkari
Kubli Khan (Self Released)
This one time we flew across the rockies to San Francisco (hiss) to hang out with a friend and check out this band that was playing one of their first US shows after having developed a small but growing following in their native London. Their CD had come out stateside and in the time between when we booked the ticket and arrived at the box office, the show had sold out and their first single was catching on like wildfire. It was catchy, popy modern rock that reminded us why we were never so terribly turned off by even the weakest parts of the U2 catalog. So yeah, we were there for Coldplay’s second stateside performance cause we’ve always had a soft spot for music that was done for its own sake and who gives a damn if it sounds too conventional to most people and like we care if it accidentally becomes popular. Oh, btw, this sounds nothing like Coldplay.

Holy Cow – Papermoons
New Tales (Team Science Records)
You know, in spite of the fact that the bulk of the Papermoons catalog (especially our favorites) have a distinct gleam of melancholy, we really don’t get bummed out when we listen to them. In fact, though songs like this couldn’t find a major chord with a tone tube and James Love’s presumably perfect pitch, we’re decidedly Guy Smiley the whole time these notes ring out and glisten like dew on the leaf pile. Even when that sad as dead ducks harmonica cuts a roman candle across the pond moments after hearing “All we are now is past tense”, we still can’t help but smile a knowing smile. Someone has taken a great universality, distilled it down to a paste, made a candle out of it, and put it there for us to enjoy its flickering. How can you not love that?

Hornless Unicorn Anthem – The Mathletes
#$@% You and Your Cool (Asaurus Records)
It’s certainly not possible to label any one Mathletes song as typical, regardless of whether you are talking about music in general or their catalog in particular. Channeling the best of Elvis Costello on this outing (which means, by default, the fantastic Radio Radio keyboard vibe as well), we’re taken along at a hard gallop for the tale of, surprise, a hornless Unicorn. Full of earnest goof that charms the wizard cloak right off of you, we’re just way too into this song to throw it in the pigeon coop of poor man’s indie rock ‘Dick in the Box.’ Yeah, it’s funny as hell and quite possibly the only thing that could make it better might be a video featuring Justin Timberlake as the Unicorn, but this is more than gimmickry. It’s wickedcry.

I Heard You’re Having a Baby – Jenny Westbury
Jenny French and the Pelican Wrench (All Star Power Up Records)
Most of Pelican Wrench is Jenny along with a guitar, miniature or otherwise. For this ditty, her own coos, chants and ba ba dahs providing the instrument track, more choir than barbershop. Actually, not barbershop at all. Its lovely, haunting, celebratory, endearing and evocative of the more layered approach she is taking with the new recordings that have been showing up on her MySpace since her recent move to the great Northeast. Perhaps people move away to do their best work in places new and strange, but it’s good to hear the root of it play out with simple, fragile grace in bedrooms and quiet spaces here at home.