The Uglysuit
One afternoon this summer, Oklahoma City indie-pop sextet the Uglysuit were canoeing on a artery on their way to Tulsa's D-Fest to abutment headliners like the Roots and All-American Rejects. It was a huge footfall for the band: a attenuate adventitious to leave their baby boondocks to play one of their bigger gigs yet. But frontman Israel Hindman anticipation they wouldn't accomplish it if a cop cruised up abaft them arrant his sirens. "We anticipation he was affairs us over, but he just blinked his lights to go about us," he says.
Chances are, the Uglysuit were abject the acceleration limit. The group's six amiable associates are religious kids who met at a Christian academy and acid their chops arena in abbey bands. On their self-titled admission disc — which they showed off at a arranged CMJ appearance at the Cake Shop — they bear 10 beauteous tunes that ambit from Brit-pop-style ballads ("Happy Yellow Rainbow") to atmospheric, jazz-tinged explorations ("Brownblue's Passing") to attractive piano-powered anthems ("Chicago").
Believe it or not, afore Hindman teamed up with his accepted chamber-pop accouterments — which appearance frontman Colin Bray and his brother Crosby, alongside multi-instrumentalists Kyle Mayfield, Jonathan Martin and Matt Harrison — he fronted assorted screamo and hardcore bands. "It was just a date in our life," says Hindman, abacus that his parents and agents were admiring of him arena such alienated music. "But eventually we just capital to go from arena fast jailbait to absolutely affecting people's hearts."
The Uglysuit may be a aggregation of acutely religious kids, but they've taken to the harder affairs of arena in a bedrock band: Mayfield even admits he enjoys a collective from time to time: "Smoking is a admirable thing," he says. And the blow of the guys accept gradually alone up on pre-show adoration circles. "It's just what happens if you abound older," says Hindman. "Nowadays, it's just like, 'Man, I can't delay to get onstage and just play!' "
So what's up with very-punk-sounding bandage name? "We've consistently enjoyed bathrobe in animal apparel from austerity stores," says Hindman. "Everyone tells us we attending like old men. We ample why not just go out foreground with the idea?" KEVIN O'DONNELL
Izza Kizza
Izza Kizza has never met Kriss Kross, but the amid duo afflicted his life. "They were the access that fabricated my career happen," says the Valdosta, Georgia built-in (born Terry Davis), who started a bounded rap accumulation at age 11 and rocked a NASA jumpsuit at his Sullivan Hall CMJ showcase. "I would airing about the 'hood accomplishing my ballad with 10 bodies abaft me, clapping," he recalls. "We did a song alleged 'It Was the Boom in My Trunk.' We didn't even accept a car!"
Now 28, Kizza — who is active to Timbaland's Mosely Music characterization and has formed with Missy Elliott — is churning out hardly racier verses. (Sample lyric: "Cool as a motherfucker, I'm Kizza Gretzky/Either account me or kiss my testes.") But he hasn't absent his playfulness: His mixtape, Kizzaland (out now), is arranged with absurd homages to nursery rhymes ("Georgie Porgie"), narcolepsy ("Red Wine") and the sticky-icky ("Ooh La La"). "I acclimated to be a weed-head," he admits.
Pot habits aside, Kizza — who has, at some point, been a able dealer, a avoiding and a gunshot victim — mostly keeps his accomplished out of his songs. "Why would I wish to allocution about those experiences?" says the rapper. "That era makes me anticipate about the humans I hurt. And accepting shot? That bits sucked!"
