the death knell of criticism, mk iii

i'm about to launch into a one-listen wednesday of afternoon records' upcoming release by one for the team, but first this: there's going to be a slamming show at the triple rock tonight featuring headliners pretty girls make graves (including ex-twin cities bamf jay clark on guitar), giant drag and the joggers. pgmg just released elan vital, which i'm pretty sure means lively flair or something like that. there are throngs and throngs of kids who love pretty girls like rap kids love breaks, and i'm not super-familiar, but i love jay clark's remix of bloc party's "positive tension." it sounds like a nintendo playing dance rock. pgmg mix up the vocals between the dudes and the dudettes, which always gets the thumbs up from me, although the critical reception for this album has been somewhat muted. i brought along the new romance, so i'm throwing that in right now.

giant drag is another boy-girl affair, although just the one girl (annie hardy) and the one boy (micah calabrese). their disc kicks off with the catchingly-named "kevin is gay," and over the course of the whole thing cover a good amount of ground sonically, especially for a two-piece. it definitely falls onto the indie-dance-punk-pop side of things, but isn't overly aggressive. watching duos go at it live is always entertaining as they fill in parts on the fly. the best of them make up with energy what they lack in instrumentation.

this just in: the new romance is more immediately good than elan vital. i'm not saying better, just that so far it's making a better impression.

and now: one-listen wednesday

one for the team
s/t(?)
afternoon records

right away: guitar-through-a-tiny-radio sound. an immediate plus. when the track kicks in, it's damn solid. i don't have any track listings here, so i don't know what this is called. it's kind of clattering and great. tamborines should be mandatory on certain songs and this is one of them. and there they are. call me crazy, but i'm thinking matthew sweet here. it's got that vocals-in-you-face feel to it.

checking up on myspace (where else do you go for info about bands?), i discover that one for the team has 0 friends. not even tom. this would be ian anderson (who heads up afternoon records and writes for the pusle from time to time) and a bunch of guys doing anderson's songs, i'm a-guessing. the second song is definitely keeping up the ante with a great line about, "i've been coming of age for most of my life," and a refrain of "you're taking off, you're taking off your..." i really hope that's a double entendre.

apparently, power-pop grows on trees here in the twin cities, and this is one of the finer examples i've heard. personally, i like my power-pop a little shaggy, a little more organic. plug in, crank the amps, write a rocker, then add claps, harmonies, and yup, tamborines. another major plus: the fourth track's chorus references the band's name ("take one for the team, and one for me"). always a plus in my book. the pinnacle example being, of course, the song "in a big country" from the album in a big country by the band in a big country.

wow, killer little ac/dc style riff at the end of track five. razor sharp, anderson. track five is so far the most spleen-filled, but it's still pretty sweet and the breakdown part at the end reminds me of muse--one of my favorite guilty pleasure bands, like a cross between queen and rage against the machine.

i always struggle in these things to just say who bands sound like, since that's the cheapest and easiest way to explain a band's sound, but on the other hand, it's cheap and easy. track six has a great little interpolation of that childhood teasing melody of "na na na na naaa naaaa" (that looks horrible and not like how it sounds, but i don't know how to express it in print) in the chorus.

"making wishes under overpasses?" hell yeah, dude. i've always liked the stuff i've gotten from afternoon records from superdanger to viceburgh to look down to squareshooters, but this might be my favorite so far. hints of 12 rods? yeah, i think so. see, there are nasal vocals and then there are nasal vocals, and it's a really fine line to walk between braying and endearing; anderson's doing a great job here of staying on the right side of that line.

and now the track nine change of pace. keyboards! well, at least it starts that way, but overdriven guitars have taken over ... and now back to the keyboards. it's a song about school and buying houses. "someday maybe we'll be fine" is the chorus. this is what i love about a good indie rock pop moment: it's simple and almost dumb, even, in a way, but couched inside of support that's fuzzy and splintered and that tension gives it a certain poignance.

okay, i've got it now: built to spill circa there's nothing wrong with love. cross-pollinate that with matthew sweet circa girlfriend. who wouldn't want to listen to that? yeah, this is just super-pleasing over the distance. we're at track ten now and i haven't heard a clunker so far.

looks like they played with voxtrot on april 17. i'll bet that was a good show. and thus we've wound to the end of one for the team's disc. man, kudos, ian. this one's definitely going to be getting more than one listen.