Duuuuuuuude! Dude!!!!!!!!!! “A shirt this sweet has to have a sweet pair of pants to go with it!” Wait for the bitchin’ air guitar action at 0:37.

Sorry Zappos but we’re totally stealing this idea for our Holiday video lookbook with John Prolly doing the “Stanky” this time in some Alexeis. “Stanky Brah!”

Did you think this was a one-and-done sort of affair? Who are we? Some fickle, fair weather music blog? What part of, “The 3 or so months where I listen to nothing but Nirvana over and over and over and over again,” did you not believe? Well, okay then.

Well Kurdt Season is back and it’s going to be a regular segment on Wednesdays all Fall or until we run out of Nirvana footage I guess? But that may not be for a good long while.

—–

On a Plain (1991) - Live in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

This song is like therapy every time I hear it. It’s a mood of its own, plunging me in a warm bath of bliss where all my anxieties and tension disintegrate. It’s incredible that its been 20 years and this song still takes me there. I can’t think of another song that has this effect on me. Everything’s gonna be alright.

—–

Lounge Act (???) - Live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This is hands down, one the best songs they ever wrote. I love its bee-bop swing and how unbelievably primal it turns towards the end. Kurdt’s vocal during the crescendo makes my spine shiver. “Lounge Act” is the closest they got to a perfect song if you ask me.

—–

Where Did You Sleep Last Night (1993) - Live on MTV Unplugged

Zut Alors! Talk about shivering spines. This is a gimme, but too epic to eschew for street cred. Forget anything from Reading or from the MTV studio. Right here is the best performance ever by Nirvana… and it’s a cover! They’re not only in the zone, they’re owning it.

This performance is why your band isn’t even close. The vibe here is so overwhelming by the end that I need to take a really deep breath. I wonder what was a cooler experience, being in the crowd during this show? Or being an extra in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit video?”

Back in July, the Spicy Mulleted Maestro of Gaming Evil, Billy Mitchell, reclaimed the Donkey Kong high score record. Dude posted a 1,062,800 on the same day that he was inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame. Mitchell, as made famous by the documentary The King of Kong is a real life villain. In that sort of cool, Darth Vader with a sexy haircut style. Brash, pimpin’, owner of his own line of hot sauce, and not really giving a fuck. I know there’s a lot to do about how fairly a documentary sets up a narrative as accurately reflecting reality but who cares.

‘Cause over the weekend, good prevailed. Well-manufactured, carefully edited good. But dammit, we need our narratives, don’t we?

Steve Wiebe, the average dude and dorky school teacher reclaimed the mantle from ole Willy Mitchell. Wiebe dropped a thunderous 1,064,500 point-effort back on August 20, and it was confirmed a couple of days ago.

How fantastic is this shit? The battle between the two of them was captured in said documentary, and it continues to rage to this day. You just know that somewhere, when Mitchell found out, he immediately pimp-slapped one of his lackeys who was giving him a pedicure and busted ass towards one of the last standing Chuck E. Cheese’s to try and topple Steve.

I love the entire thing. I love Mitchell, his swagger, and his awesome hair. I love how he embraces his role as villain. And as a frumpy dork like Wiebe, I actively root for him with all my bleeding heart. The two of them are engaged in some epic shit.

A little under a month ago we hosted our first in-store performance with the neo-folk styling of Seattle’s King Dude. We’re proud to announce that this will be an ongoing thing, where we’ll host in-store performance once a month or so. With all he initial kinks worked out we’re thrilled announce our second performance, Portland synth duo Soft Metals.

Soft Metals is the electronic romance of Ian Hicks and Patricia Hall of Portland, Oregon played on vintage synthesizers and drum machines. Brought together in April of 2009 through a common love of late 70s to early 80s analog synthesizer music, they decided to meet up and write some songs. Inspiration came to them by way of experimental noise and avant garde, early industrial music, minimal synth, 1980s Chicago house, synth pop, and italo disco. Building their songs from moody, experimental, and improvised sessions together, they never know what influence will have the upper hand. It’s simplest to say Soft Metals make dark, romantic, electronic dance music.

We’ve written a few times about Soft Metals on the Bloglin and we hop you took our advice and checked them out. Ian and Patricia make some of the best and sultriest synth sounds that are equally informed by Darkwave as they are classic Italo. They’re going to turn our magic fun house into a dark and fantastic dance floor.

