The Woods – EP Logue – Plug Research

The Woods - The EP Logue

Three years ago, this artist dude from Florida named Ian Dudley gathered up a gaggle of his artsy friends and recorded a self-titled LP called “The Woods”…’cause the collective was called ‘The Woods”.

The idea behind the recording was this fictional kid who lived in Florida had an air conditioner that was on the fritz. The lack of cool air makes him head out onto the big, blue ocean and have adventures and whatnot.

After that the group kinda moved around a bit. But Dudley felt that the tale was not complete. So he had Woods members record their parts which he then compiled and edited and all that sound-guy stuff. And the end result is this musical continuation. It’s minimalist without being sparse, y’know? The elements that exist are very swirling and interwoven giving a feel like some childrens’ books where adventure and environment are essential parts of the story (Think books by Maurice Sendak like In The Night Kitchen for example).

The disc plays on the ear with a hint of “odd”; a bit wavering in a mildly surreal fashion. The tone is solid throughout and if this were any longer and had more tunes on it, it would suffer from a sameness. But in this short format, it really works nicely-nicely.

The whole five-song e.p. can be downloaded for free at the website as well and a video for the tune Final Breaths of a Main Character from the first L.P. Can be scoped-out there too.

Death To New England – 2 song e.p. CD

Three cats, 66.6% of whom used to be in a CT band called The Battlecats. Go to their MySpace page and hear the entire e.p. for free. Dude…free music does not suck nards. And actually, (oh the clever segue) neither does this. Yeah, it’s only two tunes. And yeah, you can hear little bits and pieces of other band riffs in it that sound a bit similar (brief Everclear and Stooges moments hitting my ears). But those musical glimpses (and slight White Stripes-y vibe) work pretty danged well together. The music is catchy, it’s got hooks, it’s snotty-sounding and has a healthy dollop of sweaty, R&B-ish basement rock which is never a bad thing. Lyrics? “I feel your worm hair creeping through my knuckles/It’s all so right now” from the tune “The Hock”.
Added feature; when you drop this disc into your ‘puter the tunes show up as a couple of Christmas songs by a band called The Blue Minkies. I dunno, I found that funny.

The Hi-Nobles – Shake – CD – Zaentz Records - www.myspace.com/thehinobles

The Hi-Nobles

Suits, Soul and Shades.

If you are really, overly concerned with who is in a band and you feel that musicians should never stray from the style of music they started playing back when they were 18 or whatever, first?…you need to stop that mess ’cause that’s dumb (change is constant. Get over it and yourself). And second you can stop reading right now.

The singer who used to “grrrrr” it up for San Francisco funk metal band Mordred back in the late 80′s-early 90′s (Scott Holderby) and the guitarist who started out and is still playing in L.A. punk legends The Avengers (Greg Ingraham) grabbed some other band dudes and slapped together this crew. And what, pray-tell, do these guys sound like, you may wonder ? This is a disc of solid, R&B, garage soul living in CA with a groove address in Detroit. Real fun stuff. All sixties fuzzy sound complete with that distinct keyboard backing and heavy usage of the word “baby” and the lovin’ is always sweet. Oh…and they mean it. No frontin’ the soul on this disc. “Soul Sister”, “Red Eye”, “Shake”…hell, the whole disc (even the slower tunes) will make you wanna find a dark, smoky, steamy club and shake what your Momma gave you with some hot stranger while hitting the well bourbon. Old school party soul.