Relative unknowns, Toronto-based Menew (hint the name is reversible) recently played the David Letterman show on the strength of their self-produced album alone. Apparently Paul Schaeffer brought them up to his office after the show to discuss their future plans. The three brothers (Shade – Vocals and Guitar, Key – Piano and Synthesizers, Nathan Samuel Phillip – drums/backing vocals) from the town of Cambridge, Ontario outside Toronto proper are playing a pair of small dates in Los Angeles this week including a Cinespace Tuesday night and a 7:30 showcase open to the public at The Viper Room tonight, Wednesday, March 25th, 2009. Check ‘em out and you can say you knew them when.

Tags: cambridge ontario, cinespace, david letterman, david letterman show, drums, menew, paul schaeffer, relative unknowns, showcase, synthesizers, town of cambridge, tuesday night, viper room

Goddamn do I hate the cliché of the snarky blogster.

And now, thanks to The Morning After Girls, I’ve become one.

See, there’s good news and bad news:

The good news is that all indications from new music on TMAG’s myspace page are that after six years, they might have finally realized their 60s pop-meets-shoegaze mission statement.  After walking mostly on the wrong side of their influences with their previous effort — Shadows Evolve — a new line-up and a new home base (NYC rather than their native Australia) may have finally helped shape in practice the band that looked oh-so-very good on paper a few years ago.

The bad news is that it also appears that they’re still wielding unwarranted pretensions as fervently as ever.

You could certainly do worse than taking a Dandy Warhols’ approach to marrying 60s’ psychedelic rave-up numbers with My Bloody Valentine’s trademark wall of sound and shitting tambourine all over it, and to that end, TMAG has done well for themselves.  Their initial efforts garnered them enough success to earn a choice spot opening for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in the States, where they found an easy audience already thoroughly ignorant of or apathetic toward second and third-generation genre robbery, er, “influence” (see also: early BMRC and the Jesus And Mary Chain).

Apparently this was enough to convince TMAG that though the closest thing they had to a hit in the U.S. was their acutely juvenile and vaguely sinister-sounding screamfest “Hi-Skies,” (an incongruous throwaway which lacks all the nuance and promise of their other material), they were entitled to espouse self-aggrandizing statements and behaviors in league with the likes of say, Oasis, who, though very much derivative themselves, had the common sense to write the anthems of millions before running their mouths and acting like pricks.

Of course, it’s completely unfair to generalize.  So let’s run through the evidence:

Exhibit A (from a WOXY “Lounge Act” interview and performance in 2006)

WOXY INTERVIEWER: Is it hard — do you guys get recognized now, pretty easily, here in the States?

TMAG #1: Uh, what — walking down the streets?

WOXY: Yeah, I’m just curious.

TMAG #2: No.

TMAG #1: Yeah. Well, I don’t know man.

TMAG #2: You do?

TMAG #1: Yeah, each time we come back, I guess.

Now, let’s clarify that question and its response:

Q: “Do you, The Morning After Girls, get recognized walking down the street in the United States?”

A: “Yes.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: 60s pop, always mine, black rebel motorcycle club, bmrc, Dandy Warhols, general public, hi-skies, hollywood bowl, mercury lounge, My Bloody Valentine, nickelback, oasis, shadows evolve, snark, Spaceland, spinal tap, straight thru you, The Cure, the morning after girls, TMAG, Troubadour, viper room, who is they, woxy, wyld stallyns

I could almost boast that I saw the evolution of glitch in front of my very eyes. Despite my own history making ambient music influenced by FSOL, Can and Pete Namlook, I claim absolutely no contribution to this movement, but I can say I was there. I think it had something to do with people who had the tools, the pedigree and the fact that they were making jingles, and so had hundreds if not thousands of bits of audio that they reassembled into micro-edited music-concrete. But the difference here, that made it something beyond experimental noise for the “advanced music appreciationist” was that it SLAMMED. This stuff was groovy, sexy and could stand up by anything the Neptunes could throw at you.

Tags: advanced music, ambient music, android, Aphex Twin, art galleries, blue eyes, dj music, dj remix, drum n bass, echolocation, edited music, electronic music, electronica, experimental noise, fsol, glitch, goldie, kratz, Los Angeles, music blogs, music concrete, music weblog, the glitch mob, viper room, warehouses, warren g