Video :: Gremlins :: JonBénet

Been meanin' to pack this one into your brain and watch it squirt back out of that play-doh factory you call a head. I don't hate you--in fact, I like you--I just like play-doh more. I guess that means I'm a bit touched, don't it?

Gremlins is comprised of members from Ricky Eats Acid, Toro y Moi, Braids, and Coma Cinema, which in case you can't do the supergroup math means that by minute three, you'll be wishing you could get all that play-do back in your head and keep it there. Hold it...hold it. Now if your parents would only come and pick you up before anyone sees you sneeze.

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Craft Spells

Craft Spells
Idle Labor
Captured Tracks


Craft Spells :: After the Moment


Spring's in the air and pretty soon it'll be time for a bunch of navel-gazing kids to rent their tuxes, hire a limo, and convince the toothless dude on the curb at Snappy Mart to buy half a dozen bottles of the Boone's. But, wait, you don't need the sweet, sweet shitty taste of Strawberry Hill to make you feel like you belong, little man. Got some prom rock right here for you. Bonus: it won't puke on the pool table or knock you up the week after you get your admission letter. Just don't stare at the album cover for too long.

Idle Labor is diced, strained and canned nostalgia, sure, and I like it. Who needs drums when you've got a drum machine? And who needs actual memories from high school when you can just buy Idle Labor?  Vallesteros will hold your hair back, rock you gently to sleep, and not even muss that Country Kwencher stache you've been working on. Remember: it's just a different, far less satisfying brand of manhood you've attained there.

Like Wild Nothing and Washed Out before them, this Stockton, CA band seems to lurk in the same morose, wall-papered attic world with only a laptop and a stack of Thoreau novels to keep them from going all Emily Dickinson on the neighborhood cats. In case you slept through American Lit: Emily Dickinson didn't do anything to cats.  Led by singer/guitarist Justin Vallesteros, Craft Spells are out on the road now, and they're sure to be hitting mixtapes nation-wide by summertime.

When you finally check the Rock and Roll Hotel's page to figure out that a venue smaller than the backseat of your girlfriend's Prius managed to pack the house for Toro y Moi/Adventure, crack open a High Life or stub out a smoke on your arm, whichever one helps you feel like an achiever, then roll downhill to DC9 for the doubleheader: Craft Spells open and label mates Beach Fossils close.

Hear/here most of the brand new album at this blue/then gray word. Now I just can't wait to hear their G.G. Allin cover.

Review :: Armchair Telepathy :: Toro y Moi/Cloud Nothings

Toro y Moi/Cloud Nothings
"I Will Talk To You" b/w "For No Reason"
Carpark Records
7"



Quick on the heels of both acts' recent long-players, Carpark bundles Toro y Moi's Chaz Bundick and Cloud Nothing's Dylan Baldi for a double-header. Musically speaking, of course... though I'd love to see those two cuddlebugs together in swaddling clothes. It's a smart choice though, with both sides pleasing my attention-depleted mind.

Bundick further distances himself from his chill contemporaries here; in fact, he may be pioneering a new subgenre I'll coin at this particular moment as lukewarmwave. There it is, I said it, and it will be completely out of fashion by next week, replaced by heatwave or maybe blazewave even. For the time being, his contribution to this split could be the soundtrack to an alternate Bond universe where international espionage is replaced by the much more tangible enemy of hipster nonchalance, and that is grounds for a gripping screenplay.

Dylan Baldi's guitar tone is the star of this split, sounding like my rainbow-striped sweater if it could shred. Warm and colorful, a little scratchy and not washed, ever. It smells like shit, but I wear it almost every day. You get the picture. The guitar tone is matched with a caffeinated vocal that's trapped in a radiator and drums that sound like empty beer cans in a trash compactor. It all makes for a damn hummable tune.

Carpark came up roses with this one. Fortunately, both acts are visiting DC in April. Unfortunately, this one isn't a bundle. Cloud Nothings at DC9 4/11 and Toro y Moi at RnR Hotel 4/14. Don't miss em.

Cloud Nothings :: For No Reason