Lunch of Champions

…and God sent us Hockey Night

I love this band!!!

Hockey Night totally kicks ass! Seriously!!

“Keep Guessin’” is a rock album through and through. I imagine that Superman and Supergirl listen to this cd when they exchange super-bodily fluids.

Hockey Night – For Guys’ Eyes Only
This is some powerful rock music for people who love original rock music. You probably won’t hear this record on the radio, simply because it just rocks too hard. It’s too fucking original.

Hockey night has been a band for close to ten years, and their maturity shows through on this, their second release. Frontman, Paul Sprangers, has crafted an album that conforms perfectly to his blasé vocal style. The guitars and drums seem to grow in power every time Sprangers opens his mouth, which is quite a feat considering that he has somewhat of a subdued singing style.

The interplay between the dual lead guitars of Spranger and Scott Wells is something to write home about. Plus, there are two drummers, which I don’t really understand, but it makes the band a bit quirkier.

On this record, you will find blasting rock music interlaced with simple ballads sandwiched between music that will make you want to study the history of ancient Greece.
Hot Damn!
Summary: Buy this album. Viva la rock!!!

Dormlife: My Dad Approves!!!

My dad thinks that Dormlife’s “It’s not me it’s you” LP is one of the better albums to come out of the local Chicagoland scene in a long time. He made me listen to it shortly after he saw Dormlife play a battle of the bands in northern Illinois. He even bought an extra copy of the album so that I could take it home and review it on Lunch of Champions.

My dad has great taste in music. He loves the Beatles, Moody Blues, Megadeth, Metallica, Green Day, and Lauren Hill. I trust him when he hands me a cd to listen to, because he is the man behind my musical tastes.

Dormlife – The Saddest Girl to Ever Hold a Martini

I remember a time my dad made me watch a movie called The Deerhunter, which won 1979′s Oscar for best picture. I was a sophomore in highschool at the time, and didn’t want to watch a stupid movie about deer. But my dad yelled at me and made me sit and watch it anyway (this remains common behavior in our house). Well, as it turns out, the movie really was awesome, and, to this day, I still thank my dad for forcing me to watch it. Other movies he had to force me to watch, but which I found to be completely awesome include Dog Day Afternoon, Quackser’s Fortune, and a home video on the Internet that features septuplet babies laughing at their dad.

So, with my dad’s endorsement, I listened to the album twice on the long drive home to Minneapolis last weekend. To date, I have listened to it 7 times. But I have mostly found myself listening to it in an attempt to learn what it is that my dad finds so compelling about this band’s music. I just don’t think the album is that good.

I found the musicianship to be noteworthy, but the band has enormous potential to improve in the songwriting area. This is not a dis on the band, but rather a request for them to keep plugging along and doing tours so that they may gain some worldly experience and write some stellar songs on their next release.

As the title of the album implies, this is an album about relationships. And, unfortunately for those of us who like a little variety on our albums, the songs are all sad in some way or another, and they make me want to cry. Except that after crying for 4-5 straight songs, I am left with no respite. Usually, after 12-15 minutes of crying, I like to get a drink of water or maybe watch some House. This album doesn’t give me that opportunity. House is left waiting impatiently on the tv. I can picture him glaring at me with his gray eyes. It’s like having that talk with your girlfriend. You know. That talk where she keeps talking and talking and talking, and all you want to do is get back to watching He-Man, but all she wants to do is to ask you questions about things you could never know the answer to. Quesions like, “Why do you do that?” and “Do you think I can understand you?” You know. It happens like once per week when you are in a relationship.

Anyway, I encourage Dormlife to keep on playing shows, writing music, and recording. Meanwhile, I encourage everybody to buy this album to support an up-and-coming group of guys.

Summary: Don’t have conversations with your girlfriend before or during House. House would not appreciate it.

An Irresistible Dynamic Duo: Victoria Vox and her Jumping Flea

Victoria Vox is irresistible! I’ve seen her play twice, and both times she pleased the audience with a score of original, energy-packed songs buffered by stories of her life on the road. Miss Vox, who looks to be in her early 20′s, is addicted to touring, which a glance at her upcoming gig calendar can attest to.

