Cut Off Your Hands, and clap.

New Zealand has given us quite a number of truly fantastic things. Let's see... There's the beautiful landscape in "Lord of the Rings", the earth shaking (or space and time shaking, rather) revelations in string theory, and, of course "Flight of the Concords".

Here comes another one from the music side, with less humor, but still strong on fun... "Cut Off Your Hands" (aka. "Shaky Hands"... I suppose they were too much of a bother). I heard about these fellows from friends in Austin, TX quite a while ago... And I heard the single "You and I" added it to my iTunes under "Driving Music" and didn't really thing too much about it after that.

Then, a few days ago I was listening to one of my internet broadcast channels and heard this tune "Let's Go" and it made my head swivel. It sort of reminded me of a high school version of "Never Say Never" and I was intrigued. The song is a bit of a departure from the rest of the album, but upon listening, I found nearly the whole album to be alive with a fun energy.

These guys have a little of all the great things form Iggy Pop, The Strokes and a number of other alike references. And, in another name dropper moment, they were produced by Seude's Bernard Butler.

Check them out:

.:MP3:. Cut Off Your Hands - You and I

.:MP3:. Cut Off Your Hands - Let Go

Era Vulgaris

Era Vulgaris... What the hell does that mean?

Well, after four years of high school Latin, I'm proud to inform you that it simply means "Common Times" or "Common Era". And they said I'd never find a use for those classes.

Where the last album "Lullabies to Paralyze", recorded at Skywalker ranch, had a difinitive "Grab your mirror aviators and drive through the desert" feel to it. This album feels like you've left the desert and ended up in downtown Hollywood... With an Uzi. The ablum is decidedly darker with songs like "3&7's" that make me want to jump around and break things. Which everybody is a fan of.

Interestingly Julian Casablancas from the Strokes was a guest player on this album too. Lending backup vocals and synth guitar on "Sick, Sick, Sick". Tent Renzor also appeared on a title track "Era Vulgaris" that was released on a seperate single release entitled "You Know What You Did". The album also features Mark Lanagean (Of course) on a number of tracks. The was a rumor that Jesse F. Keeler (DFA 1979) was going to play bass on a few of the tracks but he opted to spend more time with his girlfriend instead.

All and all, this album is a touch... Weird. As well as being brilliant. There are a ton of music styles coming at you from all different sides in a fusion of punk, rock, blues and a little southern grit . There are elements of Gary Newman all over this one... Much slower, moodier, and groggier than the bands previous efforts. There's even a cover of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" featured as a bonus download in the album cover.


.::MP3::. QOTSA - "Into The Hollow"

.::MP3::. QOTSA - "White Wedding"

.::VIDEO::. QOTSA - "Sick, Sick,Sick"

The Non-Future... Of Sweden

Robot Rock was crazy last night... Writing bits on the internet about Swedish punk bands should be the last thing I do at this moment... My late night fish sticks haven't even fully digested yet... Then again, I've never been much for what I SHOULD do.


.::MP3::. Paper - Out of it into it
.::MP3::. Paper - Mylife



Anyway, this Swedish band might be making YOUR stomach do flip-flops very soon. With tinges of both Nirvana and Interpol (I mean, Joy Division) mixed this band seems to go strait for the guts of a song and yours along with it. They also carry a bit of the Jesus Lizard with their sometimes droning vocals and repetitious melody lines... You end up getting this very tense sort of sound... Like you’re waiting for the explosion that never comes.

Holy Fuck!!!

These dudes from Canada have come a long way. Their method is to make music out of things they found in the trash. In the beginning that led to some beautifully loud creations that fell somewhere between noise and dance music.



A lot of times when a noisy band attempts to reign in its sound for more traditional song-based structures, the music usually suffers. But with the new Holy Fuck reord more focused and fine-tuned than anything they've released before, they've only gotten better. We've been sitting on the EP this LP is based on for what seems like a year as the band figured out which label was going to release it. And it all still sounds fresh. The perfectly compressed drums, the delicate strings, the classic melody.