#42: Somewhere over the painbow
#42: Somewhere over the painbow
I Love Your Lifestyle; Fissure of Riddles; 30,000 Monkies; Buddha Trixie
I Love Your Lifestyle
In the video for “My Yard,” members of I Love Your Lifestyle cavort in an idyllic rural setting. The shaggy twentysomethings drink beer from cans, swim in a pond, cook hot dogs, and kick around a soccer ball, all of them looking like pasty Midwesterners enjoying a chill summer’s day. The song playing over of the footage sounds like a Midwestern strain of indie rock with warbly vocals, not dissimilar to Cap’n Jazz. I’m not the only one picking up on it, judging by these Spotify playlists featuring the band.
Five thumbnails, four usages of the word “Midwest.” The state rests, your honor.
Yet… in the video, the water in the pond is, like, dark brown. A tent in the background has a cross pattée, which is not something you often see. And, no disrespect to soccer, but I don’t usually see a lot of hipster types kickin’ the ol’ ball around like this. So something’s up. And that something is SNEAKY SWEDISHNESS.
Okay, yes, their Bandcamp says “Sweden” right under their name, then notes they hail from “Malmö/Gothenburg”—aha, umlauts!—so there’s nothing especially sneaky about any of this. But not since Spielbergs back in BNB #3 has a band that probably uses the letter “ø” in their daily lives so expertly emulated the sound and visuals of North American indie rock. They even have a deadpan moniker that would seamlessly fit on a bill with Pkew Pkew Pkew and Dads. Sneaky bastards.
Fissure of Riddles
Seldom am I this blunt, but this is a terrible name. I have no witty take to offer. It’s just bad. What’s the deal with that bad name, guitarist and vocalist Matt No Last Name?
We wanted a slightly more unconventional name as opposed to the heavy metal cliché ones that you normally see get thrown about, something with a certain level of uncertainty to it……which this one definitely has as it tends to provoke a bewildered look from people whenever they ask ‘what’s your band called?’.
I’m guessing their Facebook headline doesn’t alleviate people’s bewilderment:
Cosmic riff purveyors from the Jurassic Coast, combining elements of Death, Sludge and Post-Metal
If you’re thinking, “They sound like the kind of band who play seven-string guitars and five-string basses,” I commend your perceptiveness. Just check out this live video for “Stalactites,” which is admittedly pretty good.
30,000 Monkies
When you make punishing noise rock with larnyx-shredding vocals—check out “A Gift”—you can play it straight or, say, use champagnemetal.com for your band’s website. Considering this Belgian group has albums called Somewhere Over the Painbow, I Ate Myself to Grow Twice as Big, and, uh, Womb Eater Wife Beater, it’s obvious which path they chose. Their EP, STARRRRRRRRING, features the tracks “Orlando Doom,” “Keanu Riffs,” “Sharon Drone,” and “Tom Wanxxx.” They also make sandals.
Buddha Trixie
A million years ago in Chicago, there was this website for this thing called the Lincoln Park Trixie Society, a fake organization for white yuppie females. I still use “trixie” as a descriptor today, and apparently I’m not alone, considering it has its own Wikipedia page. That has a better description of the trixie archetype from Nat Geo writer Shane DuBow: a “blond, late-twenties woman with a ponytail who works in PR or marketing, drives a black Jetta, gets manicures and no-foam skim lattes.”
You get the point. Sadly this San Diego band has nothing to do with those kind of trixies, though their name has me picturing a trixie who either a) got, like, really into spirituality after a particularly bad UTI, or b) stopped worrying about landing a husband who studied business at Big 10 school and let herself go. Buddha Trixie the band plays smart-alecky indie rock with tinges of psychedelia, and they’re way too unkempt to ride in anyone’s Jetta.
POST-SCRIPTS
Fissure of Riddles isn’t a good name, but you know what’s worse? Bandzoogle.com, a sort of Squarespace for band pages. FOR’s Facebook has a dead link to a page on it. Is it a slurred portmanteau of “bands google”?
Not gonna lie, I’m kinda into 30,000 Monkies. This may have been the heaviest BNB yet.