August 14, 2007

Today's Hotness: Wannadies, Wicked Farleys, Tony Allen

The Wannadies>> We've been obsessed with our favorite Swedish act The Wannadies since we saw the video for their song "Hit" on MTV Europe a decade ago. Our obsession has been somewhat tempered by the fact that the quintet only had one US release, so virtually all of their records must be purchased from abroad via the Internets. Consequently, at this point we've just gotten the self-titled US release a several of the CD singles released in the UK. With today's exchange rates, we're obviously not buying a lot of their records right now, even though we have a goal of getting all the band's full lengths that use the sleeping people theme we talked about here. The reason we're mentioning all of this is that the band has put together a blog with YouTube links to all of their videos right here. So go there, watch the video for "Hit" -- seriously, this song should have been as big as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and it pains us every time we watch the video that it was not -- and then check out other clips at your leisure. Some of the early stuff is really bizarre late '80s acoustic pop. Weird. We do love seeing those fashions again, however. Anyway, if you could go to Sweden and buy all the Wannadies records on vinyl you can find for us, we'd be grateful. So what's up with the band now? Well, they've been asking fans to submit tracks for inclusion on a compilation. Wannadies have also recorded new songs it intended to release as a single or EP, but its efforts at releasing the material are as usual being stymied by label stuff.

>> Resurgent blog Built On A Weak Spot has a very nice overview of erstwhile Boston indie rockers The Wicked Farleys. We think we saw the band play a reunion show in our pre-blog days with Logie, and via him we first discovered the band through their inclusion on Holiday Matinee's Pedal Faster, Bicycle Rider compilation from the turn of the century. Built On A Weak Spot has the track from the compilation (with a mix that sounds a little different, we'll have to compare), the excellent "Fitchburg, MA," available for download along with several tracks we've never heard before but about which we are very excited. "Dig The Ring" sounds like an early Lilys cut in places; "Opportune" has a Swirlies kind of edge to it. Anyway, dynamite post, go check it out.

>> If, like us, you didn't know Afro-beat legend Tony Allen from Tony Randall (well, okay, we knew he wasn't Tony Randall) before the renowned drummer joined Damon Albarn's superlative supergroup The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Aurgasm has a couple tunes here to get you caught up. The pair of bumping tracks are from drummer Allen's 2002 release Home Cookin'.

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