replace my heart with a machine

Michael Benjamin Lerner’s project, Telekinesis, is hitting the road and bringing a new EP with them. At a little over ten minutes, the band (now comprising Lerner, Jason Narducy [Robert Pollard Band] and Cody Votolato [Blood Brothers]) fleshes out Telekinesis!‘s “Calling All Doctors”, offers up a couple new songs, and covers two more.

“Non-Toxic” has a nice 90s alt feel to it, and “Dirty Thing” is an instant like with its staccato, prancing piano and dreamy guitar. The covers on PSC stay fairly close to the originals. Lerner could have easily penned Guided By Voices’s “Game of Pricks“, and Telekinesis keeps all the punk of Warsaw’s (Joy Division before they were Joy Division) “The Drawback” while pushing the drums even closer to the explosive quality of machine-gun fire.

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Parallel Seismic Conspiracies dropped 08.31.10.
Listen to the album at the Merge Records site.

join the jaguar pirates

I love being kicked in the face. Well, musically anyway. On their debut LP Take Me to the Sea, Jaguar Love (comprising members of Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves) does just that with assaulting guitars and arresting vocals.

Single and album-opener “Highways of Gold” makes the band’s roots fairly apparent. The mix of styles is evident to anyone who was familiar with Johnny Whitney’s, Cody Votolato’s, and J Clark’s previous bands, presenting itself as a friendlier Blood Brothers sound or a razor-edged Pretty Girls Make Graves one. The anthemic battle-cry “Jaguar Pirates” slices through the listener’s headset, though at times Whitney’s voice is almost comically high. On “Humans Evolve Into Skyscrapers” a snotty, scathing vocal delivery is cradled by electronic beats and gritty guitars that evolve briefly into a shiny, happy pop sound before descending back into the grime.

Other standouts on the album include “Georgia”, which begins as an organ-laced rock tune on which Whitney mercifully brings his voice down a few octaves to ask ‘Oh Georgia, can you feel my heart explode?’ before the track melds to become a pretty departure tinged with hints of The Cure and TV on the Radio, and the vaguely-50s-esque ballad “Bonetrees and a Broken Heart” which would make an excellent theme for any zombie prom.

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Take Me to the Sea dropped 08/19/08.
Click the player below to hear “Highways of Gold” or click here to download.

listen up: with a heart so vicious

Made for my friend Jesse’s birthday, it ends up being a love letter to emo.

With A Heart So Vicious Tracklist

01| Bayside – Masterpiece

02| From First to Last – Note To Self

03| Armor For Sleep – Car Underwater

04| Brand New – Sic Transit Gloria…Glory Fades

05| The Impossibles – This Is Fucking Tragic

06| Blood Brothers – Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck

07| This Providence – Card House Dreamer

08| Head Automatica – The Razor

09| Fall Out Boy – XO

10| Coheed & Cambria – Devil In Jersey City

11| Alkaline Trio – Queen of Pain

12| Saves the Day – Bones

13| Taking Back Sunday – Error: Operator

14| The Academy – Slow Down

15| The Get Up Kids – Forgive and Forget

16| Jimmy Eat World – No Sensitivity

17| The Jealous Sound – Anxious Arms

18| Say Anything – Spidersong

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