Douchebaggery | girlpants
Category: Douchebaggery

Amazing cover (mid-90s edition)

K so lately I’ve been loving the song “Your Woman” by White Town. The song­writer, Jyoti Mishra, said of the tune: “I was trying to write a pop song that had more than one per­spec­tive. Although it’s written in the first person the char­acter behind that view­point isn’t nec­es­sarily what the casual lis­tener would expect.” The gender ambi­guity is one obvious dis­cus­sion point; so is the some­what broken nar­ra­tive. Anyhow, this song has been coming up for me lately. Other pretty big hits that I now really love from the 90s that I didn’t love at the time and/or that are increas­ingly rel­e­vant now in terms of interest or influence:

But here’s a great cover of the song that inspired this brief but (I hope) sweet post. It’s by Finnish band Cats on Fire. Here’s to wishing that you like it as much as I do. 

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I’m sure there are some other songs from that era that have come up, lately, as the 90s are in style again (side note: why??), but I’m going to cap it off at that.

No Comments by Niina on June 30, 2010
filed in Douchebaggery, Music, Video
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iggy pop, janelle monae and more: girlpants gets opinionated

It is with interest that I’ve been fol­lowing this weird week (month) of bizarre endorse­ments – does it not seem like everyone is shilling for someone these days? Some are artistic col­lab­o­ra­tions, some are out-of-genre forays, some are fundraisers, and some are straight-up curious wtf moments (like when Bob Dylan teamed up with Victoria’s Secret). Here are a few of my favorites genre mixups and lat­eral pop cul­ture moves of the past week.

  • Iggy Pop and the Stooges played Ray-Ban’s rere­lease party for the Avi­ator glasses. More on this here. While I’m sure it was cool to see Iggy Pop per­form live, I can’t help but cringe when Google pre­dicts that I’m going to type in “Iggy Pop Raw Power” and I have to dis­ap­point it by typing in “Iggy Pop Ray Ban” instead. Yes, this is about me, girlpants.
  • Beck, Vam­pire Weekend and others are on the sound­track for the new Twi­light ven­ture. The savvily indie track listing was revealed on MySpace (who uses MySpace still?) and you can see it here. Obvi­ously this means that Vam­pire Weekend will now and for­ever become a mall goth band, moody and dark save their col­orful, col­orful hair.
  • Janelle Monae and Of Mon­tréal, together at last. By col­lab­o­rating, they’ve cre­ated what my iTunes had already tried to create by rapidly shuf­fling back and forth between the Idlewild sound­track and Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? back in 2006 (seri­ously this was a problem). Luckily the song itself is way more rocking; listen to it here at Some Kind of Awe­some. It’s actu­ally pretty Of Montréal-heavy for being on Janelle Monae’s upcoming album, The ArchAn­droid (with its Baduesque cover), out on May 18th.
  • Nina Persson of the Cardi­gans and A Camp has teamed up with Swedish designer HOPE to reveal a limited-edition col­lec­tion that will become avail­able in August. I think this is lovely because I have always been a bit of a Nina Persson fan, and because A Camp is really good (watch the ABBA-parodying video here for proof), and because at the release party, the fashion col­lec­tion was inge­niously paired with avant-garde snacks, etching HOPE for­ever into my brain by cre­ating a food memory.
  • Richard McGraw, whom we’ve dis­cussed here on Girl­pants before, has released the mp3 of his reworking of Leonard Cohen’s punch-in-the-eye classic “Chelsea Hotel #2”. It is not a cover, but a re-imagining of the emo­tional crux of the song into some­thing set in McGraw’s home­town of New­burgh, NY. Listen to “Balmville Motel” here.
     
3 Comments by Niina on May 13, 2010
filed in Douchebaggery, Music, News, Off-site mp3
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Drunk Girls by LCD Soundsystem: Another Song about Girls

The new, emi­nently holler­able track “Drunk Girls,” LCD Soundsystem feels kinda retro to me — not vin­tage, but def­i­nitely a throw­back to 90s Brit pop. The yells around the chorus con­sist of just “drunk girls” and “drunk boys”, and to be honest, to me it not unpleas­antly recalls some­thing like a mashup of “Park­life” and “Girls & Boys,” both by the awe­some awe­some Blur. Observe:

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I think, though, that LCD Soundsystem are hit­ting on an inter­esting and time­less song­writing phe­nom­enon: “Drunk Girls” adds to the already for­mi­dable ret­inue of songs about girls who do stuff. There­fore, in order to appro­pri­ately com­mem­o­rate this, I shall pro­vide for you a list: Ten Songs About Girls As A Group Entity (with some hon­or­able men­tions). (These are all youtube links.)

