Webcuts Music

How Webcuts first encountered Knoxville, Tennessee’s Cool Runnings could be best described as a lucky accident. And it’s no surprise that the best way to get someone’s attention is to slap a photo of some naked chicks skateboarding on the cover of your EP and let them sell it for you. The appropriately titled (and NSFW) Babes Forever was clearly the product of talented and warped minds. The creepy, schizoid mayhem of “Trippin’ Balls at Der Wienerschnitzel” and the inspired, almost unabashed, synth-pop of “When I Got High With You” sounded like they were made by some slacker Bill & Teds who’d already embarked on their own excellent adventure.

Champion Shoegazers Slowdive get the back catalogue reissue treatment. We’ll have the Souvlaki to go, thanks.

“Take my hand and pray with me”, and how we’ve prayed, patiently awaiting the arrival of Deerhunter’s 4th album Halcyon Digest. For the dimly remembering, the monumental Microcastle was Webcuts album of the year for 2008, and expections have already been set. “Helicopter” is the second track to be previewed from the album and it’s a loop-based, plink-plonk synth-led Deerhunter meets The Littlest Mermaid undersea adventure with Bradford Cox revisiting his usual themes of isolation and escapism, and well you know the rest, drugs and paranoia. Unlike those ‘slacker’ bands out there like Wavves and Best Coast who talk about getting stoned and making music, Deerhunter is the real fuck-with-your-head deal. The collage of visuals for the clip (Deerhunter’s first ever video) is unsurprising for them, but there’s something about “Helicopter” that feels like it will have its greatest effect while being paranoid, trapped and on drugs.

It’s shows like this which give birth to the very nature of rock and roll. The hip-swaying sounds of a band as they rock back and forth, eyes closed, mouths pressed against the microphone with their feet marking the beat. It’s an undeniably sexual thing. This isn’t news. It’s why they tried to ban Elvis in the 50’s. He turned young girls on, and it wasn’t so much the man, but the music, the stage, the sweat, the motion — the rock and roll of it all. Wedged together in this barely ventilated Old Street basement, Los Angeles’ Warpaint are presiding over something that had this been the 50′s, would’ve gotten them banned too.

All killer, no filler, Joe Pernice and Co. turn up the volume and turn in one of their most enjoyable records to date.

You couldn’t pair a better band with a better song with New York’s The Walkmen taking on the R.E.M. classic “Driver 8″ as part of the AV Club’s Undercover series. With the list of 25 songs narrowed down to just one, The Walkmen were left with the track nobody else wanted. Regardless, they take “Driver 8″ and transform into their own inimitable style, albeit a little rough and ready, with vocalist Hamilton Leithauser sounding as if he’s never heard the song in his life. It’s worth remembering that the new Walkmen album Lisbon is due for release on September 13 through Bella Union, and coincidently, the deluxe edition of R.E.M.’s Fables Of The Reconstruction in which “Driver 8″ sits proudly on, was released a month or so ago. Webcuts favourite R.E.M. album of all time, you say? Well, yes, indeed it is.

Way back in January this year, Baltimore’s Beach House released one of 2010′s great albums with their third release, Teen Dream. On September 13, the band will release a 6-track iTunes session which includes re-imaginings of 5 previous album tracks and an entirely new, unreleased track. The EP contains new versions of four tracks from Teen Dream, with “Walk in the Park,” “Norway,” “Silver Soul,” and “Real Love” as well as “Gila” from Devotion, their 2008 release, and a new track entitled “White Moon”. Read on to hear the new song.

Sounding like a counter-revolutionary, singer-songwriter Jonneine Zapata’s task at hand is presciently hinted at in the title.

It’s not so much lurking in the 3 minute bluster of their debut single “How Long”, but a part of its DNA, that you quickly catch onto Ramona’s game. In the first 10 seconds alone they manage to answer the eternal question of “What if Debbie Harry joined The Ramones?”. You see it in singer Karen Anne’s bleached blonde locks and her breathy purr, and you hear it all over “How Long”, the harmonies n’ hooks, and the buzzsaw guitars that graduate with honours from The Ramones “Rock n’ Roll High School”. It’s just one song/one question answered, we thought best to rattle off 15 more. Thus becoming the first in our “Who The Hell Are…?” Q&A’s where we send out, Smash Hits-style, a random bunch of questions to a new act that has caught our eyes and ears, and then let them answer in their own words.

“You’re one of us, or you’re one of them“. Hamilton Leithauser, fist wrapped tight around the microphone as if he’s trying to strangle it, is howling those words. The rest of The Walkmen, heads bowed (as they remain throughout most of the set) play complicit and provide the carnival-esque roar to ram Leithauser’s words home. It’s not so much a question or a suggestion but a statement. For better or for worse, for way back when the band were selling their own white label records at the Middle East in Boston in 2001, I’ve been one of “us”.