cold blooded claws never offered anything at all

campus does this to you

hoho, I've finally given in, and started surreptitiously plugging my player into the computer at work. Alas the airiness of a fast emptying pocket is much more striking than the loftiness of the moral high ground.

ok the result: sia's new album ( which we only brought in #&$% three!)/ kimya dawson/ yael naim/ pianist ost/ unkle's more stories/ we are scientists/ the teenagers/ the kills ( which I think I will buy anyway since it's so bloody good) / sparklehorse/ justice/ hercules & love affair/ eels best of/ mgmt/ radio 1's live lounge ( some only)/. So fun. But I might as well wear an eyepatch and go yarr! now.

I've only started going through a little of this gold mine, but already MGMT is already stealing many repeats that should go to listening more of the other stuff. Probably have to thank a senior manager at hmv who put them on once one morning shift. It's like screwy pop songs, but terribly fun nonetheless. Reminded me of The Flaming Lips, then I read that this new band were given the same producer as them when they answered to their newly-signed-onto label whom they would like to work with:

" Prince, Nigel Godrich, Barrack Obama, not Sheryl Crow."

Heh anyway, MGMT started out as two guys just clowning around while in university, apparently just playing for fun. Which perhaps kinda explains their sarcastic response above when they couldn't really believe a major label was picking them up after they graduated. hm I wonder if this can ever happen here in sunny Singapore, but probably nah, probably no.

I've got here two tracks, " Kids " and " Pieces of What". The first is a fantastic song with a killer keyboard section that I say is guaranteed to bring the house down at any dance party. Barring hip-hop ones, but I never really liked those anyway.

Ah but " Pieces of What" is the absolute clincher. The lyrics are striking enough, enough to have caught my step a couple of times the first few times I really listened to the song. But it's the whole magical progression of the song over two and three quarters minutes that is really amazing. Oh how many times I've tabbed " back" on my godforsaken-for-better-or-worse -whiter-thou-goest-i-goest creative Zen ( yeh right *zen*) just to hear again when a particular instrument comes in. First just the acoustic guitar, then a bass guitar, then a slight stirring of strings, and man the piano! the piano! Finally the crashing cymbals/drums/ backing vocals that herald the denoument of the whole song just when you think it really only got started..

Wow. It's like a Shakespearean tragedy. With music instruments as players. The kind that thinks if all the world's a stage, they want a better sound mixer.

All in all, go give their album " Oracular Spectacular" a listen online. The rest on the album have a consistently good quality too, and I think I just might hold back one of the two last copies on the shopfloor for myself.

right time to get back to hmv. Not long now, perhaps a couple more months, but i'll make sure they are good.

MGMT - Kids
MGMT - Pieces Of What

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Quirky and laid back, indie's darling band The Flaming Lips are probably one of the weirdiest around for some time, having allegedly started in 1983 when Wayne Coyne stole a collection of musical instruments from a local church hall and enlisted his vocalist brother Mark and bassist Michael Ivins to start a band. Hah I know where to go if I want to do the same.

Although The Flaming Lips are known for continually being written off as *multiple* 'one-hit wonders', they simply refused to give in to the odds, instead rearing up with a new hit single time and time again. Taking their first big single as an example, " She Don't Use Jelly" took a year after release to suddenly break into top charts everywhere. It started off an undergroud hit, led to a brief exposure of 15 minutes of fame on mtv, and to a "memorably surreal lip-synched performance on the teen soap opera Beverly Hills 90210, where a character uttered the immortal words, 'You know, I've never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house! ' " ( as quoted from allmusic.com) . The song bore no resemblance to the rest of the same album.

I guess it is the same kind of spirit pervasive in their songs that I sort of identify with, and this is best evident with the " Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Song". A demented pop song with an insane yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah hook, pretty good lyrics that I actually believe in, and just wait for the bit somewhere two thirds through where there's a fool singing against the yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah that just refuses to go away. Wow.

The Flaming Lips - Yeah Yeah Yeah Song

and their official site:


Oh yeah if I ever have a funeral this tune will figure into it somehow. I would like to think I have a bit of this song. Bouncing along taking a swing at everything and simply.. there.