[Abby’s Road] Music for Girls

Summer. Though a friend of mine recently wrote a novella on Facebook about how it doesn’t exist in Germany, it seems to be warming up more and more here as June rolls by. Moreover, the sun doesn’t set until nearly 10, extending my waking hours far past midnight, usually. We’re even going swimming this weekend. At any rate, it’s warm. And not that DC/NYC hot, including but not limited to: swamp-ass, profuse sweating while standing still and sticky people perspiring on you while commuting on the public transport (because that, friends, has happened to me more than once in my lifetime). No, in Munich, for now, things are hot, but not humid, breezy and just pleasant. Perfect weather for some electropop.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. I have time and time again written about more than a handful of musical genres. Of course, shoegaze and lo-fi bands happen to pluck my strings the most and are what I hope people associate me with. When the weather is the way it’s been for the last few days, however, I prefer something a little less prone to drive my thoughts inward, feeding not my introverted side, but the more unreserved Abby. Bright, synthesizer-laden music does the trick.

Continue reading [Abby’s Road] Music for Girls

My Take on Kitty Pryde is that I Love Kitty Pryde

Editor’s Note: We are honored to feature a guest post from the one-and-only Laura Jane Faulds of the fantastically fun-filled new music blog, Strawberry Fields Whatever. I assume you just want to jump in after reading the title of this post, and jump you should, but I need to thank my pal Sarahspy for demanding I follow Faulds on Twitter. Because the rest, my friends, was history. [Illustration by Jen May.]

My Take on Kitty Pryde is that I Love Kitty Pryde

by Laura Jane Faulds

This one goes out to all the teenage girls.

There are millions of them, everywhere: locked up in their bedrooms, listening to Lil B, drinking pop rock-flavored vodka, trying to figure out what blow jobs are. Staying up all night talking to their best friends in hushed voices on the rhinestone-studded Hello Kitty iPhones they didn’t work to buy, trash-talking their math teacher’s mom-jeans and saying cunt because they can. Their lives are so endearingly pointless, endearingly because they can’t see it- it’s all life and death, and yes: they will marry him. They’ll take everything they can from anyone who has it, offering nothing in return but empty Frappuccino cups and the cloying scent of vanilla.

I would like every teenage girl in the world to assemble in a wide open space- ideally, a field- and I would like Kitty Pryde to stand before them, on a podium, on a stage. I would like her to speak into several microphones, like Geri Halliwell in the video for “Spice Up Your Life.”

She is drinking a Big Gulp, and speaks exclusively in Emojis; somehow, she has made it possible for that to happen. When she opens her mouth, the Emojis fly out: the happy face whose mouth is a heart, blowing a kiss. The Bento box, the dolphin, the koala face. The eggplant, the princess, the ATM machine. Everyone knows exactly what she means. If she must make a sound, it’s her eeeee from Orion’s Belt, heard first at 1:12 seconds in: a noise simultaneously unbearable and adorable, a noise impossible for any human being over the age of twenty to make.

When she eeeees, the assemblage of teenage girls eeeee back. It’s their emblem, their anthem. They are a cult, and she is their leader. They are a country, a culture, a population, and I am anointing her their king.

Continue reading My Take on Kitty Pryde is that I Love Kitty Pryde

Dance to new ARMS: “Summer Skills (Bump in the Night Version)”

Good friend Todd Goldstein is back with his latest ARMS single, “Summer Skills (Bump in the Night Version),” which builds upon and re-imagines the title track to the much-ballyhooed Summer Skills album amidst head bopping psychedelica. The percussion will floor you in the best way possible.

ARMS, a four-piece, premiered the track on […]

New Golden Fable

Golden Fable, winning my heart since August 16, 2011. Music so precious I could hug it and it would hug back.

“Sugarloaf,” Golden Fable’s new single, is due August 13. Their debut album, Star Map, is out September 10 via their own Full of Joy […]

[MP3] Battleships: “Your Words”

Anthemic pop rock rarely ever goes wrong in my book, and Adam touched upon this beautifully when he spoke about why he likes his music “big.”  Battleships, a four-piece Aussie band, has that build-up to loud emotion and a lushly orchestrated sound in their latest single, “Your Words.” These guys are set for […]

Walk-In Records’ first release has arrived!

It’s an exciting day for Walk-In Records and the Knox Road family. Pre-orders for Spaces’ LP, Nothing Exists but Atoms and The Void, are now available!

The vinyl is beautiful. I’ll let Walk-In Records do the rest of the talking:

The LP is pressed on 180 gram blood-red vinyl and comes housed in a sturdy jacket […]

The Tinder Box

I almost considered deleting the email from The Tinder Box, what with ReverbNation as their main band page. BUT THEN I saw a Tumblr link and that they were from South Dakota and most was forgiven. AND THEN I listened to their music and I became a snapshot of pleasant surprise. I trotted […]

Harbors

Harbors are a duo from Orange County with a rotating line up of musicians for a full sound. Below is a full stream of their s/t debut album. Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been going back to early 2000s indie lately? A lot more “alt folk rock” floating around the interwebs. It was […]

[Abby’s Road] Riding the Delta Wave

Earworms. We all get them. Usually it’s a bad track someone unknowingly burrows into our head, unbeknownst to us. Then, as innocently as it happens, an hour after the crime is committed we find ourselves humming a ridiculous song by Lionel Richie.

More joyous, however, are the rare instances when we hear a […]

[MP3] Gina’s Picture Show: “Forget”

Here’s one that rushed me down memory lane. Back in 2009, I wrote about one of Akudama’s several free EPs, and the second track featured Gina Cimmelli, of Gina’s Picture Show, on backup vocals. I’m not sure how she ended up as background vocals with this solo talent, but no matter: her new […]