Lips, Sweat and Fake Asian Names
This morning I woke to a local news story about an aspiring Hip-Hop mogul caught up in a plot involving drugs, guns and kidnapping just a few towns away. While at the local news outlet’s site I noticed they have a new Twitter feed, which I clicked, intending to “follow” it. The first headline on their feed was a story about a heroin bust that went down last night around the corner from my house. Then I overheard a piece on one of those morning shows about how England wants to teach Parkour to kids in school. And just now I caught a bit of some evangelical Christian talk-show promoting the benefits of texting, “tweeting” and blogging on the youth of America. Huh?
Inspired by this surreal exhibition of what passes for news I indiscriminately chose a playlist unified by nothing more than a collection of relatively recent release dates. Well that and perhaps an undercurrent of incongruity that happens to run through them all as well. Take Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made, the debut full-length from eclectic Highland Park, California-based five-piece Fol Chen for example… It’s got bright-n-bouncy of Montreal-reminiscent Electropop ditties like “The Idiot” and “No Wedding Cake”…Growly electroacoustic Gothic hymns like “The Believers” that sound like Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails as covered by a Twee orchestra…Apocalyptic Girl-Group-meets-Psych-Folk reinterpretations of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” (or The Clash’s “Straight to Hell”) like “Red Skies Over Garden City”…Drum-machine-driven Country ballads like “You and Your Sister in Jericho”…And crunchy synthesizer jams like “Winter That’s All” and “The Longer U Wait” that sound like Hot Chip if they joined forces with a high school marching band…Almost all of which are decked out in blingy horn arrangements. The opening song even features the lyrics “don’t follow me”…Shout out to Twitter!
