Monday, January 30, 2012

Pterodactyl - Spills Out

JagJaguwar’s constant stream of excellent indie records keeps flowing with the excellent Pterodactyl album “Spills Out”. These Brooklynites have fused drumdriven noise records (opener ‘School Glue’) with 60’s melodies, almost Wilco like. Even though there is a song called ‘Zombies’ on the album the legendary sixties band influenced the mellifluous ‘The Hole Night’. Little guitar riffs and breaks make the songs choppy while the drummer keeps doing his awesome profession. Multivocals add more layers of sound, especially over the distorted bass line in ‘Allergy Shots’. Pterodactyl’s name suggest something really old, but their music I assure you, though borrowing from the 60’s and 90’s is anything but.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

The Beets - Let The Poison Out


I could give you a long list of things that are wrong with this album. It’s not very well played or sung, the speed of some of the songs seems to be strange to say the least. A garageband that hasn’t figured out yet that sometimes speeding up the play improves a song.
But I won’t do all of that because the Beets are just too much fun. Violent Femmes clanky acoustics played with the mental state of the Ramones. This Queens band sounds more like a lo-fi band from the early 90’s but who cares. Lyrics about mundane things and a song in Spanish: the very Pixies-like track 3. Best track is “Without You”, a future indie classic.
With the help of fan Howard Stern The Beets might just get the cult-following they deserve.