  • Blur, “Girls & Boys”. Obvi­ously, I had to put this song on the list. Here is where you can listen to it. Don’t worry, it’s cool again. Also, this song is its own hon­or­able mention.
  • The Queers, “Punk Rock Girls”. Cel­e­brating the (Chuck) tai­lored image of the icon­i­cally rough-round-the-edges girl that you want to take out but you can’t ‘cause she would prob­ably drink you under the table. The Queers bring it home here. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Punk Rock Girl,” Dead Milkmen.)
  • Beastie Boys, “Girls”. This song falls into the cat­e­gory of Sexist Jam About Par­tying And Girls. It is bril­liant, shouty, and hor­ribly incor­rect, and cel­e­brates the girls who might or might not pick up after gross frat­boys. It is an 80s gem and we could not have a Songs About Girls list without it. Period. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Cal­i­fornia Girls,” David Lee Roth.)
  • David Bowie, “China Girl.” This one epit­o­mizes the Song About Girls From Places: even though this girl is sin­gular, she’s really a list of cul­tural cliches. Still, we believe Bowie when he says “shhhhh.” (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Amer­ican Girl,” Tom Petty.)
  • Queen, “Fat Bottom Girls.” Songs like this one fall into the cat­e­gory of Cel­e­brating Girls With Imper­fec­tions, i.e. pos­sibly the awe­somest cat­e­gory. My room­mate pointed out that this song also could be the begin­ning of its own list – sweeping gen­er­al­iza­tions about girls written by gay men. Pos­sible future list coming?
  • Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” This cat­e­gory is the com­panion piece to Beastie Boys’ “Girls” — the Cel­e­bra­tory Jam about Girls Par­tying. Cyndi Lauper is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of this cat­e­gory, still, to this day — as you can read from this hilar­i­ously irrev­erent inter­view. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Jumpin Jumpin,” Destiny’s Child.)
  • Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl.” Although this song is a mil­i­tantly drummed cel­e­bra­tion of one girl crushing on one neigh­bor­hood queen type, it’s really about every girl crushing on every awe­some badass girl ever, and so it qual­i­fies as the (Girl Envious of) Awe­some Megacrush Girls cat­e­gory. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Cherry Bomb,” the Run­aways.)
  • The Smiths, “Some Girls are Bigger than Others.” This song demon­strates Morrissey’s ability to make mean­ing­less com­par­isons, and marks his easy fiefdom over the kingdom of Semi­goth Blasé Obser­va­tions About Girls. Often these songs come dance­able; they don’t really reach any con­clu­sion by the end and leave the lis­tener feeling some­what like s/he has just fin­ished reading a repres­sive Vic­to­rian novel. I guess not in the bad way. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “West End Girls,” Pet Shop Boys.)
  • Duran Duran, “Girls on Film.” Another song about genre girls (see #9 and #6), this song makes itself note­worthy because it Observes Girls From Afar, rather than giving a tribute to the fan girls or a slightly con­de­scending descrip­tion of exotics. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Amer­ican Girls,” Weezer.)
  • Major Lazer, “Keep It Goin Louder”. This one is the most common in the world of songs about girls: Girls As Acces­sory. The note that the girls are present “six chicks deep” totally con­tra­dicts the semi-intimacy of “girl I wanna party with you” because it doesn’t really matter – they’re all fly and we all hella want to party with them. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Girls Girls Girls,” Jay-Z.)
2 Comments by Niina on March 27, 2010
filed in Douchebaggery, Listmakery, Music, Video
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The Best Worst Record Review of All Time; 10.0, Best New Video

For those of us who are in the above-25 age bracket, it’s old news that Pitch­fork, that ven­er­able bas­tion of hip­ster trend­set­ting and mediocre prose, was once down­right ter­rible. Unar­guably, inex­cus­ably so.

