NAILED Songs of the Week #32
“dance floors composed entirely of Jell-O Jigglers shaped like dinosaurs”
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Shenyah Webb, Arts Editor of NAILED:
"Simple Time" – Tiger High
Tiger High raises the bar set before them in their hometown, the rock-and-roll epicenter of Memphis, Tennessee. I discovered their classic psych-pop sound late last year when a friend road tripped through the South and met their drummer, who happens to be Memphis music scene veteran Greg Roberson. She was convinced that I would love their sound, and well, she was right!
While researching Trashy Creatures Records and Tiger High, I was fascinated to learn that their 3rd full length LP, Inside the Acid Coven, was a complete concept conceived and recorded in a single marathon session. Being a musician myself, little details like this make my listening experience all the better. Needless to say, I’m impressed.
This is one of those albums that, when listened to in its entirety, really puts you in loose and blissful head space. There's just a little bitter-sweetness mixed in with groovy textures that span the last 5 decades of rock and roll, garage rock, and psychedelia music mastery.
A final integral part of creating an amazing album is the artwork, as Josh Breeden nails it with the cover art for Inside the Acid Coven!
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Matty Byloos, Publisher and Contributing Editor of NAILED:
"Elvis' Flaming Star" -- Pond
In all sincerity, one of these days (and this would have been a great opportunity), I'd love to post a review of a song that was nothing more than: "Who doesn't love string cheese?" or some other such nonsense. With songs like this one from Pond, it really does make more sense than the blathering that I'm about to do.
Released back in February of this year, the band's 6th release undoes music again, to produce a poppy, self-aware, reverbed out acid dance track (am I saying that right?) that sounds like Ariel Pink's interpretation of Ziggy Stardust. That was a real comment. At 1:35 of the 3:25 jam, the band does this thing (much like Ariel Pink and Chad Vangaalen) where all of a sudden, you're listening to a totally different song. Rather than creating a more commonplace "bridge" or going the Guided by Voices route and penning 32 songs that are less than 2 minutes long, instead, Pond offers the theory that the 0:01 start and 3:25 end of a song can be strong enough bookends within which -- well -- literally, anything might happen. If part of the essence of rock and roll has always been, fuck you we can do whatever we want if you don't like it then don't listen, again -- here you have it. When it works, it really works.
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Guest Editor: Stephen Meads, Music Aficionado, Writer, and Touring Poet:
"Call It Off" – Shamir
I have yet to feel comfortable going out to a club because even if a DJ is up enough to be playing something that sounds like "Call it Off" (or any similar song wherein the automatic reaction to it is to start dancing), there is no club that actually FEELS LIKE "Call it Off." For example, there are no dance floors I can think of that inject you with streaming pulses of light turning you into a human strobe. Nor are there dance floors composed entirely of Jell-O Jigglers shaped like dinosaurs and/or jungle creatures. To my knowledge, no dance floors exist where you can feel cooler standing on the wall head-nodding than dancing.
Mostly there are yet to be dance halls that morph you into the wondrous sort of confidence machine that lives inside of Shamir and comes shimmering out through that voice like a pack of raver cherubs on a mission to make you fall in love with a beat, even as they tell you explicitly not to do just that. But oh, when those places do finally exist, on that watch me rock my day-glow worthiest sweater and ease right on into the steadiest of grooves!
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Carrie Seitzinger, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of NAILED:
"Scott Get the Van, I'm Moving" -- Cayetana
Cayetana brings out punk rock joy with this song. I love the lead singer Augusta Koch's voice; it's vulnerable, raw, and powerful all at once. The lyrics present an interesting idea: that we only mourn the loss of something if we remember what it was like before we had it. Cayetana is about to head out on a summer tour--catch them if you can.
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