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Arriviste
Listen
Pretty
soon, Arriviste Listen will be a comprehensive source of news, reviews,
and legal MP3s from your favorite indie and alternative artists
(and a lot that aren't your favorites yet but will be). Right now though,
it's just a bunch of us blathering about whom we like, don't like, or just
find funny.
All
pics and MP3s you find here are posted with permission and very okay for
you to download and use however you see fit (except for reselling them,
posting them on KazAa, or doing anything else you know damn well is
illegal).
How 'Bout Them Apples?
Appleseed Cast
Two Conversations
Tiger Style, 2003
Pick this up!
As long as the
earth has women, men will have a need for CDs like the Appleseed
Cast's latest release, Two Conversations. This 10-song
commiseration speaks to every guy who's grappled with some chick's
bullshit - blindly scrambling to save his relationship, yet
mercilessly maintaining the presence of mind to feel his ship sink.
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But Two
Conversations doesn't come off like melodramatic art-school
moping; rather it soothes like the down-to-earth consolation of the
union-shop spot welder sitting on the barstool next to you.
Effective keyboards and some elegant harmonizing give Conversations
a dreamy effect, but Aaron Pillar's guitar and Chris Crisci's
stand-and-deliver vocals keep it in the genre of honest rock records
and more digestible than the band's previous release,
Low Level Owl.
We caught up
with Crisci after a recent set at the venerable Middle East
nightclub in Cambridge (Boston). Click
here to see what Chris had to say.
Click here to download the track
"Fight Song."
Click
here to see pics from the show.
OR show Appleseed Cast some love and
Pick this up!
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The Deadstring Brothers serve up a
helping of country-fried rock that may never see the light of radio
airplay but deserves to be heard nonetheless. They also win the
award for most optimistic album cover.
Here's our take...
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Fischerspooner:
An Arriviste Pictorial
On stage, or waxing philosophic for the press, Fischerspooner projects
an image that embraces controversy -- not an unusual ideological stance
in the world of electronica or even the world of contemporary art,
where the duo originally cut its creative teeth. While the mainstream
press has been inclined to ask: "What do they really look like?"
or "What are they really saying?" we at Arriviste are more
inclined to ask: "What are they really?"
At the FNX Best Music Poll in Boston earlier this summer, front man
Casey Spooner spat both epithets and and partially digested Budweiser
on a sweltering audience just daring it to fight back. The crowd,
of course, did the opposite and begged for more, but from the intimacy
of the photographer's pit one wondered what would happen if Casey
really got his riot.
He got the verbal equivalent by way of a nasty review from Pitchfork
Media when the album #1 was released late last summer, but the rest
of musicland has been content to play on the band's (real or manufactured?)
mystique. We aren't inclined to summarily dismiss #1 like the Pitchfork
guys did; it has its moments. Just don't expect it to supplant Underworld
or Apollo 440 in the canon of modern electronica. But we do remove
some of the mystique with this pictorial from the band's Boston appearance. |
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Independent's Day
Pinback releases another completely
indescribable EP, and the Thermals make an honest indie rock debut
that's destined to drive them crazy.
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out the reviews here,
or say, "To hell with those Arriviste airbags," and just
buy the CDs here:
Pick Up Pinback
Pick
Up The Thermals
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Essential Summer CDs
for '03
At press time it's roughly a week into the 2003 summer
season. The kids left campus a couple of weeks ago to take up residence at
the lake, the beach, or the camp for their $9 an hour, their tenuous
resume filler, and their 13 weeks of romantic turmoil. We who've been off
campus more permanently as of late pay as much as they earn - for summer
rentals and time shares - to hang on to a shred of that nervous tension
that underscores June.
In the background of it all is the music, the subliminal seed
that will trigger fits of nostalgia and daydreams of Rosalyn's white
bikini years from now. But what does it take for a CD to become
essential summer listening? A few things, as we note below, and we'll
tell you which artists may haunt your flashbacks 10 years from now:
1. Familiarity. None of the CDs we recommend below were
issued in 2003; the oldest has been out for a year. An essential disc has
had some months of subtle presence -- like soundtrack and TV appearances
or advertising samples-to build that all important mindshare. However, no
one with a modicum of modern taste wants to rehash Steve Miller one more
time. Familiarity is a matter of degree.
2. Pop sensibilities. Tool never made a summer album. no
matter when they played Lollapalooza. Anal rape just doesn't set the mood
for Pina Coladas. We're not demanding every summer song carry the tempo of
"Rock Lobster," but a good beat and a good mood definitely aid the case.
3. A message of liberation. The Violent Femmes captured it
when they sang "Gimme the Car." After at least six months held captive by
weather that would kill you (literally, if you live anywhere north of
Jacksonville), you
want anthems for escape. Find the footage of U2 at Live Aid for a
refresher course.
Or just listen to one of the three bands below. Here are
three CDs Arriviste Press believes could be the summer anthems for '03:
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Jurassic 5: Power
in Numbers
With
one of the most notable voices in rap and hip hop today (Chali 2na),
Jurassic 5 deliver infectious and danceable beats in a variety of
tempos and styles. The entire 17-track disc is solid, but you can
skip to "A Day at the Races" and let it run from there
for 45-minutes of summer background. Highlights include "What's
Golden" and "Thin Line," the latter featuring Nellie
Furtado as the friend that goes too far.
The
Power in Numbers CD also comes with a DVD mini-documentary
in the vein of MTV Cribs... with significantly more modest pads.
Jurassic
5
Power
in Numbers
Interscope
Records, 2002
(Pick
this up!)
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Hot Hot Heat:
Make Up the Breakdown
We're not aiming for a play on words, but Hot Hot Heat is the
band you'll have in your player as the tide is receding and you're
tossing your Frisbee on the flat of the beach. Reminiscent of great
80s party bands like the English Beat or Oingo Boingo or the Romantics,
Make Up the Breakdown is 32 minutes of punk-influenced power
pop embodying the freeing effect of summer.
"You are my only girl, but you're
not my owner girl," sings Steve Bays in "Talk to Me, Dance
With Me" -- which (along with "Bandages") has breakthrough
summer single written all over it. The band originally worked with
indie powerhouse Sub Pop Records, but now is published by Warner's
Reprise, guaranteeing a marketing push that should make Hot Hot
Heat a household name by September.
View
Hot Hot Heat in Boston.
Hot Hot Heat
Make Up the Breakdown
Reprise Records, 2002
(Pick this up!)
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Like Dirt
You've rolled out of the club with
a few new friends and you need mood music that keeps the energy
up for a late night affair. Soul Hooligan marries suburb-friendly
rap with electronic rhythm and old-school samples for a very capable
post-party piece of entertainment.
Even without radio airplay, Music
Like Dirt will sound eerily familiar at first listen. It's tracks
have been picked up by pitchmen and music editors for everything
from Toyota to the Truman Show, but the band hasn't crossed
the line and sounds fresh enough to be the sound you'll remember
from the more pivotal points of an endless summer night.
Soul Hooligan
Music Like Dirt
Warner Brothers, 2002
(Pick this up!)
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Interpol
Turns on the Bright Lights
From "Untitled",
the nearly wordless opening track on Turn
on the Bright Lights,
the band caters to solitude and introspection. "Untitled" opened
and set the mood for their recent show at Boston's Avalon Ballroom,
and what followed was 90 minutes of some of the most straightforward
and earnest alternative rock to grace that venue in some time.
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