Her youthful energy provides the backbone for “Victoria Vox and Her Jumping Flea”, an intense ukulele-based album. On the album, Vox sings with the maturity of a mo-town legend while strumming away on her ukulele, which she calls her “Jumping Flea.”

Victoria Vox
The album starts out with the perfect twist of tongue-in-cheek humor and solid musicianship on Ukulele Lady when she sings:

If you like a Ukulele lady,
A ukulele lady like me will like you.

Dr. Mario’s Diagnosis: An acute case of the bleeps and bloops

I play a lot of Dr. Mario on the old 8-bit Nintendo gaming console (NES). I’m getting so good at that game that I can now get up to level 18 without batting an eye. If you were to watch me in my nerdy solitude, you’d probably make a note of how I regularly can be seen beating level 20, which is a significant accomplishment even for established Dr. Mario’ers.

As anyone who plays the game will tell you, Dr. Mario has some great music! Certainly better than that found on lesser games such as Tetris and Bubble Bobble. But even with that being the case, “the Doctor” offers me only two musical choices – “Music A” and “Music B”, respectively. I am extremely pleased to announce that I have found a third choice!!!

Avenpitch - Butterfly Radio – Dusseldorf

Avenpitch’s sophomore release, an LP entitled “Butterfly Radio” brings Dr. Mario to new heights with it’s solid hooks and jiving keyboard parts. Plus, the Avenpitch option gives me a solid 10 songs to choose from as opposed to just two. I might even go as far as to say that Butterfly Radio’s jams rival those found on the game. To illustrate this grand achievement, I have created the following chart:

Dr. Mario vs. Butterfly Radio
vs.

Category			Winner
Musical hooks	Dr. Mario introduced some catchy melodies of a calibre not heard of since The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers.	Avenpitch has some catchy melodies and great hooks to enjoy on Butterfly Radio.
Beats	While the Good Doctor has some sweet rhythms that repeat over and over and over again, there isn’t quite enough midi drum sounds to satisfy me.	Butterfly Radio sports some pretty awesome beats behind it’s catchy melodies.
Lyrics	I wrote and regularly perform lyrics over the Dr. Mario music. These lyrics include such gems as:”You’ve got to pray just to make it today.” and “You can lick, you can lick on my nads.”	Avenpitch’s lyrics are astounding given the relative youthfulness of this group.
“Bleeps” and “Bloops”	Composed almost completely of “bloops” and “bleeps”, Dr. Mario’s soundtrack pretty much corners the market on these great sounds.	While Butterfly Radio certainly has it’s fair share of “bloops” and “bleeps”, it lacks sheer volume to compete in this market.
Overall	Dr. Mario’s music is undeniably catchy and great to sing and play along to for hours on end, particularly if you are rubbing a victory in your friend’s face.	Butterfly Radio is solid through and through.	Tossup

The album begins with A Safer Car, an interesting song about how difficult it is to communicate with those we care most about. Frontman, Todd Millenacker, belts out:

Express yourself if you’ve got something to prove
I won’t be the one to stop you
And that’s the problem with this world we live in
Everyone’s got advice but no one wants to listen

After that first track, the band begins to build up momentum, rolling into the album’s title track, a song sporting brilliantly written lyrics that contort the song’s rhyming scheme while speaking of what I assume to be a confused mass of American citizens:

And the rumor on the left is that they’re dancing on the right
And when they’re told to turn it down they don’t give a frightful
Fear or second glance
Reliving their last chance

The album gets stronger as it goes along, finishing up with Tumbleweeds, a song that I believe is about regret over having said something to someone, most likely a lady.

Summary: Butterfly Radio is a magical album, especially when played as background music to Dr. Mario.

Living life moment by moment

I’ve been watching Jenny Dalton play her unique style of piano rock for close to three years now, and I’m glad that the local and national media are just now catching up with what us Minneapolis residents have known for a while – Jenny Dalton kicks some major ass! She is also extremely sweet, cute, nice, and I’ll even throw in a pinch of surly.

