Musical forks

More on the music front, seeing as it’s the end of the year and Best Of 2005 lists will need to be compiled before too long. At this point, I don’t believe there are any other major releases left for the year, or if there are, the promos are already out, meaning mildly connected record nerds have probably heard what they’re going to hear from the zero five crop.

Because all things indie revolve around Chicago’s best-known elitist webzine, I’ll start with their recent review of the Death From Above 1979 remix album Romance Bloody Romance. Writer Nick Sylvester, once nominated for an Andrew Sullivan Posuer Alert (spelled that way cause Sullivan isn’t just a semi-conservative homosexual beltway blogger-pundit-former New Republic editor, but a British semi-conservative homosexual beltway blogger-pundit-former New Republic editor, and those Brits like the extra letters), makes his feelings rather plain from the start, calling it the “worst release of 2005,” which is pretty dumbfounding considering it’s actually one of the year’s better albums. Who knew?

Maybe I just don’t have the dance beat knack, but every track on that album kills, and whether I would want to shake my ass to it Ken Mehlman-style isn’t even a factor. The whole thing is a groove bludgeon, the sort of spasm-inducing aural energy bar that will transmogrify a boring night of dancing and drugs into a sweaty-chested celebration of hedonism. That, by the way, is a good thing. All those hardcore kids sporting bushy growths and clever piercings need some sexed-up rock blasts, and for the segment that thinks The Locust is good date music, The Faint just doesn’t cut it. Romance Bloody Romance is a fucking great disk, and Nick’s just mad cause his parents stuck him with the name of a cartoon kitty cat dunce, always on the losing end of the battle and without even gaining a bit of audience sympathy. Looks like he lived up to it well.

On the other hand, the Fork gave appropriately high marks to the Test Icicles disk, another spazzy hardcore gem who sound a lot like The Blood Brothers but a little more spastic. Plus they have a genital pun for a name, so you should probably own this CD just so other hardcore heads will get a chuckle when browsing through your CD rack.

And if you occasionally dabble in wussdom, the new Cardigans record is pretty sweet too – a little bit precious, a little bit too cute, but nicely sad and with just-specific-enough lyrics about mopey shit that your urge for vaguely embarrassing innocence and melancholy ought to be satiated till the next Postal Service LP.