East Bay View (a blog about several things)

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

New favourite band contender: Art Brut

Better concepts than anyone else to emerge this millennium. Who else could you imagine building a work around the line "modern art makes me want to rock out"? Godard, maybe, but these days only if he was being patronising. Yes, for Art Brut the words are what matters, though the riffs are functional enough.

Frontman Eddie Argos inserts a memorable phrase into even the least of his songs: I was going to adopt "popular culture no longer applies to me" as my slogan until I realised it didn't apply to me. When he and the band bother with some melody, whether ironically like in "Moving to LA" or ebulliently like in "Good Weekend", they're unstoppable. Argos is also eager to insert bonus tidbits and lyrics into live performances: clarifying that "Bang Bang Rock and Roll" is dissing the Velvets' 1993 reunion, not White Light White Heat; explaining that in fact he had seen Emily Kane recently, he had a drink with her over the holidays in fact. Also, he told me-yes-you to form a band, and in a future life when I can play an instrument I will.

Reliability: Only one album so far. Despite word that the next album is going to be sweet, Argos must run out of ideas sooner rather than later.

Potential for greatness: Reasonable. He just needs one really cute concept.

The record:
Bang Bang Rock and Roll (2005) A (my #2 album of 2005)
All-time top 10000 quality songs:
1. Emily Kane
2. Good Weekend
3. Bang Bang Rock and Roll
4. Moving to L.A.

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