This woman has been writing songs for over close to two decades now, and her debut album is testament to the amount of work she has put in honing her art over that time.

Jenny Dalton – Circles
Fleur de Lily‘s “Snake Oil” breaks out Jenny’s penchant for building up piano riffs into an explosion of guitar, drums, and bass. The song keeps building and building until the listener is taken to rock’s high ground at the 2:30 mark of the song.

On “My Shape”, Jenny turns a beautiful piano riff into a powerful diamond drill, blasting through sadness, regret, and lover’s remorse, as she sings:

Hard wiring can be so lethal,
But I am not afraid to let go!

With her emotions pouring through the hard wiring on my speakers, Jenny ends the album with an intense song about persevering through all the tough moments that life throws at you, when she sings:

Pierce these moments
Live out this cadence
Say amen

Summary: Say your prayers. Buy this album. Support surly songwriters! Visit Jenny’s website for streaming audio samples from her album.

A Land Called “Yeah Yeah Yeah”

If anything can be said of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it is the fact that they are not modest. My guess is they think they are the coolest band to grace the face of the Earth. And who am I to argue? Oh wait! I am a music reviewer! Muwhahaha!

Their new album, Show Your Bones, sports a cover which sports a flag of the territory known as “Yeah Yeah Yeah”.

When a discerning listener opens the cover insert, she will find photos of all sorts of Yeah Yeah Yeahs blankets, shirts, sheets, cats, diaramas, drawings, and watercolors – and that’s only the first two pages of the insert.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ flag

Moving forward, the insert sports numerous packages, boxes, envelopes, poster containers, and letters, which one might assume the band was too busy to open and read so they instead decided to take a photo of all their fanmail, thereby saving precious time and energy that would have been expended during the opening, reading, and ultimate understanding of the mail.

The back page of the insert finally gets to what we must assume we’ve been waiting for all these years – a photo of the bored band looking pissed off that the photographer took them away from their busy not-opening-mail schedule. This photo on the insert was taken in a forest somewhere, which happens to not even be in Yeah Yeah Yeah land – an area somewhere west of the arctic circle as we are led to presume by the location of the locals’ posting of a trifecta of the country’s flags on an arctic tundra seen on the back cover.

These folks are pissed off, man!

Fortunately for us, the band actually makes some decent, albeit overproduced, rock music. Scorching guitar riffs burned a hole in my shirt on “Cheated Hearts”. And the album’s first track, “Gold Lion”, makes me want to run a marathon or at the very least run to the SuperAmerica gas station to pick up a Hostess Cupcake.

It isn’t until the album’s final track that the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s actually showcase their talent for songwriting. “Turn Into” is a driving ballad that makes me think of Dave Grohl fighting the Incredible Hulk. Seriously, wouldn’t that be awesome? I predict that the Hulk would first strike Grohl where it hurts most – in the mustache.

(above: The Incredible Hulk faces off against Dave Grohl’s mustache.)

Anyway, I think this band’s got some potential to do some nice things if they would go easy on the post-production leveling and compression. Maybe next time.

Summary: I’m going to give it a few more listens, but only because it comes highly recommended by my advisors.

When’s the last time you killed your dinner?

Oh my god! Joanna Newsom is one the most fantastic songsters I have ever heard. Seriously. She sings songs of communal discomforts while spiriting in hope for the masses underneath the cloud of a polluted sky. “Should we go outside?” she sings on “Sprout and the Bean.” “The difference between the sprout and the bean – it is a golden ring. It is a twisted string.”

Joanna Newsom – Sprout & the Bean – Peach, Plum, Pear
Newsom plucks a harp while singing her twisted melodies, enchanting the giants that reside inside castles or even the giants inside the small apartment buildings in Minneapolis.

I could see Newsom singing in Medieval Europe to vast audiences. She is a rare blend of rugged talent mixed with advanced musicianship brought by years of toil alone with her harp.

Her album is mezmerizing throughout as she lifts rocks and stones to save the worms and moss trapped beneath. She provides the listener with the protection of a mother/queen/lion.

