Who likes Jens Lekman?

If you look at Google Trends to find out how popular someone is on their searches, it also lists the top 10 cities for that search item. When you plug "Jens Lekman" into it, guess who loves him most? Well, obviously, there's Sweden, where he's from, but after the top 5 being Swedish cities, you have New York. Fine. Lots of music-savvy people. Next? Melbourne. Then Perth, and Sydney. He's onto something over here I think.

Tours it sucks you missed #1

In 1999 Jimmy Eat World went on tour supported by Jets to Brazil and Pedro the Lion. All of the above are/were awesome parts of the 90s indie/emo scene. None of this eyeliner crap. Just sweet music.

Here's a video of my favourite Jets to Brazil song, I Typed for Miles. It's pretty bad quality sound but the song is great, especially towards the end.



Pedro the Lion's song Options:

muscles

I have to say I'm loving this guy's music right now. His creativity in forming sweet tunes and beats and vocal stuff has overcome my natural reaction against music with techno/house sounds. Ice Cream (audible on jjj) is one you may have heard. It's semi-restrained, dance-imperative, deliberate electronic music with a penchant for the word officially spelt as wooo but with the variations of whoa, woot, wooh, and if you're getting really picky, woo.

Muscles (real name top secret), a country boy in Melbourne, has gone from unknown to the global poster child of hyphenated post-modern electro-dance music, within a year. In Mess + Noise around July or August last year there was a feature on this unknown aspirational kid, probably around my age, who the writer thought was a bit eccentric and whose world-domination ambitions were not thought to be likely to succeed, even though he was trying really hard. I mentioned him on splodge in August, and ended up being just the fourth little review excerpt he stuck in his review column on his website. Fluxblog, one of the internet's mp3 blog barons, beat me by a month. But less than a year later Muscles has 5000 imaginary Myspace friends, in November he passed 10000 page views, and to date there have been around 80000 plays of his few songs that he's got up there. Triple J is head over heels for him and he's gone off to America to tour for a little while with Soulwax and 2manyDJs who I think both have something to do with dance music. Those sort of people.

How did he do this? In the M+N article his aspiration was to be a superstar, something like that. That he'd work at it even if it took decades. This guy is hardcore. He used to offer to send a promo CD of his songs to anyone who asked. Right now he asks for anyone to send him 'cds and stuff if you're in a band or a dj who makes mixes, im always looking for new music and bands to play with!' This is one enthusiastic guy. Persistent too.

But how long will it be before he is over-lauded on Pitchfork as the messiah from Melbourne, and how long after that that they surgically cut him down to size, and how long after that that the British poparazzi fawn and drool over him and his relationship prospects, and how long after that that he becomes a coked up vegetable propping up southern California's rehab industry? Huh? Hopefully the plot won't unfold like this. This is a guy who sings about the simple pleasures in life- badges, lemonade, finding common ground with an acquaintance through shared musical tastes, ice cream, and riding on the train. Not only that, he seems cluey, with some nous and good judgment. He refuses to accept people as Myspace friends if they "have an annoying background that takes ages to load, transparent objects on your myspace, or 'special' characters in your name, you will not recieve a 'wooo' therefore not worthy of befriending muscles." I respect that. And so should you.

Muscles Website
Muscles Myspace
Mess + Noise article

setlist

The setlist for Sodastream's last ever show:

Firelines
Out
Keith & Tina
Chorus Line
Horses
Charity Board
Fresh One
Wedding Day
Let it all Turn Black
Warm July
Lushington Hall
Otherwise Open
Blinky
Constant Ships
Mood in the Bunker

I feel a need to record all of this for posterity... i'll do a review soon.

Sodastream ends

The Elevator Music King

So in Bangkok I bought a CD called The Jazz King, of jazz music composed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand. And I was listening to it, and it just didn't sound right. It sounded weird. And then, after seven tracks, I figured it out. It's not really jazz music. It's elevator music. You know, that awful stuff they put over tourism promotional videos, with too-smooth melodies and a beat that belongs in a Vegas hotel in 1992.

mewithoutYou - Brother, Sister

So I first heard this whole album on a dark night in Istanbul, and I bought it this week. In short, it is awesome. It's sort of indie-rock 'post-hardcore' arty-farty music with spoken-word poetry/singing/wailing. It goes from soft to chaotic, from English to Arabic (in one song), from understandable to confusing. Sound stupid? It's not. Listen to them here.