Touch and Go

Watersports

admin — Sun, 10 May 2009 10:46:00 +0000

From the opening chord of Mi Ami’s Watersports, the “weird for weird’s sake” noise music is an overwhelming auditory experience. Initially it comes across as some sort of “Oh God, this sounds like stereotypical angry girl band music,” then it evolves into something more in line of tight-pants hipster music. You’ll walk away with a headache, but with a speedy rhythm in your step. This is especially obvious after “Pressure,” which, literally, pressures your eardrums into submission.

Don’t expect to find anything new here, or any sort of modern twist to what has become a very calculated formula—nasty punk rock chord changes and androgynous high-pitched vocals. Former Black Eyes members Daniel Martin-McCormick and drummer Jacob Long are featured in Mi Ami to develop a chaotic but rhythmically intense sound that is most significantly heard in “Echononecho” and “White Wife,” but the mixing and bizarre nature of Mi Ami takes away from what might have otherwise been a brilliant melding of sound.

The repetitive rolling and shrill feedback of the oddball punkfests circa the first half of this decade over-influenced the group: it’s obvious that !!! (Chk Chk Chk) and Black Dice, with some early Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Kinks, dominated the band’s creative process. In fact, my favorite stanza from the album is in “New Guitar” where the only words I could discern were “this is just like the last one.” All I could think was “the last one ended at some point?”

The entire 43.5 minutes of the album felt more like one long jam session of atonal screaming rather than a song compilation. Huzzah for discordant disco shriekage right? Although...if you find yourself in a gym where all you have to listen to is Natasha Bedingfield’s “Pocketful of Sunshine” and Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” as I often do, the clangy punk rock really gets you riding that elliptical like a madwoman—if only I could get away!

Written by: Nic Strahl, May 10th 2009

God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me

admin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:54:00 +0000

By CocoRosie

Touch and Go

You’ve probably noticed that Sierra and Bianca, the sisters who make up CocoRosie, are not the type to play coy when it comes to performing. Not only do their provocatively bright outfits and adventuresome vocals call attention to this fact, but the duo unapologetically evokes the name of the big "man" upstairs in the title of their latest single. And for the record, G-O-D is an S-H-E.

Known to many as folk musicians, the single God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me distances CocoRosie from comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. With well-timed synths and programmed beats, they have managed to move away from the muted whimsicality of their previous work into an energetically hip-hop inflected sound.

Despite their attempts to prove otherwise, the sisters are far from capricious. Lyrically, CocoRosie fails to add much depth to the ambitiously titled track, and somewhere after the second verse, the looped drumbeats and xylophone notes fall flat. With pop-a-licious drums and operatic vocals, CocoRosie is tapping into a formula that will undoubtedly force hipsters to move their feet to the beat, but a song with such an enthralling title needs to be more than just a whimsical dance number. Sure, God Has a Voice has a catchy hook, but it doesn't graduate beyond that.

I expected these dapper dames to turn the musical world on its head - not merely by pushing a feminist agenda, but through the creation of innovative music. In a world where the term feminism is shunned in popular culture, it is refreshing to find a couple of talented women unafraid to proclaim that God is a woman. However, when you manage to lose the poetry in subversity, are you really speaking out through your art? Or is it all a well-planned marketing ploy?

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, August 4th 2008

Living with the Living

admin — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:00:00 +0000

By Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

Touch and Go

In a day where so many previously non-political artists are taking a stance to assure themselves a Grammy nod, Ted Leo’s refreshingly authentic social commentary shines through in his music just as much as it has for the past decade. The strict vegan, along with his band The Pharmacists, released his fifth full length studio album, [Living with the Living](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MQ55DO?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000MQ55DO).

Produced by Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, Living with the Living proves to be a Molotov cocktail of explosive blues-tinged punk mixed with light-hearted summer sounds and even reggae. The latest effort by the D.C.-based trio envelopes an instrumentally experimental complexity with a lyrical simplicity that combine for a well-rounded compilation of songs. The album’s most memorable tracks are heavily stacked mid-album and surprisingly embody more of Leo’s social views than his political agenda.

The endearing “A Bottle of Buckie” is a stand-out track that shows sometimes you need nothing more than a good friend and a bottle of cheap Buckfast wine. Leo comforts the listener with this laid back track only to black their eye with the next. The garage-metal antics of “Bomb. Repeat. Bomb.” combine with both spoken word and chanting group vocals to create a track that is so politically fierce that you might be inclined to turn off Living with the Living and initiate change.

Written by: Claire Ashton, April 21st 2007