Music, musings and miscellanea

Teenage MC Kitty Pryde is what happens when you give Ellen Paige’s Juno the mic. A brilliant mix of self-awareness wrapped in a protective blanket of pop-culture name-dropping and self-obsession. This song reveals more about teenage girls in 2012 than any social network, vampire novel or magazine article.

In case it hasn’t been made clear through some of my recent posts, I’ve been really digging the resurgence in interest in distorted, heavy guitars in underground circles. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that I grew up a riff-obsessed teenager in the 90s post-grunge distortion-a-thon.

But bands like the Men and now Amherst, MA’s California X harken back to the 80s American indie underground, as glorified by Michael Azzerad’s influential book, Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Their debut single “Sucker” an epic riff fest, was recorded by  Justin Pizzoferrato, who worked on both of Dinosaur Jr.’s post reunion albums Beyond and Farm and Sonic Youth’s The Eternal as well as Thurston Moore and J. Mascis’s recent solo albums. It’s out now on the Sounds of Sweet Nothing.

Check out “Sucker” and its B-side “Mummy” below.

“Sucker”

“Mummy”

I’ve written about my love for Grimes in the past, so I’ve been easing off a little with the release of her latest, most excellent album Visions. However I felt compelled to post this latest video for the track “Oblivion” because it’s the first time we get to see Grimes, aka Claire Boucher acting playful and more or less being herself in a sense.

In previous vids, Boucher comes across as aloof and mysterious, which is part of what has made her so appealing – we don’t just want more of her music, we want more of her.  With “Oblivion” she gives it to us, but just enough to satiate our appetites. The scenes in the sports stadiums are the most off-the-cuff, while the staged scenes with the buffed up body-builders and the jarhead football fans reinforce her mysteriousness and power.

Boucher and director Emily Kai Bock sat down with Pitchfork to discuss the clip for P4K’s Director’s Cut. Check out “Oblivion” below.

Chattanooga, TN (yes, that’s a real place) crew Moonlight Bride have found a nice middle ground in the indie world walking a thin line between the slinky post-punk of Joy Division and the swirling shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine.

“Lemonade” is the first song released off the band’s forthcoming EP Twin Lake. On top of perfectly showcasing the band’s musical dichotomy it’s got a nice anthemic quality to it, and kind of feels like the soundtrack to a deleted  One Tree Hill Scene (in my world, this is a compliment).

Twin Lake is out  Feb. 28.