The evolution of a man.Prob­ably every home­grown pub­li­ca­tion has these embar­rassing teething prob­lems, but in Pitchfork’s case this Ter­rible Epoch coin­cides neatly with the time when Founder and Editor-in-Chief Ryan Schreiber was a reg­ular con­trib­utor. In the course of the site’s slow, stum­bling crawl from sub-Geocities design and sub–Karen’s LOST Note­book writing toward the point where Schreiber could be listed as a nom­inee for Time’s 2009 Person of the Year, the media mogul pub­lished a string of cringe-inducing “reviews” of albums—some emi­nently for­get­table (Walt Mink? 10.0? What?) and some clas­sics. And Ryan was at his absolute worst when appre­ci­ating leg­endary artists.

Case in point: Schreiber’s hair-clenchingly godawful writeup of John Coltrane’s Live at the Vil­lage Van­guard. This hood classic (thanks, Mike) has recently been given new life by some enter­prising YouTu­bers with a knack for ani­ma­tion and silly voices. Look here:

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If watching it wasn’t enough for you (you sick, twisted person), you can read the unabridged orig­inal text of the review (since banish-ed from P-fork’s hal­lowed halls, per­haps in recog­ni­tion of its shameful nature) here.

1 Comment by Ben on March 25, 2010
filed in Douchebaggery, Music, Reviews, Video
tagged , , , , ,

friday filler fun

Well, we were sup­posed to have a new mix up for you by now, but, well… Mike left the coffee pot on and when it died a fiery death in the wee hours of the morning, no one knew how to cope. I mean, the fire put itself out and no one was hurt—or at least, not directly. But unable to get their caf­feine fix in this sad state of affairs, Mike, Niina, Joel, Jason, and the home­less guy who’s been crashing under Joel’s desk var­i­ously lapsed into comas and/or delirium. The hardiest of the bunch, Niina man­aged to crawl down­stairs and around the corner to Star­bucks, using her dying strength and the chipped and cracked edges of her fin­ger­nails to drag her­self toward a $4.99 Amer­i­cano. This she gra­ciously shared with the rest of us, caring soul that she is. Well, except for me, because I don’t drink coffee. So while the rest of the crew are on the DL, here’s some wacky internet shit I’ve dug up to hold you over:

First up we’ve got this curious and heart­breaking Youtube video in which a group of brave, mis­guided teens from the frost­bitten wastes of Canada go on public access tele­vi­sion to give you their vision of the sub­lime. As the uploader put it, “The band is called Mental Note, and they appeared on a show called Johnny Sizzle’s Enter­tain­ment Watch, which aired on the Win­nipeg Public Access channel in 1992.” Enjoy! YouTube Preview Image Wow, what an incred­ible solo, amirite? Rem­i­nis­cent of Creed Shreds 3: You Shit Here With Me, don’t you think?

Up next is a gem of a remix—a reworking of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” by long­time hipinion.com boarder j_brooks. Now, I hate brooks as much as the next guy, but this remix… well, it’s good. Someone in the thread where brooks outed it described it as “shits like audio ambien,” to which brooks replied, “ambien is like my main musical influ­ence.” Thrilling, no? It sounds like exactly what you’d expect, given that exchange.

Lady Gaga — “Paparazzi (Élite Gym­nas­tics Remix)”

And actu­ally that’s all we’ve got for today. I have to go tend to the sick and wounded (I think I hear Jason calling for a mocha drip), and get that mixed fin­ished up for (we hope) tomorrow. Please send all get-well-soon cards and/or packets of instant coffee via overnight ship­ping to Girl­pants, Inc., at the address in our Con­tact Us page.

2 Comments by Ben on March 5, 2010
filed in Comedy, Douchebaggery, Music, Video, mp3
tagged , , , , ,

useless under the sun

Now that girl­pants is back up and run­ning we’re get­ting invited to all the good par­ties again. It’d be gauche to go into too much detail, but I will say that Ben and Joel vis­ited la Tour Eiffel together and Niina shot some­body with a revolver. 

And me? I’ve been ensconced in Lali Puna’s bangin forth­coming album Our Inventions.

