The Whigs

Mission Control
(ATO)

Are you half of a two-piece rock band?
Possible answers are: a) Of course. b) No. I’m lame. c) No. I do many other interesting and/or necessary things with my life.
For the latter, I say, buddy, relax. Have a rock record. It’s good, and your girl will like it. With focused marketing, you might even hear it on that radio station you like, the one with those loud, car-dealer commercials that you don’t mind listening to.

Parker Gispert sings exactly like a rock band singer should — like he’s here to make girls want to make sex with him. Song titles include “Like a Vibration,” “Hot Bed,” “Already Young,” “I Got Ideas” and “Need You Need You.” Can’t you smell his leather pants already?
No politics, no religion, just … “Hey, what are you doing after the show?”
It’s all there in his voice. I even thought it was the other guy singing on two songs, “I Never Want to Go Home” and “1,000 Wives,” but it turns out that was just him faking sensitivity like the Foo Fighters to get even more tail. Right on!
File under: Dude, just let me rock, OK?

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Times New Viking

Rip It Off
(Matador

1993: A triumphant time. Our authentic rock star was Layne Staley, not that poseur Jon Bon Jovi; our president was Clinton, not that asshole Bush. While the popular kids hated Shannen Doherty, music nerds argued passionately about Kurt and Eddie, licensing your song to a car commercial meant career suicide, and nothing was hipper than burying your pop songs under a mountain of hiss, as if the tapes had fallen into a toilet 30 years before and just been rediscovered.
"Rip It Off" (a title which should’ve been reconsidered) is an enjoyable (if more challenging than necessary in 2008) pop record. It owes a debt to Superchunk primus inter pares (mostly considering the chipmunk quality of the vocals, which is not to everyone’s taste). Otherwise, they are a fine band who probably sound fun live.

While they’re working on their rip-offs, they might consider following the path of Pavement, a band that began making lo-fi rumbles and evolved into a mature, beloved band that will, undoubtedly, reunite in about four years and make millions.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Cat Power

Jukebox
(Matador)

The woman that Christina Ricci wanted to be in the accidental comedy “Black Snake Moan,” Catherine Power has lately found new strength in her Southern roots. Thankfully, her father must be Dan Penn or Steve Cropper, and her brother isn’t Kid Rock.
Once perceived as an indie rock/folk bird, time has revealed Chan Marshall (Cat Power’s lone constant) to have more in common spiritually, if less so sonically, with Mary J. Blige.

While cover albums are usually horrible, and no one should ever do them, ever, Marshall is one who should do more. On this, her second covers album, she proves again able to pump blues, jazz and soul into moribund songs like “New York, New York” (trust me), dares and wins taking on Janis and Joni, and, OK, like everyone else, attempts to jump genders and become Bob Dylan — by singing his song, singing a new song about him and singing everyone else’s songs kinda like him.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

King's Daughters and Sons bio

From the first note heard in August 2004, I was in love with the music that came from the barrels of Joe Manning. A city boy who can easily fool tourists into seeing him as a rustic, Manning is both a true writer and a vocal marvel. What's amazing about King's Daughters & Sons, though, is how Manning here has surrounded himself with the very best other musical marvels in the region - all of whom have been utilized in other ways, and one of whom has never had a chance to truly shine before, who emerges as a star against the odds, like Leif Garrett in a '70's TV movie...

There's the rhythm section - bassist Todd Cook and drummer Kyle Crabtree. Both are thunderous yet calm, stable yet always moving forward. Both began in heavy rock but few can play more subtly; it is this versatility that they call on here, with Shipping News and with Shannon Wright.

Keyboardist and vocalist Rachel Grimes sings like she looks - like a porcelain, Victorian-era queen that Cate Blanchett should get an Academy award for playing. With the Rachel's band, she has seen the world and she has absorbed it. Mike Heineman is the aforementioned rising star, with an angelic voice that needs to be heard by every mother and father and their housebroken pet. I even heard that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan himself is coming back to life just to hear Mike sing - he's just that good. People used to talk about the harmonies of Crosby, Stills & Nash - imagine how good that was supposed to be, multiply that by 18, cut out the cheese and what you've got is what happens when Rachel, Mike and Joe sing together.

If this isn't what God and Rodney Dangerfield are listening to together up in Heaven, then I say, never mind, I'll go to Hell instead.

The Teeth

In Minutes
(Noise Pollution)

In the 1960s, the term “garage band” referred to a gaggle of young men, often American and/or Caucasian, attempting to play that one fairly generic Rock Band sound common in the days when the Beatles were popular but not yet creative. (Sorry, Ferris Bueller, they didn’t write all those blues songs).
Perhaps the phenomenon was most popular in the Midwest, because, gosh golly, there’s just more of them (insert birth control joke here). But where would we be without those mutant strains — exemplified in this example by the Stooges, MC5, Styrenes, Electric Eels, Pagans and Pere Ubu? You know, the guys in high school who were freaks, not geeks.

You’ll feel like they’re smoking in your boys’ room again while injecting The Teeth's In Minutes, a post-proto-blast of uncomplicated rock ’n’ roll made by guys who don’t sound like they know, yet, what it feels like when you realize your dreams will never come true.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Foxhole

Push/Pull
(Burnt Toast Vinyl)

As a teen trying to become more cultured, I went to a Wynton Marsalis concert. I’d heard that adults with taste and brains listened to jazz music. Later I would realize that not all jazz is the same, and that Wynton Marsalis is not really much like John Coltrane. I was acting like an adult, but not the type of adult I wanted to be.
At the concert, Marsalis introduced a piece, “This one’s about education.” At that point, I had no choice but to laugh. How could instrumental music be “about” something? Now, I’m twice as old as I was then, and I still don’t understand.

Four of the five pieces here are inspired by the death of a friend. The fifth piece was inspired by the death of Wesley Willis, a man of color who made a lot of well-off white kids laugh because he was mentally ill. Oh, and their music is also inspired by their, uh, religious beliefs. (If you know what I mean).

c. 2008 LEO Weekly