Album Review: Shimokita is Dead? - Tennis Pro

Normally, when someone gets an advance copy of an album with the intent to review it, they write and post that review before the album comes out. That's not what we do here, though! Despite getting the new Tennis Pro album Shimokita is Dead? a few weeks ago, I'm just now posting this review - days after the album dropped.


This album, based heavily on the time the band recently spent in Japan, is 15 tracks long and much more musically diverse than their previous offerings. Not all the tracks are considered by the band to be full songs, but they're all worth a listen. Here are a few of the album's highlights:


Track 1: "Dance Hit Number One" - A good, very eighties-influenced song residing far outside the band's power pop wheelhouse. Though its style isn't repeated on the album, its strangeness serves as a good introduction to the rest of the tracks' divergent styles.


Track 2: "Satomi Bicycle" - Immediately, the album shifts back to power pop. The narrative style that characterizes some of their best songs is evident here. One of the album's top three new songs.


Track 6: "Rock Over Tokyo" - See the review of Happy Is The New Sad, but like some of the other repeated tracks, this one is a new and slightly different version.


Track 10: "Clothing Optional Christian Barbecue" - Based on a melody written for a beer commercial and the creepy vibe of a middle-aged nudist, there is no way this song wasn't going to be fantastic. Its origin gives it a slightly different vibe, instrumentation-wise, from a lot of the other stuff on the album, but paired with the vocals it's the perfect weirdo party song.


Many of the other tracks would merit a description as well, but let me simply summarize by saying that the album's experiment with guitar-driven post-grunge make for an interesting - if not always completely effective - contrast. I fully recommend the album, but if the price tag seems a little much I would at least recommend downloading these four songs.

Minipost: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

I only have a few songs from this guy (these guys? I'm only aware of the main dude, but I know he at least occasionally had help), but there are two that I want to point out as awesome:


"Streets of Philadelphia" - A Bruce Springsteen cover, I got it off of that PIAPTK Sampler I wrote about a looong time ago. It's really good - if there's one thing the CFTPA nails it's the straining, heartbreaking vocals.


"Tom Justice, the Choir Boy Robber, Apprehended at Ace Hardware in Libertyville, IL" - Ho-lee crap I love this song. I got it off of the CFTPA Daytrotter session, and it describes the (apparently, though I'm not sure) fictional life and exploits of the title character. The line "All those times they thought you were praying/Some you should have been praying" is pretty fantastic, but it's just one among many.


Alright, just had to get that out there. No podcast this weekend, I have two parties and an exam. Yeah, I know, stop bragging. We'll see what we can do for you next weekend.

Karaoke

For over a year now, I've been on a real tear about karaoke. That's about the time I started to think about buying a karaoke machine, which led to my turning my laptop INTO a karaoke machine, and has culminated in my receiving a karaoke video game called Lips for my Xbox. Now, what I learned is that this is no ordinary karaoke game. Yes, it has "Video Killed The Radio Star" and "Hungry Like The Wolf" (which, we learned, one can sing perfectly even if they've never heard it before), and yes I did pay to download "Baby Got Back".

Most importantly, however, it allows you to import songs and then sing OVER them. No on-screen lyrics, and it can only reduce the actual vocals so much, but I don't care because it's awesome. My roommate and I each made a playlist to import. Here's mine (I'll post his later):

1. Ben Lee - "Catch My Disease"
2. Billy Joel - "Only the Good Die Young"
3. Blitzen Trapper - "Furr"
4. Blue Scholars - "Joe Metro"
5. Blue Scholars - "The Ave"
6. The Dandy Warhols - "Bohemian Like You"
7. Danko Jones - "Lovercall"
8. Danko Jones - "First Date"
9. David Bowie - "Ziggy Stardust"
10. Death Cab for Cutie - "Crooked Teeth"
11. Dire Straits - "Money for Nothing"
12. Harvey Danger - "Flagpole Sitta"
13. Harvey Danger - "Wine, Women, and Song"
14. Hey Marseilles - "Rio"
15. Pavement - "Cut Your Hair"
16. The Presidents of the United States of America - "Peaches"
17. Queen - "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy"
18. Skee-lo - "I Wish"
19. Stellastarr* - "Freak Out"
20. The Tallest Man on Earth - "King of Spain"
21. XTC - "Statue of Liberty"

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WLI Radio: Episode 1

The podcast is available here.

It's finally up! The first episode of our new podcast, WLI Radio! This first episode is a mixtape, twelve songs that Hannah and I put together, for you! Normally the episodes will have a lot more talking, but every so often we're going to put out one of these.

Here's the tracklist:

1. "Never Had Nobody Like You" - M. Ward & Zooey Deschanel
2. "Come On Mona" - Mona Reels
3. "Auctioneer" - The Broken West
4. "Seaside" - The Kooks
5. "Northwestern Girls" - Say Hi
6. "The Capitol" - Visqueen
7. "Chips Ahoy (Acoustic)" - The Hold Steady
8. "Shelly Gets High" - Tennis Pro
9. "Forever" - Walter Meego
10. "In the Sun" - She & Him
11. "Pure Imagination" - The Smoking Popes
12. "It Started With A Mixx" - Los Campesinos

We're still trying to get the feed going so that you can get it like a normal podcast, maybe even through iTunes. Right now though it's just a download.

Making Up For Lost Time

Whoops! We... may have forgotten to post for a bit. Hannah and I have been working hard on the podcast - getting it online is giving us enough trouble - and soon we'll hopefully get into a nice pattern of a few posts for every episode we put out. Here's the plan now (once the hosting service comes together):

Every other week, a new episode will come out. Every third episode will be all-music, with only short song intros from Hannah and I. We're going to try and go about half-and-half between new and old music, but that's a little bit money-dependent. Sorry, I can't bring myself to torrent my favorite bands' music, not even for you guys!

ANYWAYS...

Since there were some issues with one of the podcasts we recorded (three in and we've already got a Lost Episode), here's a quick run-through of what got lost:

• Starfucker/Champagne Champagne concert: Awesome!
• New season of Doctor Who: Awesome!
• Bang Bang Rock and Roll by Art Brut: Maybe even TOO awesome?!
• My roommate's music collection: Still not proving to be interesting!

More on those three bands later, and sorry for the missed posts!

WLI Radio Premiere - Ep. 0

The podcast is available here.


Well, pilot more than premiere - Episode Zero of WLI Radio is finished! It clocks in at a pretty hefty length, but we think it's worth listening through to the end. Here's what you have to look forward to:

1. Artist profile: The Lonely Forest
2. "Be Glad You Don't Live In Brooklyn, Part 1"
3. Album profile: 69 Love Songs, by The Magnetic Fields
4. Movie review: Sucker Punch
5. Album profile: Happy is the New Sad, by Tennis Pro
6. Artist profile: LCD Soundsystem