NICOLE FREHSEE
Chairlift
Chairlift, the indie-pop leash whose "Bruises" became the soundtrack to the newest iPod nano commercial, arranged Piano's in what became the a lot of accepted CMJ advertise on Wednesday night. "Last year, we played this aforementioned exact allowance and there were alone two humans in the audience," singer/keyboardist Caroline Polachek said. "One of the humans became our manager, and the added was Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT." During their able five-song set they channeled the Zombies' psychedelia on "Garbage," and angry out the Björkish "Make Your Mind Up" and poppy new beachcomber "Planet Health." As for the iPod ad, "Apple begin us," Polachek says. "At first, we were like 'There's no way in hell they wish us.' " DANIEL KREPS
Ponytail
Originally brought calm by a painting assistant at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore art-punk affair bandage Ponytail accomplish a blithesome agitation with an expressionist agitate of bright noises, danceable grooves and howled onomatopoeia. Advance accompanist Molly Siegel spent Tuesday's appearance at Music Hall of Williamsburg shuddering and gazing at the sky like she was accepting a clandestine tantrum. Letting apart a pre-verbal beck of ululations, squeals, trills and nonsense, the bandage cut a age-old aisle that had the heretofore sedate admirers acclamation and dancing along. With eyes formed back, a abiding beam and apart limbs flopping about like a rag-doll's blimp arms, Siegel's achievement was added like a control ritual than a bedrock show. If they bankrupt with the appropriately called viral MP3 hit "Celebrate the Body Electric (It Came From An Angel)," Siegel was abnormal abroad from accomplishing jumping jacks as the bandage rode their spastic dance-punk grooves and doughy guitar textures into about bisected a dozen climaxes in the song's seven-minute run time. CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN
Bison B.C.
If Mastodon had spent added time alert to Anthrax, they ability complete like Vancouver's Bison B.C. At the Knitting Factory's Tap Bar on Thursday night, the quartet fronted by barbate shouters/guitarists James Farwell and Dan And, alloyed the acceleration and riffing of batter with the low-range crisis of Southern-fried ankle metal, switching from half-time quarter-note thumps to asleep sprints after warning, but consistently with a assertive blithesome bounce. Any advised abomination was betrayed by bassist Masa Anzai, who couldn't lose his astronomic beam while anguish his three-string instrument. Bison thundered through a half-hour's account of cuts from their debut, Quiet Earth, including the six-minute active composition "Medication" and the charge of "Primal Emptiness of Outer Space." Heavy, man. Real heavy. Jean-jacket heavy.
CHRIS STEFFEN
Friendly Fires
Mix disco-funk beats with automated guitar babble and emo lyrics about shacking up with a admired one in a Paris accommodation and you've got British four-piece Friendly Fires. At their aboriginal of 5 gigs at Williamsburg Music Hall on October 20th, the bandage delivered note-perfect versions of cuts from their accomplished self-titled debut. That attention was mostly due to the actuality that their robo grooves and synthesizer fills came address of boom machines and pre-recorded loops. But there was some spontaneity: accompanist Ed Macfarlane hopped into the army to sing mid-set and occasionally best up a drumstick to bang abroad at a set of cymbals, and guitarist Edd Gibson played a dust buster through his guitar pickups to actualize what articulate like a kazoo funneled through a baloney pedal. Best part: Watching Macfarlane abominably beat and spazz about the date like David Byrne about that "Once in a Lifetime" video.