Check out their new video for “Voices” off of their debut EP, The Cold World Melts now available from Captured Tracks. We hope you’ll come join us and take in a band that we’re very excited about on their first ever tour to the East Coast!

The performance will take place on Saturday, September 26th from 7-8pm and will be on a first come, first served basis. Our shop can only fit so many people so please arrive early to ensure a spot for the show.

Saturday September 25th, 7pm-8pm
Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

The Pacer Car Coat ($263.00)

Autumn’s my favorite season. The air smells good and it’s dark and cold, but still comfortable enough that you don’t have to don cumbersome clothes. I hate sweating in the hot sun, going to the beach and all of that awfulness. In the fall you can wear sweaters and coats, hats, gloves, and the fall holidays are probably my favorite.  Halloween and Thanksgiving,good holidays for having a good time with no obligatory gift giving.  Autumn is my favorite season.

Мишка’s cold weather garments are perfect. They make your shoulders look sharp and defined.  They’re comfortable and they last. Plus, they’ve got a ton of pockets which is great if you’re really into drugs or just need a lot of pockets, because you don’t want to carry some sort of man purse around with you.

The Pacer Car Coat continues a long tradition of Мишка getting classy with it’s outerwear for the Fall. It’s a 3/4 length classic silhouette with a touch of sporty flair!  Available in Black and Brown, the Pacer Car Coat is constructed of a warm, comfortable and durable 100% brushed cotton twill. On the interior the jacket is lined with our Goats Head plaid flannel through the entirety of the coat. That includes the sleeves and the pockets, player! Not every coat has that. This shit is warm and thanks to it’s tailored fit will make you look like one sharp smartypants! Dress it up, dress it down, throw it over a hoodie or just a buttondown, whatever’s clever! Just keep the pace.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
—
Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

I made it out of New York alive. I’ll be back, and just as liable to die when I visit, but for now I’m in Los Angeles. Fortunately for me a prescription for legal marijuana was the second thing I got. The first thing was a California license, because you need a California state issued ID in order to get a prescription for legal marijuana. I made an appointment with a doctor whose sole niche is the prescription market. No snotty kids, no lumpy dicked frat guys, no grandmas with chests all weezeling, no contractors with pneumatic nail injuries. This guy sits in his office all day and talks to people about why they need to smoke marijuana.

I told him about how stressed I’ve been since getting here (a few days prior), and how guilt and stress are genetic because I’m Jewish. Somehow over the course of the next minute or so he assumed that I was stressed because my parents were unhappy about me dating a shiksa (he was Jewish too) and I went with it, and we wound up talking about how difficult it is when your Jewish parents want you to date a Jewish girl. Mind you my parents don’t really care at the end of the day, so it was indeed a ruse. Anyways, this pseudo therapy session continued for another few minutes, and then I was photographed, registered in a statewide database, and issued my prescription.

Once you’ve got the prescription you just walk into a collective/club/dispensary, wait in a small anteroom while they check your status in the state database, sign an agreement, and then you enter the second room. The agreement states that you are part of a co-op whose purpose is to procure marijuana for its patients. The patients in turn agree to contribute to the collective either with services, goods, or money. Most people just contribute money, and so most people just proceed to the second room. Now, what you’ll find here varies, greatly. Some collectives aren’t worth visiting twice, and some are veritable indexes off all things weedish. Strains are separated by Indica, Indica dominant hybrids, Sativa dominant hybrids, and Sativa. Indica slows you down, and you feel it in your body, Sativa lights your mind up. Most collectives also have edibles, hash, joints, pipes, some have drinks, and some have clones. Clones are baby plants, grown from cuttings of a fully grown plants. Each patient can grow up to 6 plants at home, but most people come to the collective because they don’t grow their own. And, because most people with marijuana prescriptions are consumers the marketplace has taken on some very consumer-centric traits.

Perhaps the strangest thing about all these collectives—that already have a product cool enough to fly off the shelves with no marketing campaign—was all the deals. Most collectives give you incentives for coming in and buying an eighth or more for the first time, and most also offer incentives for referrals. Its usually something like a free joint, or a free eadible, or even a free gram. One place I went to gave me a free gram, a cookie, a joint, a lighter, and a clone. When I got all that free stuff was the first time I tipped anyone at a dispensary. Most collectives have a tip jar out. It’s really this weird mish mosh of a whole bunch of different market traits.

