p>This is a very special Snobcast. This week Angora Holly Polo gave Father Guido some time off and she took the responsibility of picking this weeks songs. Angora is a huge fan of Halloween so she jumped at the chance to do this special edition Snobcast. The Father was still responsible for mixing the tracks into a podcast format, so a round of applause for our team effort. (clap, clap, clap)
Zombies! Death and terror! Oh, mon dieu! This is the Halloween Snobcast featuring the darkness of the Denver Sound. Each of these artists bring terror on a wide spectrum, from apocalyptic visions of hell to your garden variety despair and loneliness. Hellfire and damnation! It's the....
...HALLOWEEN SNOBCAST FEATURING THE DENVER SOUND! sound! sound. sound...
Really, this ended up being more of a mish mash of pseudo-insight into Angora's psychology, a tour of her fears. So judging by these songs,we can deduce that Angora is most afraid of:
- abysmal loneliness as a glimpse into the dropoff otherwise known as "the afterlife"
-insanity
-Biblical anything
-gypsies, and
-folkies (they ruin property value)
Autumn is a time of change, Halloween a time of death and rebirth; so this Snobcast is packed full of new releases (Black Lips, Bela Karoli, the Wheel, Tarmints) and bands who have gone to the grave (Bright Channel and Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots). We also dusted off some old songs you haven't heard for a while - in the local scene, of course. Enjoy! List of songs and descriptions and linkies after the jump!
Tarmints, "Robey": Tarmints bring the Halloween year-round. If I didn't start the Snobcast with this song, off their newest album Thirteen Dead Cats, I would fire myself. Their new album has less growl and less bite, more '70s rock and songs that build slowly, then change and morph completely.
"If You Could Read Your Mind" Clinic: If the bees from Dante's inferno comprised a guitar sound, it would be like this: a buzzing, bouncing gypsy parade to hell that tours all the hidden corners of the earth. In the Halloween Snobcast, Clinic wins. Hands down.
"Slime and Oxygen" The Black Lips: God, I fucking love these guys! It's old school blues rock, with lots of squishy chaotic feedback crap! Awesome. This song is so Halloweeney - from the fearful Reefer Madness-esque rant about drugs and parties, to the grotesque song title, to the howling chorus.
Cat-a-tac "Devil": This is the first song of cat-a-tac's that casually overtook me; I thought it was just alright, and then I listened to it more, and pretty soon I was singing it constantly until it became...a problem. And I pass that problem onto you. Of course I chose the song because it's called "Devil," and also that ex of Jim's sounds pretty scary...
"Airborne" Bright Channel: The most terrifying thing about this band is the fact that they recently broke up; because they made the most alarmingly beautiful, paralyzing music. That echo you hear is the sound of each note bouncing off the edges of the abysmal void of collective human dispair. True story. But the good news is that human despair can be pretty. Yay.
"String of Lights" Bela Karoli: upcoming local darlings! Everyone is in love with them. Sometimes an uneasy feeling can be created simply with strings and the minor end of the Eastern European bag-o-keilbasa, and that's enough for me; and this song's repetition of "inside" makes me shudder.
"The Most Evil Thing You Can Do" The Sundresses: Real Sex always plays rockabilly music, and somehow it makes the gigantic woman being zipped up in a vinyl torture device seem whimsical, like a cute hobby. Rockabilly music is dark, yes, but also kind of winking and adorable. How they do it, I do not know. The Sundresses put on a show at South Park Music Festival in '06 that ended in toothless locals dancing in the street. Back to those folkies...
"Amen Corner" Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots: this is what Denver has that no one else does. American Gothic Country, for me, captures a fear Denverites can understand: the fear of being an open and cosmopolitan city in the midst of a gigantic minefield of Bible-thumping redneckery. You need not go further than Bailey or South Park to catch a fright and never go back. American Gothic Country celebrates our rural roots with a scary, pentacostal vibe. Eeeerie.
"This is How We do Things" Slim Cessna's Auto Club: We can talk about monsters and demons, but as a concerned citizen of the world, we Donnybrookers know the most fear-inspiring beasts of death are the gypsies and folkies. For this reason, you'll find their exotic sounds and country twang laced throughout.
"I Do" Tarmints
"This Loneliness" El Perro Del Mar: Isn't she just the sweetest little thing? Sweet like blond children in horror movies and old dirty baby dolls. Sweet like poisoned lollipops. She is so great and makes me want to hide in a corner.
"Distinguished Guest At The Downtrodden Ball" The Swayback: This is an old one, and probably no longer representative of their sound. When I interviewed the Swayback in their creepy practice space - with mannequins and posters of murder victims on the walls, and bums trying to sell us raw meat in the alley - I asked them to play this song for me and me alone. And it was ah-hawesome.
"Black Mirror" The Arcade Fire: Arcade Fire recently played Red Rocks, starting out their amazing set with this doomsday sound, pounding on pianos, the stage lit up red, girls playing stringed instruments and accordions in creepy old dresses, Win Butler's face lit up, shadows projected on the rocks behind them.
Bright Channel "Final Stretch": I'm not sure what the Final Stretch refers to, though it might have to do with technology or outer space; but it seems final and tragic, not like, the motivational final stretch of the marathon or anything. It feels more like the final stretch of war and disease and apocalypse. It seemed like a good choice towards the end of a podcast.
Devotchka, "Llorona": Devotchka brings twinkling darkness to the stage with this little Mexican ode to the folklore of la Llorona. The myth itself has many versions. The standard is that La Llorona was a mother who was wronged by her husband, or was overwhelmed by her children, so she drowned her kids in the river, and her ghost wanders the rivers, and pops out of sinks, and drowns people and stuff. Mexican moms and dads tell their kids that if they stay out too late, or wander off too far, La Llorona will snatch them and throw them in the river! You can also find articles on modern-day Lloronas, mothers who've gone crazy and killed their children. Many people, to this day, believe they've seen her ghost. Seriously.
The Wheel "When We Were Towers": this gloomy song is EIGHT MINUTES LONG, but if you're patient, you get to hear Nathaniel D. Rateliff absolutely lose his shit! The man is amazing, and simulates a nervous breakdown for our listening pleasure. Would you do that? The Wheel just released this on Friday at the Hi-Dive. It has the same downtempo, rainy-day feel as Born in the Flood, but with less; and this song is more thunderous than the rest.
