Garage Swim Compilation

I usually try to shy as far away as possible from releases like this. Corporate created labels diving into the indie world to extract bands into a release that will give the brand a degree of hipness, complete with another corporate sponsor in it as well. See everything within the Scion Audio/Visual spectrum. However, Garage Swim is far too great a release to be ignored by me in anyway. Put together by the folks at Williams Street, Adult Swim's inhouse label, Garage Swim is fifteen tracks of some of the best garage rockers out there in one tight, digital, and completely free package.

The most outstanding thing about this though, might be the outstanding degree of quality of it though. It's like every artist decided to hold onto one of their best songs just for this release. Thee Oh Sees' "Devil Again" is them at their catchiest, all nervous energy, popping keyboards, and hidden darkness underneath. Mikal Cronin's "Better Man" feels like the the lost gap between his new album and previous one, pure sunshine power-pop and noise guitar roar on top of one another. Mind Spiders are all dark punk glory, JEFF the Brotherhood channel Black Sabbath, and King Tuff's song with Gap Dream sounds absolutely nothing like a King Tuff (it's super slow! It has '80s synths in it!), but it still sounds awesome. The Gories have a new(?!) song on here that feels like a tribute to the older garage styles, and yet works just as well as anything else on here. The release closes with a mini-epic from Weekend, who should be completely out of place on an release like this, but the spacey psychedelia of "Teal Kia" is instead ends Garage Swim on a surprisingly uplifting note. Corporate or not, Garage Swim is 15 very awesome songs, and should be promptly shoved in the face of the next person who says guitar rock is dead.



Links:

Download Garage Swim here, from Williams Street Records

Fun Fun Fun Fest '10: Day 2 (Part 2)

The Gories



Truth be told, I think The Gories' set was probably the I was most excited about for the entire Fun Fun Fun Fest. I have a serious soft spot for garage, and who more so then anyone else managed to craft some of the best garage records around then The Gories? It was truth from the moment the band set foot on the stage and the band launched into their anthem "Hey Hey, We're The Gories". For the misinformed it looked as if this band had been doing this for years, never losing a step and playing so in time and so well it was like watching a well oiled machine. Yes, all the band members have been performing in other bands for years, but this was something to be seen. The way Mick Collins and Dan Kroha played off of each other, you wounder why they ever broke up in the first place. They were alive in their performance, more so then any other band. Long live The Gories!









Cap'n Jazz



This year's FFF Fest will probably be looked back on the "reunion one". Sleep, The Gories, The Descendants, all wound up playing on these various stages. However, I can say the one reunion set the most people were excited for was Cap'n Jazz. Never mind the legion of crappy bands and scenes that were produced due to everyone trying to copy their sound and in turn bastardized it. Cap'n Jazz were everything honest and showcased on their album. I know everything has been made of front man Tim Kinsella's performance, but it was something to be seen. Kids half his age don't performance as well as he did. Screaming and conveying every single piece of emotion from "Little League" to stand out "Oh Messy Life", diving into the crowd, playing a heart breaking french horn to add to atmosphere, and packing so much into everything they he did it was incredible. Summed up by the man who screamed he had been waiting 15 years for this show, it was everything reunion set should be.







Dirty Projectors



Dirty Projectors are infinitely better live then on record. There, I said it. I was never able to get into Bitte Orca last year, no matter how hard I tried or how much of a Talking Heads fan I am. But are seeing them live, I am easily prepared to buy every single one of their album and give them a spin. That's because instantly everything artistic the band tries to convey on record came alive on their show. The disjointed and wild guitar riffs; the quirky singing styles of every band member; the completely left-of-center song arrangements all came together in this show. Not to mention the vocal back flips the sirens that pretended to be female singers were pulling off was slightly mind blowing. Not to mention hearing "Knotty Pine" performed live by the band was nothing but completely sublime.











Bad Religion



Due to the massive crowds that surrounded the orange stage to try to capture a glimpse of MGMT's set, I decided to for go the obvious and see Bad Religion. Things did not get off to a good start as the band wound up taking something close to 30 minutes to do a sound check for a punk band. Thankfully, when all that was done the band stormed on stage and performed a hard, heavy, and furious one hour set. While every band member unfortunately looked their age, they sure as hell didn't show it. Playing at a break neck pace that never did let up, the band blasted through the their repertoire, while concentration on their newish material, did not hesitate to dive deep into their catalog. The crowd was just happy the band was playing at all, screaming, singing a long, and just going insane to the entire set. When "Infected" came barreling out, everyone who was crowd surfing or moshing was singing a long to the song, just like it was 1982.