Run Lali Run

Lali Puna — “Move On”

Not just anyone can sing “you’re just a small light, so use­less under the sun, no will rec­og­nize your shine. Try.” In the wrong hands it’s like Thomas Kinkade ter­ri­tory. But ren­dered in that flatly Ger­manic, sexy robot voice of chanteuse Valerie Trebeljahr–I dunno, it seems earned somehow. By the chorus I find myself gazing out onto the horizon con­tem­pla­tively, morning coffee com­mer­cial style, won­dering what the day will bring. Warm, pul­sating elec­tronica and swelling major chords, apparently.

3 Comments by Mike on February 22, 2010
filed in Douchebaggery, Music, mp3

“I wanted to give you disneyland”

All apolo­gies to Niina, who I know is a fan, but I really don’t think Patrick Wolf has proved him­self to be a ter­ribly good musi­cian. I also think he’s a par­tic­u­larly annoying human being–though I admit that’s an opinion based entirely on a couple of his emails and blog/message board posts. Some P. Wolf his­tory: a couple of years ago he wrote a lengthy, bor­der­line inco­herent rant about the early leak of his debut album Lycan­thropy; a year or two later he did it again regarding the leak of his third album, this year’s The Magic Posi­tion, but this time with a more cal­cu­lat­edly world-weary tone. He’s fop­pish, dandyish, inten­tion­ally dramatic–his videos are pre­cious, carefully-constructed for max­imum whimsy fan­tasias and he seems to spend more time on his hair than A Flock of Seag­ulls in their prime. Internet reports indi­cate that he’s inspired a growing fashion sub­cul­ture of sim­ilar uber­hip­ster douches in the UK (and prob­ably some US hangers on). Other internet reports indi­cate that he’s “a twat.” Long­time readers of Girl­pants will know that we’re not prone to making posts about things we dis­like. If there’s a record we’re not into, rather than bashing it we don’t post about it. The site is more about our love for good music than it is about any and every music-related thought that passes through our heads. That said, occa­sion­ally some­thing really obnox­ious comes down the pike and we (I) can’t resist com­menting on it. Which brings us to Patrick Wolf’s recent mes­sage board post. Here it is, without any more preamble:
dear all… I should never have read this.. I really shouldn’t. I dont think when I was 16 and dreamt of releasing records there would ever be so much crazy spec­u­la­tion about the person I am and that you want me to be. I have become so tired of this behav­iour, some­times I wake up and have to do six hours of inter­views before doing a show, then go straight to bed to sleep a couple of hours to fly to a new country to be cross exam­ined in the same way.. I dont know what is left of me some­times, some morn­ings i dont know how i get on the flight or even open my mouth to sing that night. If I choose after working since the early hours of a day and then pouring my heart out for an hour and a half that I really have nothing left to give.. that I cannot be a fake politi­cian and sign auto­graphs for an hour.. does this make an ass­hole? because my drummer was causing argu­ments within my road family, taking seda­tive drugs before an impor­tant show in a city i really love, so much so he could not play the music I wrote, the songs that I have sur­vived on in the last six years… because I had to slap him to see if he was even CONSCIOUS on stage.… the fact that the only thing that got any reac­tion out his corpse hap­pened to be made of metal.. because all of this.. does this make me seem like I was on cocaine, or on some power trip? I was pissed off because this was just one more musi­cian or busi­nessman taking my good nature and gen­erosity for a ride… trust me, that moment onstage was the end of a long line of bad behav­iour that it would unfair to go into in public. Yes I was drunk, but It was one oclock in the morning after seven hours of inter­views.. i had been run­ning on about four hours of sleep a night for about two weeks… such is the joy of pro­moting a record. Anyway, I was having FUN until that moment. So was the rest of my band until we realised my drummer was taking the piss out of all of us and our hard work. I dont work with liars and I dont work with thieves. I dont want to have to share this infor­ma­tion with you but so many seem so inter­ested… I have made a deci­sion, my