I Like All This Stuff! Part # 1

Let the reckless positivity commence!

The Rantouls

Man, now this is a band who embody everything I was going on about below! Will, Gavin and Lauren are The Rantouls. They purport to live in some place called Frontier Village, and they like to play total, unashamed bubblegum pop stupidity that grins in the direction of 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Gentrys and the like, but with overdriven guitars, primitive punk momentum and ‘ooh-ooh-oh’ surf harmonies thrown in to boot! Yes, like The Queers before them, The Rantouls satisfy my inner shitkicker by playing both kinds of music – Beach Boys AND Ramones! In fact, their debut EP opened with a tune called “Chugalug”, presumably in tribute to the Beach Boys frat-party classic of the same name, a song whose spirit has been quietly written out of history by the ‘Brian is a Genius’ gang, and noisily reinstated by anyone who’s ever felt the urge to get totally blitzed and lurch around dangerously to the strains of ‘Fun Fun Fun’. The second Rantouls single meanwhile leads off with “Little Green Hat”, perhaps the most mindless, annoying song I’ve ever heard… which has gotta be some kind of a recommendation, I guess. But it’s their latest 7” – the oddly titled “Songs of the Frontier Villagers” – that’s really blown my mind. Both songs on it, “Little Dune Buggy” and “Still 16”, are absolute winners – two minute definitions of wondrous, raucous summer fun with a wistful undertone of unfulfilled teenage fantasy that will speak to you like the very word of god… assuming that you want nothing more out of life than to be drunk, sixteen and riding around in a dune buggy. Homer Simpson would absolutely love this band. And you’d better believe that’s a recommendation. Yummy yummy yummy, The Rantouls have got love in their tummy, and they feel like loving you.

(Looks like that 7” is self-released and shows only, so if you don’t live in Frontier Village and don’t want to miss the goodness, you can pick up a sneaky d/l from here.)

http://www.myspace.com/therantouls


Graffiti Island

Currently rising to prominence amid the latest wave of East London trendsterisin’ that’s also given us Pens and Male Bonding, Graffiti Island haven’t been around long, but they’re a band who seem to have had their aesthetic and musical identity clearly mapped out from the word go. And where’s their wagon heading? Off the fucking map altogether, dude! For make no mistake - whilst their feet may be stuck in the Old Blue Last, in their minds Graffiti Island are busy living out some kind of monumentally twisted, early ‘80s shot-on-video Italian b-movie. Their songs – almost all clocking in the right side of two minutes – are glorious exercises in fucked up literalism, dealing frankly with such day-to-day concerns as cannibal orgies, demonic cats, treasure-filled caves and ‘bad potion’, never letting good taste or societal norms stand in their way. Musically, they express all this via a striking blend of psychotronic art-punk, fusing a Back From The Grave strain of treble-thrashing garage thunk to deathly, monster mash repetition, reverb-drenched barked/chanted vocals out of a rockabilly nightmare and queasy, Pere Ubu-ish electronic murk – brilliant, unhealthy, instinctive fun that’s not quite like anything I’ve heard before. Seriously: if you only buy one record this year with a scary dayglo caveman on the front, make it Graffiti Island’s debut 45, and, if your world is half as maladjusted as mine, these guys’ll rock it.

http://www.myspace.com/graffitiisland


Garbo’s Daughter

Is that the sound of party-starting, fizzbomb bubblegum grrl-punk I hear wafting over from Orlando, Florida? Why yes it is, and Garbo’s Daughter are responsible! Like the first Donnas record with a better sense of humour and some 60s melodic chops, like The Riff Randalls before they got all boring, like the B-Girls but not disappointingly crap, this gang are just TOO PERFECT. If Garbo’s Daughter were cast in the kind of dodgy slasher flick that Graffiti Island are probably all too familiar with, I bet they’d feed the knife-wielding loony to a crocodile in the first ten minutes and spend the rest of the movie cracking wise, eating Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and listening to awesome, obscure pop records. And it would be a GREAT MOVIE. Just look at their ‘influences’ box on the myspace – it’s the funniest thing I’ve read on the internet in weeks. I think they just threw all their rejected band name suggestions in there, mixed up with the real and semi-real pop cultural shout-outs (and if anyone wants to help me make Bangs Askew or Headlock & The Noogies a reality, my email’s at the top of the page). Doesn’t look like they’ve got any records out yet, but a tape – A TAPE – is due shortly. Good times ahead for anybody undertaking a short car journey. These girls are the greatest!

http://www.myspace.com/garbosdaughter

Smith Westerns

Yet more levels-in-the-red bubblegum, this time from some consummate Nobunny affiliates hailing from Chicago. The Smith Westerns are boys who like to sing about girls, and the cosmic pleasures of relations with, and frankly probably just daydreams about, them. They choose to deliver this to us via some wide-eyed Rubinoos power-pop, hard-riffin’ Chilton folk-punk and – best of all – a whole load of shiny, slinky, mid-period T. Rex groovin’. Smith Westerns self-titled album is a sickly sweet blast of warped, loved up glam-pop from start to finish, with stand-out cuts like ‘Be My Girl’ and ‘Girl in Love’ sounding like Visconti let a dragon drool all over the master tapes of demos from a much better, bizarro world version of ‘The Slider’. Aw, yeah, take me…, as our lord Marc was apt to put it pre-guitar solo.

http://www.myspace.com/smithwesterns



Ethical Debating Society

Anyone who would seek to belittle the achievements of Riot Grrl (with capitals) as a valid musical and cultural movement need only take a look at London’s Ethical Debating Society, comprising girls who were probably barely even born when Bikini Kill were still putting out records, but who take their inspiration straight from the fanzines and photocopied manifestos, from the more oblique, formally challenging British wing headed up by Huggy Bear and Skinned Teen, and from the hilarious, vicious polemics of Alison Wolfe. Even more so than contemporaries such as Pens and The Corey Orbison, EDS make their lack of musical ‘know-how’ into a direct political statement (see “A440” on the myspace), taking The Raincoats original refusal to submit to a male-defined language of rock band playing and pushing it further out into a no wave wilderness of yelling and tangled, wirey fury. Here’s hoping they’ve got a happy future in store for them, splitting opinion and terrifying audiences the world over. For better or worse, Everett True is already hip to them from his cabin in the outback, and he did a neat little interview here.

http://www.myspace.com/ethicaldebating

Labels: Ethical Debating Society, Garbos Daughter, graffiti island, I like, punk, Smith Westerns, The Rantouls