There are also usually different deals for different days. For instance one place had “Heavy Thursday” where you get 4 grams for the price of an eighth. The prices usually vary too. For the most part there are 3 price tiers separated by $5 increments. I’ve seen eighths at $45, but I’ve also seen eighths at $85. The best stuff you get here isn’t better than the best stuff you can get anywhere else. The difference is that the average quality is way above what you’re finding anywhere else.

Some places you walk in, and it’s like having a meeting with the marijuana section of wikipedia. Some places you walk in and the person behind the counter can’t tell you the difference between Indica and Sativa. It’s a wide range of stuff happening out here, and a wide range of people participating. With that being said stay tuned to Standard Deviance, because I’m gonna be providing extended coverage on my experiences at the collectives.

Women - Public Strain (2010) [Jagjaguwar] // Grade: A

Public Strain has a single disappointing moment, and it’s a fake disappointment, a selfish little thing: “Untogether” isn’t a Lush cover. It’s a beautiful, washed-out jangle—the same Velvets via Zombies ambiance the album had already been surfing on for 20+ minutes—but you see that song title, you start remembering Lush and wondering: how would Women, this great beast of schizo-noise and lullaby, interpret that melody? How would Patrick Flegel’s voice coo over those bitter lyrics? You can guess at the chill and hollow surliness, how dead-perfect an answer it would be to the original, but try not to think about it. Gets to be a bummer.

But seeing as this totally illegitimate gripe is the album’s only bummer—and again, you know, not a for-real flaw—it’s safe to assume Women have just wandered themselves into 2010′s Best Bands circle. The sophomore Public Strain is like our modern Velvet Underground & Nico: this undulating wave of an album that’s obviously aware of current culture (read: reverb-soaked lo-fi, surf and psych revivals) but also wholly separate from it. Women’s jams aren’t so much about style as they are tension: the way the quartet charges through terror-noise and beachy instrumentals, the militaristic thwomp of “Narrow With A Hall”, the zoned-out cacophony of “China Bells”, just building and building, clenching their jaws, bracing for the smash. Sometimes you get it, that satisfaction of explosion. Others are a total reversal, quiet mantra melodies or a hushed little ballad. There’s no predicting where Women will land—they’d really rather you didn’t know.

And Public Strain is unforgettable in part because of that fuck-all confidence. Can’t hear the hook through so much ambient noise? Who cares. Woven guitars spin too sick, too long, too loud? What does it matter. The album exists so much in its own little space that if you can’t get down with it, well—from Women’s vantage, that’s your problem, not theirs. And, of course, that very fact makes it not a problem at all; it’s simply the beauty of Women. That thing making Public Strain essential, a collection of unsettled tracks you spin over and over: it always does exactly what you think it can’t or shouldn’t. And it’s damn near perfect for it.

L-O-V-I-N-G this new song from Ðose… it’s got this sick late 90′s dark alternative feel to it and the drums just sound soooooo good against that warbley bassline. Had it on repeat for an hour now.

I think these guys are based in France and have an upcoming CDR release on Disaro to compliment an EP from earlier this year. We’ll probably be blogging about them again, very, very soon. Liking this too much not to.

Fuck yeah, tomorrow is comic book day, and I’m all amplified for this shit. This is the week of epic viking Gods. Blood and Thunder! A little mid-week tomfoolery in the land of face smashing wunder-hammers. Are you excited? You can bet your bottom goddamn dollar I’m stoked. Let’s hit the list of comic books I’m excited for tomorrow.

—-

Thor #615
I’ll make you a square fucking deal. I’ll stop blathering about the nineteen Thor titles when they stop stacking them with primo talent. Aiight? Fair deal? This week, Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry’s run on Thor proper starts. And Jesus Christ, if I’m not beyond excited. Fraction, my current writer crush and inspiration beyond measure, spends most of his time unleashing mainstream brilliance on Invincible Iron Man. He follows that with interdimensional space-bound insanity with his creator owned Casanova. And oh yeah? He describes his run on Thor as “epic space metal.”

Ferry ain’t no slouch either. His preview art for this debut issue did nothing less than make me arch my back in a furious nerdgasm.

I’ll admit that I bemoan the excessive amount of Avengers titles, and in a fit of hypocrisy, have found myself excited for nearly every Thor title announced. But when you stack them with Fraction and Hickman and Langridge? Unfathomable awesomeness.

Serious aside: Thor with beard, or sans beard? I can’t decide.