final con­cert will be this november, a ret­ro­spec­tive with an orchestra in London. I am not sure wether there will be any­more public com­mu­ni­ca­tions after that, Infact I am pretty sure there will be none. Of course, this has nothing to do with my drummer.. but a cre­ative clock is ticking and I have many many projects to be cre­ating with my time left on this earth. I hope to share my last shows with you this year. I have enjoyed making and per­forming music for you all, I have enjoyed trying to give a little hope and inspi­ra­tion to the world. But I feel, espe­cially when I read all this and I go about my days that I have failed. Im not seeking sym­pathy or empathy, god, I have to go find some­thing I love and am inspired by in this world again. Many of you will never know the amount of work and emo­tion that goes on behind the scenes for me and many of your other favourite artists or musi­cians and why should you? I wanted to give you dis­ney­land.. I wanted to give you a world at the back of your wardrobe, now im just feel a fool for both­ering. I am in berlin today, i know I should never have read this, I dont know who any of you are, just strangers talking amongst them­selves, and I wish I was stronger minded today, but i have to take enough bull­shit from other parts of the world for what I do and who I am without get­ting it from here. Im going off for a walk now.. clear my heart and head. Thanks to all you with the intel­li­gence to see past the super­fi­cial chaos of the media and the var­ious ridicu­lous per­son­al­i­ties and char­ac­ters that have been painted around me over the years, the problem is, unfor­tu­nately many of you will never get to know the truth, but many will still spec­u­late, and play chi­nese whis­pers with inter­views and opin­ions from the friend of a friend. This is nothing new to me, unfor­tu­nately, luckily I have always had a close set of dear friends that will always know me for who I really am, just as I do. If I can give any advice, is, if any­thing, just listen to the music, watch the videos, read the lyrics, see the art­work, these are my com­mu­ni­ca­tions, not others. still love x patrick
There are a number of things that bother me about this post, but before I get into them I’d like to state that I don’t think firing your drummer because he’s falling asleep on the job is in any way out of line. If a dude’s not doing his work, sure, get rid of him. How­ever, slap­ping him mid-performance and firing him in full view of the audi­ence is step one on the road to douchebag­gery. The main problem with this post is the enor­mous ego involved. Every other sen­tence refers back to Wolf’s own self-assigned genius, his mar­tyrdom at the hands of the recording process/record industry/media/fan cul­ture, or his gen­er­ally mis­un­der­stood nature. The entire post drips with the feeling of how put upon Wolf is to be such a celebrity (give me a fucking break)–Patrick, if you can’t handle inter­views and signing auto­graphs and trav­eling to shows, per­haps you should recon­sider your line of work? You’re hardly the first to expe­ri­ence the down­sides of being a recording/traveling musi­cian. It’s been a part of the game for going on a cen­tury now, and that’s not going to change any time soon. His solu­tion is to stop touring. Fine. It sounds like he’s not cut out for it, anyway. How­ever, the idea that he’s playing up this igno­min­ious retreat from touring as a cul­mi­na­tion to an illus­trious career is pretty laugh­able. That he’s plan­ning his final show as a “ret­ro­spec­tive” (of three footnote-of-an-albums?) speaks directly to the kind of hubris involved in the enter­prise. Listen, Patrick. You’re 23 years old–you have plenty of time left. You’re clearly tal­ented. Take some time to your­self, find your­self, get a fucking grip, and maybe some of your “many many projects” will be worth hearing in a few years. I don’t doubt that your post was another cal­cu­lated ploy for atten­tion like the rest of your act (any press is good press, right?), and I don’t doubt that I’m playing into your hands by replying to it, but I feel it’s worth the risk to deliver this mes­sage: get the fuck over your­self. Regards, Ben @ Girlpants
3 Comments by Ben on April 23, 2007
filed in Douchebaggery, Music

Two Drink Mike (note: not our Mike–he can hold his liquor)