KEVIN O'DONNELL
School of Seven Bells
There's a affiliated superior to Academy of Seven Bells' synth-rock rave-ups that's echoed in the anthology art of their admission release, Alpinisms. Onstage at the Fader Fort Friday night, the New York leash — which appearance Ben Curtis, aforetime of psych-rock heavy-hitters Secret Machines on guitar, and twins Claudia and Alejandra Deheza on vocals, synths and guitar — eschewed the album's apathetic consciousness-expanding chill-outs and kept the drum-machine pumping and the tempos swift. The bandage trucks in down-covered drones and the girls' abutting harmonies, abandoning Stereolab (on "Connjur") and My Bloody Valentine ("Face to Face on High Places"), and their complete glowed like a balmy orb in the venue's alveolate loft. CARYN GANZ
The Muslims
San Diego quartet the Muslims calmly amalgamate an accessible adulation of the Kinks and added Sixties Brit-beat staples with a Strokes-like tautness, breeding an exhilaratingly beginning garage-rock amalgam that seems to buzz out of the speakers. It's not harder to see why so abounding labels are falling over themselves to assurance these guys appropriate now (and why their CMJ gigs were all abounding to capacity): The chugging "Parasites" is an crazily communicable four-minute thrash, and the way they administer their alarming signature complete to Spacemen 3's shoe-gaze canticle "Walking With Jesus" is fearless. And afore John McCain voters alpha autograph anxious belletrist about civic security, no, they're not in fact Muslims. HARDEEP PHULL
Parts & Labor
Brooklyn-based Locations & Labor started out as a Sonic Youth-style noise-rock group, but they've acquired into an accouterments that creates highly-structured electro-rock abstracts that arm-twist German kraut-rockers Can or British experimentalists Throbbing Gristle. At the battered Brooklyn area Death By Audio on October 21th, the quartet unleashed aural renditions of songs from their analgesic new disc Receivers, which were acute by bassist BJ Warshaw and keyboard amateur Dan Friel tweaking sounds with abundant furnishings pedals and keyboard buttons. Highlight: the slow-building canticle "Satellites," which builds from a brittle guitar-powered canal into a gale-force-level bank of keyboard blips, noise-rock guitars and the aggregation chanting "We cycle our eyes aback into our heads!" KEVIN O'DONNELL
Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains
Formerly the assertive drummer/vocalist in caressible Canadian babble duo Death From Above 1979, Sebastien Grangier attacks his new role as frontman as if he's charmed to be chargeless of the borders of his boom stool. At Wednesday night's Mercury Lounge set, Grainger hopped around, leaned back, tensed up his shoulders, fell to his knees and genuflected to his amp. He was acceptable in his adaptation of power-pop: a abundant complete that relies on boastful choruses and jailbait energy, according locations the Replacements and Eddie Money. Grainger was active in his overalls and accepted shirt, starkly allegory with his three-dirtbag abetment bandage who banned to yield a breach for anything. Even admitting he's confused from art-rocker to just apparent rocker (his new anthology is due on pop characterization Saddle Creek), he's still got cutting bulk of acrid distance, even snarkily abacus onstage, "We're just gonna tune our 'axes.' " But don't acquaint that to the assorted adolescent couples in the admirers dancing, cuddling and kissing. CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Tobacco
When he's not against the day-glo consciousness-expanding accumulation Black Moth Super Rainbow, Tom Fec (a.k.a. Tobacco) turns out awful tuneful, vocodor-heavy synth-rock jams with titles like "Yum Yum Cult" and "Pink Goo." True, the super-groovy bong-water vibe is actual agnate to Black Moth's tunes, but if the being this jaw-droppingly great, added is absolutely better. KEVIN O'DONNELL
Trash Talk
Playing three shows at three venues in one night, Sacramento jailbait assertive Trash Allocution lived up to the short, fast and acute spirit that of their admission anthology — a self-titled blink-and-you-miss-it becloud fueled by early, spazzy Black Flag and later, awkward Black Flag. At the aboriginal appearance at Brooklyn's Europa, advance accompanist Lee Spielman gave his all, flailing about in the audience, accomplishing somersaults and about egging on the 50-or-so kids diving on anniversary other's shoulders. On whether they could in fact cull off accomplishing three shows in one night, Spielman said, "I'll apparently be dead. There's alcohol tickets at all these shows." CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN
The Coathangers
Playing an crooked CMJ appearance in clammy Brooklyn absolute area Death By Audio on Tuesday night, Atlanta's four-girl ball monster Coathangers got a mix of dancing and addled stares for their unhinged affair music — a high-energy mix of no beachcomber and frat-rock. Their abbreviate set drew mostly dancing and addled stares, a ceaseless battery of three-part screams, accidental swears, splintering tambourines and keyboard amateur Bebe Coathanger, who upped the activity by berserk mashing her easily into her instrument. Their additional almanac is due on Suicide Squeeze in April. CRW
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