Ghost - Papaganda Episode One: The Olde One

My good friend Tori is the one who turned me on to Ghost back when Opus Eponymous was released. I dug the album but there was something that kept me from really loving it. There seemed to be a certain... I don't know if lethargy is the exact right word, but it's the word I always think of when I listen to or contemplate that album. When the hype started for the band's second album, this year's Infestissumam Tori told me she thought the band had switched singers. This intrigued me, however once the album came out and I found that it did everything so much better than the previous one did I found it hard to reconcile the idea of the singer having been changed. Well, unless this is an elaborate hoax - which it might be - this video show's that Tori was completely correct.

Bells into Machines - Chris Connelly & Paul Barker Reunited!!!

Holy cow does this make super extra happy! Chris Connelly and Paul Barker in a new band together? Go to their website here or their facebook here and shower them with love folks, this is going to be great!

23 Skiddo

One of those bands I have always read about and yet they've stained perpetually on my peripheral radar. So this is a first experience for me. And it is a fantastic first experience.

Wire - Chairs Missing

Pink Flag is one of those records that changed my life when I got into it later in life, circa twelve years ago. It immediately became one of those albums that is ALWAYS on me, occupying a constant, non-negotiable spot in both my automobile CD binder and the ipod that I constantly have to juggle the contents of in order to accommodate day to day fancies along with such mainstays. Chairs Missing is a step further down the Wire spiral, and from the first track you can feel a little bit more madness eating in around the fringes of the classic post-punk sound that means so much to so many.

Pinebender - Fifth to Last

I came by Working Nine to Wolf by Pinebender on accident back when it was released in the fall of 2006. In the press that accompanied the record it's interesting to note that the band describes their music as "amplifier worship", and when you get to know the music that becomes a crystal clear encapsulation of what they do. I wish I could see them live, because as good a job the recordings on this album are in translating the loud factor - my guess is there are a lot of good room mics involved in the mix - simply by listening to it you become swallowed by the sound and inevitably I find myself wondering how much more glorious the 'worship' would be in a live room, with thundering space and the occasional breeze from a back room. This has been a peripheral staple of mine ever since, however listens are infrequent enough that I really never kept tabs on the band and as such with just a smidge of internet research this morning (woke up thinking of this song again) I am unable to discern whether or not Pinebender still exists. Perhaps someone from the band will see this and drop a comment? One can hope...

Ty Segall - Ghost

Filthy.

Al Jarreau's Working on the Night Shift

I'm rounding out the night watching Night Shift for the first time in about... oh, twenty-something years. Not even twenty, had to be twenty-something. Night Shift was originally released in 1982 - I would have been 6 at the time - I don't remember what year I saw this flick on late night WGN Chicago's channel 9 but a lot of it stuck with me. That's how 80's movies were. Part of that is probably just the nostalgia - you know, the first time you see Michael Keaton jump off a second floor balcony in a cave man toga and land flat on his face it stays with you, right? Yeah, but of course there's the fact that my brain was still gathering mad information and formulating future experiences based on what I was perceiving at the time - a lot of deep-seated psychological growth going on that explains the attachment as well. Either way, my boss and I have talked about this movie a couple times and I've been surprised how much I remembered for having seen it once. Surprised despite the fact that I held it in a slightly unexplainable regard ever since...

Alas, I fear that this post has become incoherent because I've now been up for almost 24 hours and have a handful of Sierra Nevada's in me, so why don't I just let my sudden predilection for jabber-jawing take the proverbial dive off the second floor balcony of an $8k a year strip club and let Mr. Jarreau attempt to pull my ass out of the recycler?

What?