The other morning started out as a reg­ular day at the MAN­pants office. I was eagerly waiting for my apple toaster strudel to finish crisping on the hood of the VW bus when sud­denly I expe­ri­enced a strange feeling–a feeling some­where between divine inter­ven­tion and my usual Monday morning fever dream. I felt the curious urge to write a review of come­dian Mike Birbiglia’s album Two Drink Mike. I con­tacted my audio­phile supe­riors at girl­pants and they granted me per­mis­sion to reside tem­porarily at the GPHQ while I exor­cised this review demon. Now I find myself sit­ting on a cot Joel has set up for me in their base­ment. I’ve been given a can of Italian wed­ding soup for sus­te­nance and a Royal type­writer to com­plete my task. Mike Bir­biglia is a stand-up comic you might have seen on Conan or Let­terman (he is one of the youngest comics to appear on The Late Show). You might have heard or read his Secret Public Journal, a con­tin­uing series of anec­dotes and wisdom bestowed upon The Bob and Tom Radio Show and avail­able in easy-to-use blog form. Two Drink Mike is Birbiglia’s second album (his first, Dog Years, was self-produced). Two Drink Mike is a CD/DVD set from Comedy Cen­tral Records and it’s a birthday cake of good­ness for Bir­bigs fans and new­comers alike. Recorded at the Improv in D.C., this is an hour long set that never drags. Bir­biglia has an instantly lik­able per­son­ality, with an alter­nately laid-back and excited style. His humor is nei­ther squeaky clean nor too blue. He wisely slips in his edgier punch­lines when you least sus­pect them. With “Whiffle Ball Tony,” his playful cri­tique of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Bir­biglia does in 3 min­utes what most polit­ical come­dians take an hour to do, and he does it better and fun­nier. Bir­biglia worked with the late, great Mitch Hed­berg for some time and the influ­ence is clear, but never dis­tract­ingly so. In a moment on “I’m Crazy and Gay Cats,” after segueing from a Karma Chameleon ref­er­ence to actu­ally singing a line from the song, Bir­biglia cracks him­self up and mum­bles “that’s absurd…” It’s the kind of aside you’d expect from Hed­berg, and here it feels like a brief but caring tribute. Birbiglia’s game plan is to mix home­spun nos­talgia with modern pop cul­ture (sit­ting down to a game of Scrabble with Jay-Z), or riff on his own goofy inno­cence (trying to buy Snapple from a crack dealer). In “Hip Hop Ani­mosity,” he per­fectly sums up the plight of the average good-natured single guy with a great bit about dance club cul­ture. He also presents his under­stand­able obses­sion with pizza, a cau­tionary tale about drinking at a laun­dromat, and a curious con­cern for the sex lives of panda bears. Don’t be scared when he breaks out the guitar toward the end of his set–the three musical bits are all solid. “The Oat­meal Song” tackles (all kinds) of reli­gious rock; “The Guitar Guy at the Party” takes aim at the tit­ular girlfriend-stealing trou­ba­dour; the “Thanks For Coming Song” is a recap of the set. (There’s a radio ver­sion of “The Guitar Guy at the Party” included as well, but the live track is simply more fun.) Let me wind this down by praising Comedy Cen­tral Records. They’ve been pumping out these fan­tastic CD/DVD sets that are pretty much revi­tal­izing an under­ap­pre­ci­ated art form. Two Drink Mike is no dif­ferent. The DVD includes Birbiglia’s five min­utes from Pre­mium Blend, his half hour from Comedy Cen­tral Presents, and a seg­ment from Shorties Watchin’ Shorties. I’m not a fan of Shorties (the show in which choice comedy bits from var­ious artists are Flash-animated), but the bit they chose for Bir­biglia is a strong one. As for the other videos, he seems a bit more relaxed on the CD, but these are still fun to watch. All in all, this is a golden set. Rating: 5 toaster strudels (out of 5) [buy] Try: “Whiffle Ball Tony” “You’d Be Sur­prised” [site][myspace][wiki][label]
1 Comment by Peter on January 27, 2007
filed in Comedy, Douchebaggery, Reviews, mp3

Double Nepotism!

