Obscure Band Update

I occasionally post track lists from mix tapes that I've made, and with a few exceptions, I generally get comments along the lines of "Oh, boy. Twenty more songs by bands I've never heard of." The funny thing about this is that I really haven't had access to any good source of obscure bands. I mean, sure, I read some music magazines, and reviews at the Onion AV Club and 75 or Less, but until I rediscovered KEXP's webcast, I haven't had anywhere to hear new music before buying it. (Yeah, Amazon offers song samples for most of their CD's. The thing is, there are a lot of really bad songs out there with a brilliant thirty-second stretch in the middle. I've been burned by that before...)

Anyway, since I've got KEXP on my computer at work these days, I'm hearing a lot more new stuff, and I've been keeping notes on random scraps of paper. This has added a number of really obscure bands to my personal purchase list and eventually onto my credit card bill, much to Kate's chagrin. For lack of a more inspired post topic, I'll list a few recent purchases here, with miscellaneous comments.

• The Fire Theft, The Fire Theft. This was actually a free "gift" for pledging money to KEXP. I have, at various times, confessed a bit of a fondness for art rock bands. I like the occasional touch of the operatic in my pop music, and The Fire Theft are certainly good for that. "It's Over" is the song that got me to pick this one off the list of available prizes, and it sounds a lot like Marillion (or at least the one album of theirs that I picked up used because Mike Steeves kept talking them up).
• Reconstruction Site, The Weakerthans. Speaking of art-rock bands, this disc features song titles like "Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call," "Plea From a Cat Named Virtue," and "Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961)." Which pretty much tells you where these guys are coming from. What you can't really get from that, though, is that the music is terrific. The songs don't necessarily hold to a conventional sort of structure, but they know how to put together a catchy tune, and the lyrics are full of vivid little phrases that might not mean anything, but sure do sound cool. I picked up a lot of good albums recently, but this was the best of the lot, and good enough to get me to buy their previous release, Left and Leaving.
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Article Author: Chad Orzel

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