Because I wrote about Title Tracks’ versions of songs by The Flamin’ Groovies and The Merseybeats earlier this week, and because Bob Dylan’s truly atrocious new disc of Christmas standards leaked yesterday, I’ve been thinking a lot about covers.

Let’s put aside the illustrious history of ill-advised tributes (read: the entire Me First and the Gimme Gimmes oeuvre). A good cover can both satisfy a simple, dorky impulse—to hear one artist you admire spin another in an interesting way—and prove rather instructional. For example, it can tell you that Title Tracks frontman John Davis is probably a sucker for semi-obscure gems (he is), as well as a student of infectious, pop-classicist hooks. With that in mind, I’ve collected some recent covers by local artists.

My short list, after the jump, is fairly folk- and indie-centric, and by no means complete. Tell me what I missed in the comments.

Read More “Your Local Faves, Playing Other People’s Songs” »

Never mind its status as an icon of Madchester and forerunner of Britpop. Happy Mondays remains in easy contention for another rock superlative: rudest fookin’ band. The drugged-up, blissed-out Mancunians made some pretty memorable, influential music around the late ’80s and early ’90s (see especially Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches), but mostly they earned notoriety for frontman Shaun Ryder’s antics: a very public heroin addiction, explosive comments, several threats made with unloaded guns. The band fell apart in the early ’90s, and Ryder went on to form Black Grape. Since then, he’s reformed the Mondays twice, in 1999 and in 2007. (The current incarnation stops at the 9:30 Club tonight with another great ’80s band, Pyschedelic Furs, and Islands.) All the while, Ryder—once a thuggish, pranksterish lothario—has remained insanely quotable. After the jump, some of his better bon mots.

Read More “Things Shaun Ryder Has Said: Happy Mondays @ 9:30 Club Tonight” »

John Davis’ new project, Title Tracks, makes some mean power pop, and it covers some, too. Davis, who played in the defunct Georgie James and Q & Not U, recently posted some quick-and-dirty demos to his MySpace: ”I Can’t Hide,” one of the catchiest teenage anthems by the influential ’70s band The Flamin’ Groovies, and “I Stand Accused,” a similarly themed ditty by the mostly forgotten British Invasion group The Merseybeats.

Davis’ band, which plays tonight at the Black Cat, occasionally covers both songs live. Davis wrote in an e-mail that he recorded the covers in his Brookland practice space with Michael Cotterman and Andrew Black, who play bass and drums in the band’s live incarnation (Davis plays every instrument in the studio).

“I think they were just songs that fit in with what we were doing overall,” Davis wrote. “We were actually playing that Flamin’ Groovies song on the final Georgie James tour in Europe last year (Michael and Andrew also played with me in GJ), so it was something we knew and just thought we’d bring back and do again.”

Read More “Hear (Groovy) Title Tracks Covers, See Title Tracks Tonight” »

Think of all the truly awesome things that Merge Records has accomplished in its 20-year existence. Not only has the label—founded in the late ’80s by Superchunk members Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan—released countless 7″ singles, LPs, and at least one boxed-set by myriad worthy artists, but they’ve pulled off a few truly improbable feats. Merge basically invented the tolerable use of brass in indie-rock. Before Neutral Milk Hotel, the best you could get was June of 44’s Fred Erskine playing balloon-on-scalp-style free jazz trumpet. The label also put out countless Lambchop records, even though Europeans were the only people who listened to them.

But most remarkably, Merge has grown into a widely successful record label in the most humble and respectable way possible—keeping their business personable, modest, and honest. Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, an oral history assembled by John Cook alongside Ballance and McCaughan, tells the label’s story through countless photographs, fliers, and extensive interviews. Washington City Paper recently spoke with McCaughan, who will be reading selections from the book tonight at Crooked Beat.

Q&A after the jump:
Read More “Merge Records’ Mac McCaughan @ Crooked Beat Tonight” »

Considering the group only has one full-length album to its name, Ra Ra Riot brought an impressively enthusiastic audience to a sold-out 9:30 Club last night. The Syracuse indie-pop sextet put on a show better than its album would lead one to expect—the hour-long set was just enough to leave fans wanting more.

Photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

Read More “Photos: Ra Ra Riot @ 9:30 Club” »

There are two questions Sacramento, Calif.’s Ganglians say they’re asked all the time: Is the band named after ganglion cysts? (Those are gross and kind of cool, frontman Ryan Grubbs said Tuesday, but no.) Also, what’s it like to trip on ayahuasca?

Grubbs said he loves talking about psychoactive drugs almost as much as taking them. But he and his bandmates have never ingested that particular one, which is hard to find outside of South America. (Not that he wouldn’t, he said.)

“We definitely talk about acid experiences a lot,” said Grubbs, whose band opens for Wavves tonight at the Rock & Roll Hotel. “I think it was Rob [Enbom] of Eat Skull who told some guy from The Agit Reader that when we were on tour with him we were finding psychoactive stuff along the road like ayahuasca and ingesting it.” Which is true, Grubbs said, except for the ayahuasca part. “Our bass player Adrian [Comenzind] is a botanist. He’s like the hippie of the group.”

Read More ““What’s the Question, Again?”: A Trippy Interview with Ganglians” »

It’s probably not fair to call The Pains of Being Pure at Heart a lo-fi band. Certainly, the New York group’s self-titled album sounds appropriately hissy and fuzzy. But “lo-fi” also connotes an attitude, a puritanical devotion to songwriting whether it comes at the expense of sound quality or not.

But when the four-piece, which plays tonight at the Black Cat, released the song “Higher Than the Stars” earlier this month, I was taken slightly aback at the single’s wintry synths and programmed gurgles. And I wasn’t the only one. But maturity doesn’t have to be a bad thing, nor do higher production values. And you only need to look at some of the band’s forebears to see why:

Read More “In Defense of Hi-Fi Maturity:
Pains of Being Pure at Heart @ Black Cat” »

Ben Westhoff reviews Lil Boosie’s Superbad: The Return of Boosie Bad Azz and finds it to be less than bad ass.

Aaron Leitko talks to singer/songwriter Aaron Thompson about “Vals,” which captures the Nordic calm of Ikea in song.

Teenbeat has announced that, for the first time since ’92, the label has re-pressed Unrest’s Imperial f.f.r.r. as a vinyl LP. It’s a nice gesture for those of us who missed it the first time (myself included). There are a few critics out there who imply that Imperial f.f.r.r. was the band’s breakthrough—the moment when scrappy and high-concept indie-rock gave way to blissful minimalist pop. I might be inclined to agree. Then again, I refuse to spend any serious time with the follow up, Perfect Teeth, until I can afford listen to it in the way it was meant to be heard.

What’s more, the Teenbeat Website has made two Unrest live CDs available via mail order—one set recorded in 1993 and another from the label’s 20th anniversary show in 2005.

Track listings for the live stuff after the jump.
Read More “Teenbeat Releases Unrest Live CDs/Reissues Imperial f.f.r.r..” »

Bluebrain’s “Cakeblood” composition is to aleatoric (or chance-based) music as the duo’s usual repertoire is to heavily textured indie pop: smart, a tad bewildering, and ultimately quite pleasant.

That was certainly the case last Thursday night, when the area duo and about four dozen recruits performed the 36-minute work-for-30-odd-boomboxes while walking around the Dupont area. The music itself shuffled through a few movements and themes: At times it was ambient and aquatic-sounding, while other moments were minimalistic and percussive. My favorite passage was a chaotic assemblage of found sounds—exactly the “weird, electronic jungle” that Bluebrain member Hays Holladay told me to expect last week.

After the jump, check out a 3-minute video Bluebrain made containing some highlights of the event. The group performs this Friday at The Writers Center in Bethesda as part of the ongoing “Story/Stereo” series.

Read More “Video: Bluebrain And Its Boombox Orchestra” »