What’s this? Two posts in two days? Visions of a fully func­tional blog dance before my eyes! Today I’ve got some­thing mildly self-serving for you guys–a col­lab­o­ra­tion between two boarders at Hip­inion, hip­ster brain­trust extra­or­di­naire. Boarder #1 is Toaster aka Hari aka Robotville, an elec­tronic folk act out of the UK. Boarder #2 is rollie aka Roland Pem­berton aka Cadence Weapon. I’ve posted about him before, and no doubt you’ve heard his debut record Breaking Kay­fabe (buy) or at least heard of him due to his tours with Islands, Bus­driver, and Why?. Things like this are why I love Hip­inion; for all its snob­bery and snarkery and life-destroying antics, occa­sion­ally its con­stituents come together and create some­thing beau­tiful. Here we’ve got Hari’s simple upbeat folk tune (reminds me most of that breakout Sugar Ray song, actu­ally, but in a good way) aug­mented by a killer verse by Rollie (best lines: “They say I’m indie rock like an asian girl­friend”; “so I hang with the idiot, like I was Ian Curtis”). Anyway, check it out: Robotville — “Kick Out the Snow (feat. Cadence Weapon)”
6 Comments by Ben on September 15, 2006
filed in Douchebaggery, Music, mp3

A spectre is haunting Girlpants–

–the spectre of Man­pants. Yes, dear readers, the dreaded day is upon us. The under­lings, the proles… they’ve risen as one and cre­ated a blog ded­i­cated to the worst in film and tv (the workers’ bread and butter, don’t you know). Is this the end for Girl­pants? Is it merely another turning of the wheel of his­tory? Is it inevitable that Girl­pants’ beau­tiful and pure, God-given right to rule be usurped by the masses? Or will Mike and Peter post a few times, get bored of it, and trail off? Time, it seems, will tell. In the mean­time, we at GP got some postin’ to do-ooo. Lots of new music has been hit­ting the inter­nets lately. Some of it is good. Some… not so good. Since we at giga­pants aim to cover all of it, here’s a smat­tering of the stuff that’s been get­ting play in my ears as of late. DJ Mehdi — Lucky Boy (Ed Banger Records/Espionnage, October) If you read us reg­u­larly, you might have noticed that despite my exes­sive protes­ta­tions against dance music, I tend to post about it pretty fre­quently. (With some rhythm, you might say.) Lucky Boy is the best straight up dance record I’ve heard all year and, depending on how crunk’d I get at the party next Friday, I might end up actu­ally dancing to it. In view of other people(!!). Check it:
  • DJ Mehdi — “Pony Rocking feat. Feadz”
  • DJ Mehdi — “Lucky Boy feat. Fafi”
  • DJ Mehdi — “Hot-O-Momo feat. Xanax”
Of Mon­tréal — Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl, Jan­uary) I don’t think I’ve ever heard a record so far ahead of its release date as this one. It’s still Sep­tember, right? Yeah, I thought so. This baby offi­cially hits your ears in Jan­uary, but I figure it’s worth building the hype a little early because it’s so damn good. Used to be Of Mon­tréal was “just another one of those E6 bands”. Folksy, playful, whim­sical, etc. They’re still most of those things except now they sound like ABBA, too. Seri­ously, this is great.
  • Of Mon­tréal — “A Sen­tence of Sorts in Kongsvinger”
  • Of Mon­tréal — “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider”
Tim Hecker — Har­mony in Ultra­vi­olet (Kranky, December) This guy’s last couple records, Radio Amor (on Mille Plateaux) and Mirages (on Alien8) were cre­ative runs through the kind of gritty, sandy, stat­icky fields you’ll usu­ally find Fen­nesz dom­i­nating. Har­mony in Ultra­vi­olet cer­tainly makes it out to sound like Hecker’s been lis­tening to Venice on an end­less loop (all summer, per­haps?), but the con­nec­tion is def­i­nitely more inspi­ra­tion or kin­ship than thievery. Lots of music is said to have sonic “tex­ture” but in my opinion only a few records ever really achieve it. After only a few lis­tens, I’m nearly cer­tain that this is one of them.
  • Tim Hecker — “Chimeras”
  • Fen­nesz — “The Point of It All”
I’m not gonna say I’m revi­tal­ized, or that I can guar­antee I’ll be posting more reg­u­larly, but I will say that I’ve been feeling the itch. Joel’s set­tling back into the rou­tine of col­lege life; Niina’s livin’ it up in Yonkz; Mike… I don’t know what Mike’s doing, but he says he’s still working on his top 10 list. We’re alive, and we’re still on top. Don’t you forget it, Manpants.
No Comments by Ben on September 8, 2006
filed in Douchebaggery, Music, mp3
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