“I killed my dinner with karate – kick ‘em in the face, taste the body. Shallow work is the work that I do.” Newsome states on “The Book of Right On”. Do you really need more proof of Newsom’s bad-assness??!

Summary: Newsom kicks major ass. She is big and powerful. She plays the harp. And she kills her dinner every morning.

Open up a can!!!

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I listen to Spank’s “Fresh out of the Can” EP when I am pissed at my girlfriend. Or sometimes when I need to jump out of a window. Or even sometimes when I’m cooking. This is an all-purpose EP. It rocks, yet it is sensual. It can provide the foundation for a relationship with a special person, or it can destroy years of toil building communication between partners and such.

Lead guitarist, Nate Cryns, brings his ax out in mad style on “Little Frankie” and “Get Those Things”, while playing nice on “I Can Make It”. His guitar playing is a mix of James Hetfield’s thrash on old Metallica’s Ride the Lightning album and Eddie Van Halen on “Jump!”.

Spank – Little Frankie – Ball of Fire
Meanwhile, lead singer and bass player, Noah Cryns, provides the growl of a bear in the vocal department while belting out accusations of thievery on “Little Frankie”. On “Ball of Fire” he proclaims, “I’m a great big ball of fire!”, which actually summarizes his vocal style quite nicely.
Drummer Bradley Thomas performs stunningly. I can’t say enough about his workmanship on this record. He ranks amongst the best drummers of the last decade, and consistently performs at a high level.

Summary: Don’t kill your girlfriend – just listen to Spank.

What an attick sounds like

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“Speak easy Heroes, as you pillage the earth! Speak easy, Heroes, while you rain salt upon me! Speak easy, Heroes! Speak easy, Heroes!!”

So began a recent show by Chicago-based rock band, the Speakeasy Heroes.

Speakeasy Heroes – People on the Run – Collegiate Man
This band’s attick-recorded, live LP is a must listen for anyone who appreciates the sort of raw recording techniques reminiscent of old-school punk bands. Recorded over two weeks in an attick of an old farmhouse in Illinois, the Speakeasy Heroes’ LP provides a lesson in band ergonomics for those who find it difficult to rock in a 100-degree attick for hours on end.

The powerful vocal lines sung by Toby Cryns provide chilling accounts of government meltdown on “People on the Run” and of college dating conquests on “Collegiate Man”. Meanwhile, bassist extraordinaire, Bob Serrano puts down an irresistible set of roving basslines, all set up by the explosive drumming of Los Angeles drum-smacker, Bradley Thomas.

The album is held together by the fact that the songs were all recorded live with the same microphone set-up, which provides a stunning cohesiveness amongst the tracks on the album.

Summary: This band ROCKS!!!

Pocahontas County – I think I want to move there!

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Ever seen a banjo player get so pumped up that he started yelling at the crowd? Ever see a banjo player run into the crowd and start headbanging to the groove of the bluegrass tune he is picking?

Neither did I until I saw Pocahontas County’s banjoist, Colin Anderson, break jump into a rowdy mix in the crowd during the middle of a banjo solo.

Pocahontas County is a bluegrass band that has the persona of Metallica. Underneath the band members’ suit-and-tie outfits lie six of the rowdiest bluegrass experts you’ll ever see.

Frontman guitarist, Jackson Buxton, an elder statesman of the local bluegrass scene, tends to sit in the background and let his more youthful bandmates, led by Anderson and upright bass spinning, Justin Bruhn, make sure the crowd knows they came to rock. And usually the crowd knows this, as Pocahontas County’s fans are some rowdy S.O.B.’s themselves.

At a recent show at St. Paul’s Turf Club, I witnessed two drunken regulars start a moshpit next to a couple of youthful couples dancing away unaware of the potential injury straying near.

Pocahontas County – Sittin’ On Top of the World

The shows regularly are packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people dancing and jiving away to the swingin’ grooves and impressive soloing of fiddlist/mandolinist, Jake Hyer. Hyer, a man of many talents, has also been known to sport a washboard if the occasion fits.

The group’s self-titled LP can be purchased exclusively at the band’s shows.

Summary: Come see these guys rock out. Not for the faint of heart. Definitely good first-date material.