Song-a-Day 026: Amanda Fucking Palmer

Amanda Palmer plays Radiohead's Idioteque on ukulele.

The 4am 20: Making Bells out of Bones

Warren Ellis' podcast, the 4am, is back. I couldn't be more pleased. It is what I play when I can't stand anything else.

This is episode 2 of the reboot.


Lester and the Hoax – “Jellybeanz” (2:27)
Margaras – “Noisegrind” (2:52)
Brent Wilcox – “Gametime” (1:18)
Horrorfall – “Necroplasm Fix” (3:45)
Steve Long – “Uneasy” (1:57)
Max Xiantu – “Forget The Future” (5:00)
Jimmy and the Binliners – “Walk It Out” (0:31)

Track list and liner notes here.

Find all previous 4am podcasts here.

Live Show Log: Evelyn Evelyn

Evelyn Evelyn was in Minneapolis on Tuesday at the Cedar Cultural Center (a pretty great venue). I spent the night in a migraine fog, so it's probably for the best that I didn't try to get tickets.

Here's the customary pre-show Ninjaview:

Album Absoprtion 011: Street Fighter Mixtape

I admit: I haven't made it all the way through this yet, but I am pretty much loving it to pieces.



MUSIC by Akira The Don

via Warren Ellis and the new 4am

Noise Diary 007: Raining

I was lamenting my lack of audio equipment while walking by the two fountains near my house today. But when I got back to the computer, Magnulus, a Whitechapel friend, had posted a great clip of rain:

Magnus Hølvold - Raining (2010)


Another great site for rain is Rainy Mood, a 30 minute loop of a thunderstorm, which basically drops my blood pressure by about ten points just from turning it on.

Song-a-Day 025: Kate Nash

I'm sick of this song. I still like it, I think. I still sing along with the 'bum ba dums,' but I could go a couple of months not hearing it.

Kate Nash - Do-Wah-Doo (2010)


Can I point out, first, that the words Do-Wah-Doo do not appear in the song? Thank you.

The intro grummy guitar hook goes straight to the part of my brain that's still in love with Bikini Kill. It pops up again in the bridge. I wish the song would go with that feeling for the coda, because what it does is so busy! Piano, horns, the seemingly indefatigable hi-hat that gives way to a tambourine, back up singers. My brain stops trying to catalog what it's hearing and goes, "my my, aren't we effervescent?" What the hell is a dirty little guitar riff doing in there? What it does is pull me back into the song. Good job, Mr. Producer, I'm still listening to your song.

The thing I do like about Kate Nash is her voice. It's all floaty and nice. I appreciate the incongruence but a) her tone makes it really sound like this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black and b) what, did she kill Lily Allen and absorb her power, Highlander-style? At least when Lily Allen goes the jaded ingenue route she still sounds kinda like she might cut you.

Album Absorption 010: An Unwelcome Guest

I really hope y'all aren't sick of Guante yet. I am definitely a record needle stuck in a groove and I just need to work it out.

An Unwelcome Guest is a concept album. It's about one man traveling across the United States from East to West after an unnamed apocalypse. I choose to assume zombie apocalypse, from the line "We are waking up in our caskets" in track 4, The Stockholm Syndrome (featuring Prolyphic and Big Quarters). Sure, I am probably meant to interpret it metaphorically, and it's a very powerful line taken that way. I just also choose to interpret it literally. Because I can. This is my LitCrit Bill of Rights.

I like, in my mind, to line up this album and Stars Lost Your Name, which is a transcontinental journey in the other direction. Different genres, different stories, different compass needles, but a thread between them. It's good.

A particular favorite is track 3, The National Anthem (featuring Haley Bonar). I need to look into more of her stuff. Intriguing.

Okay, analysis now. Big Cats brings nice beats, and layers them with the nostalgic, tragedies of futures-past retro crackles and bent sounds, as though from time-warped cassette tapes or thermonuclear-slagged records. Guante's voice, now smooth now ragged and raw, delivers very tight images of what we will have lost. What we are in danger of losing right now. What we are losing right now. In a sense he's cataloging our apocalypse-in-progress.

It's all streaming here.