—-

Skullkickers #1
This comic book is titled Skullkickers. It’s also being billed for “dork dicksores who like Army of Darkness.” Awesome. And apparently it’s already sold out at the distribution level. Even a dumbass such as myself can sense something special going here. I mean, Jesus Christ, to reiterate, it’s called Skullkickers. In a week seeing Thor’s continual dominance as the God of Thunder and Dorks Like Me Who Play Warcraft, this title seems like a perfect compliment. Two dudes wrapped up in an assassination plot who punch werewolves in the face and engage in witty banter. Sold.

Slap something new into your pull list and roll the dice on this one. At the very least, you can probably sell it for a decent mark-up in a couple of months when people coming late to the party can’t bring themselves to wait for the trade paperback.

—-

Nemesis #3
Confession time: even a staunch Millar fanboy such as myself is beginning to fatigue of the guy. Overexposure in motion is enshrouding the dude. He’s got this title, Kick-Ass, and the forthcoming Superior. All creator owned titles that he’s constantly wanking off as being in some sort of movie production. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. We get it. Then there’s the movie he’s making on his own. Which he called “X-Men Meets Trainspotting.”

Fantastic.

Then there’s the fact that all of his titles have gotten to the point of being pretty mediocre. Back when I was repping Nemesis #1 as being awesome low-minded action, a reader pointed out that this was pretty much Millar’s calling card. And while I bristled at the time, I’m officially onboard with the notion. People swearing a lot, little girls stabbing people, ultra-violence and depravity. Yawn. This is coming from someone who is clearly a fan of all of the above. But it’s overdone and being mashed into paste, bro.

Nemesis was already the obvious Batman As Bad Guy title, but the second issue was remarkable in the fact that it stole directly from The Dark Knight. Wait, the villain wants to be capture? Stop me if I’ve seen this somewhere before. I stared at the page, thinking, Like, Really? That’s what you got for me?

Damn.

Even a fanboy like me. A bit fatigued.

—-

Eulogy: Fare Thee Well, Wildstorm
Hijacking my own column to comment on the news today that the imprint Wildstorm is closing. The bastard child of Jim Lee nearly twenty-years ago, it gave birth to both Planetary and The Authority, as well as Wildcats and Gen 13. Most recently, Brian Wood’s DV8 was resurrecting the Gen 13 spin-off and was my favorite X-Men book that wasn’t an X-title at all.

It’s a bummer to see an imprint closing. Sure, an imprint which probably wasn’t financially tenable any longer, but none the less. Lee has commented that they have plans for the characters that are being shuttered, and I puke a little when I imagine them being folded into the DC Universe.

Every time the comic book industry shrinks a little less, a certain pall strikes a little cord in my comic book heart. Even if the Wildstorm-verse had stopped entertaining me for a while, it was nice seeing a realm without Wolverine or Superman persist for as long as it had. Maybe if the quality of the titles was higher, fans would have stuck around. But maybe the fans not sticking around is what prohibited them from drawing the larger names.

Who knows?

I sure don’t.

Rest in peace, Apollo and Midnighter. Easily my favorite gay couple in comic books. When Batman and Superman made out, we all won.

Aeroplane - We Can’t Fly (2010) [Play It Again Sam] // Grade: C

I’d love to be able to pinpoint where it all went wrong in the studio for the Belgian duo Aeroplane. Their live set remains one of the most entertaining I’ve seen this year, bringing with it French filter, new-disco and what one may loosely define as yacht rock.

However, their new record We Can’t Fly is a nutty frenzy of country, indie-rock, and disco. The three of which amalgamate to create a car-crash of a record that covers far too much ground in only 49 minutes of air play. “Good Riddance” features the vocals of the soulful London based singer-songwriter Jonathan Jeremiah; The net result is a track that sounds eerily similar to the True Blood Theme. When juxtaposed with “The Point of No Return,” what can only be described as a 21st Century power ballad, the record loses all credibility. Rather than push towards a single listener-base, Aeroplane appear to be sitting on the fence and not committing to any particular sound of their own, which is a great shame as the potential is certainly there.

Redeeming tracks on the album are “Caramellas,” title track “We Can’t Fly,” and “Without Lies,” which peaks at a chorus of “When I eat cake, I prefer the cherry” – Well so do I. And unfortunately there is just too much heavy cake on this album and not enough sweet, sweet cherries, something that’s in abundance whenever they preform live. As a fan of their remixes, I highly recommend that you catch a live performance of theirs, as they are a force to be reckoned with on the dance floor. Album-wise however, this is not one I would rush out to get.