New Stuff for a Weird Friday from Quiet Slang and The RockNRoll Hi-Fives

The RockNRoll Hi-Fives

Closure

This has been a weird Friday around here. On the Jersey Shore, we're on like day 47 in a row of rain. The fact that Asbury Lanes is forever gone will be driven home this evening as the new venue at that address holds its "soft opening." This morning, I watched the guy who caused my brother's accident get handcuffed and taken away to serve out his seven-year prison sentence. Weird, to say the least.

At times like this, when I'm feeling kind of disconnected and disjointed, I turn to music that holds meaning for me.

Quiet Slang, "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas"

Beach Slang's James Alex released Everything Matters But No One Is Listening today. Put out under the name Quiet Slang, the album re-imagines the melodramatic, romantic, and loud punk rock of Beach Slang. Alex calms things down, adding piano and strings where before there were "Guitar, bass, and drums. Played loudly."

Beach Slang were the last band to play Asbury Lanes before it closed in 2015, and I always associate  "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas" -- and screaming along to that song with friends old and new in the front row -- with that evening.

It seems appropriate that we get this sad, quiet version of that song, along with the rest of Everything Matters..., on this dreary, rainy day when it becomes official that Asbury Lanes is never coming back.

Everything Matters But No One Is Listening is out now on Polyvinyl.



The RockNRoll Hi-Fives, "Hold On"

The RockNRoll Hi-Fives played the first set I got out to see following my brother's accident. I don't know if it was the best set they ever played. I don't know if it was the worst set they ever played. I don't know if it fell somewhere in between. What I do know is that show was exactly what I needed right when I needed it. The songs that The RockNRoll Hi-Fives played that night gave me the push I needed to get myself through the immensely difficult next few days and beyond.

I recently accompanied Joe, Gloree, Eilee, and Evren Centeno on their tour of Japan. We spent lots and lots of time together; and I got to feel that same lift, that same push, at each show. It was like getting a little refill every couple of days of the fuel I needed to keep on keeping on.

Earlier this week, the band released the first single from their forthcoming LP, Re-Introducing the RockNRoll Hi-Fives. With "Hold On," the family band take their sound into the glam stratosphere; and it's one of the songs on which Eilee really comes into her own as front-person. I can't help but see her flaming Vans stomping around the stage every time that chorus comes around.

Re-Introducing The RockNRoll Hi-Fives comes out June 29th on Little Dickman Records, and the band will play Asbury Park Yacht Club next week, May 26th, with our good friends in Dentist.

A Couple of New Videos This Week from The So So Glos and dollys

Friday Video Post

I used to post a video every Friday and tell you all to "Rock on!" Not sure when or why that stopped, but a couple of interesting videos came out this week. It's Friday, so...

The So So Glos, "A.D.D. Life"

If we've learned one thing from the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, it's that message discipline can take you far. My Bay Ridge, Brooklyn paisanos, The So So Glos, appear to be big believers in that. Songs like "Xanax" and "Speakeasy" from 2013's BLOWOUT are commentaries on the dominant role that technology has assumed in our lives. Even their band name is a reference to the subtle glow of a smartphone screen on a user's face.

Their latest single, "A.D.D. Life," stays pretty solidly on message with lines like, "I'm a too much information generation cliché" and a video that's as frantic as the life they describe.



dollys, "friendly"

dollys display a discipline of a different sort. They stick pretty tightly to a strategy which I'm beginning to believe is a really good one for new bands. Rather than releasing an album and then waiting until they have enough new music to put out another, dollys have gone with releasing a couple of singles every few months accompanied by a video or two. It allows an up and coming band to stay out in front of people and to keep adding new music to their sets.

It's been about two months since dollys' last singles; but this past Tuesday, the band released a video for "friendly," one of the songs they put out towards the end of last year. The video compiles footage from one of dollys' semi-regular trips to Virginia (Establishing kind of a "home away from home" area to tour: also a good strategy.) into a simple but effective montage.

And now that dollys have enough singles out there, they're combining them into a full-length called Low Year that they'll be releasing next Friday, February 26th, as part of a joint record release with Lost In Society. That show takes place upstairs at Asbury Park's Convention Hall and also includes gods, Kyle Trocolla, and Derek Rossi.



This may or may not be the last you hear from me today, depending on how things go, but...

Rock on!

I Haven't Been Totally Slacking Edition

Warm-ish Friday (and Stuff)

Posts here lately have been less frequent than I'd like, but that doesn't mean I've been slacking. I already pointed out that my pics from the first two nights of the Don Giovanni Records Showcase, along with my recap of Night 1 are over at Speak Into My Good Eye. Also, last week, I provided the shots to accompany Allyson Dwyer's write-up of the Nicole Atkins tour kickoff at The Saint.

All of those pics (and many more) are now up in the Flickr galleries that I've been posting over the last week or so and that you can access by clicking on the "Galleries" tab up top. Let me tell you, uploading those pics was a much bigger chore than I thought it was going to be. I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say that my OCD-induced need to re-edit and re-export over 1,000 pics made things difficult. I've gotten back to September 2013 so far. More work ahead.

I'm hoping to catch a couple of shows this weekend, which I'll recap here; and, next week, it's back to Brooklyn for an evening with Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks.

Oh... Also... I do these listing things every week where I pretty much stick to what's around here. If you know of or are playing some basement show in New Brunswick or in your buddy's backyard in Toms River or something and want it listed, just get me the info. I'll post it. Thanks.

I know I kinda took some not-so-subtle digs at these guys the other day, but I still like 'em and this video is cool. I've already got Matt's part kind of down.

Rock on!