Time for another video four pack. Taking it from the top left, we first have Entrance performing their flanged-out smash hit from the recent "Prayer of Death" album on Tee Pee Records. I first heard this on Scott Williams' show, and that psycho guitar lick hasn't left my head since. I also caught Entrance's fierce live presentation not long ago at the Maxwell's nightclub along with DJ Trouble, and she and I both left with the mutually shared opinion that the rock had been delivered most effectively.
On the right are Brooklyn's totally insane purveyors of "shitstorm skronk", Talibam!, who are currently enjoying tremendous popularity in WFMU's fabled new bin, as this link demonstrates. This video contains the best evidence for true mastery of the keyboard: being able to partially disrobe while playing, and not lose time or rhythm with your bandmates. Eat my angel dust, Geddy Lee.
For those of you who can't deal with new music, or who only surf this blog for relics with which to validate your teens, I offer the following: Australia's Celibate Rifles, (left) who've been their country's rock-hard lords in waiting for more than twenty years now, and who've casually observed lesser bands come, go, reform, and fall by the collective wayside for nearly as long. This looks to be a rehearsal tape of the song "Bill Bonney Regrets", but it has no trouble standing mightily astride anything in the Radio Birdman canon. Aussie surf-punk rules, OK?
Finally, Washington DC's Nation of Ulysses, as fronted by the pre-Make Up, pre-Weird War, and pre-Sassiest Boy in America Ian Svenonius. Like many of the best frontmen, Svenonius dances like he has exploding firecrackers in his pockets, and menaces the crowd with the finest in simian-inspired freakouts. Would somebody please get this man an American Tourister and be done with it? With so many subsequent musical projects and scattered band members, I doubt there's any likelihood of a forthcoming Ulysses reunion, so make due with what the good ship Internet has preserved for you.
Nary can one go wrong with Celibate Rifles. Or most of Australia for that matter. Goddamn, did they have a heapin' helpin' of good bands or what? A cornered market!
Posted by: b. brown | August 08, 2007 at 09:10 PM