It Occupies My Mind

Ladyhawk came to my attention in a way that pretty much guaranteed I would investigate their music with the utmost interest: they were recommended by Carrie Brownstein on her NPR blog Monitor Mix. If Carrie Brownstein were to recommend that her readers change their names to Schnarfflepopper and move to an island populated by obnoxious Yorkshire Terriers, I'd probably look into it.

Continuing my surrender to modernity's methods of discovering new music, I hopped over to their Myspace page to check out what Ladyhawk had to offer and I was almost immediately won over. "I Don't Always Know What You're Saying" is essentially my definition of a clutch rock song - simple but compelling lyrics, vocals that parallel some stellar guitar bits and lots of heartfelt yelling. I am a sucker for heartfelt yelling. I promptly went out and purchased their album, because despite my visits to blogs and band websites, I'm still of the opinion that when you like a band, you should support them by buying their albums. Somewhat unpredictably, my favorite song on the album is their finale, "Ghost Blues." It isn't often that a nine minute song winds up my heavy rotation queue, but "Ghost Blues" is slow and pretty and sad and although there's not out-and-out yelling, there's enough of a desperate drawl to meet my quota for songs that imply wrenching angst.

Shots, their second album, is a much more well-rounded, thought-out album and since it's only their second effort (their self-titled first album has "Drunk Eyes" and "The Dugout" to recommend it, but overall doesn't measure up to Shots) I'm definitely looking forward to any future works from them.

I doubt if you'll find missing is what minds are really for

Occasionally I will go two or three months without listening to Tuscadero's My Way or the Highway and when I finally return to it for a good, long listen, it's nothing short of rejuvenating.

Tuscadero was only around for a heartbeat in the 1990s, released just two albums, barely toured and they can (not inaccurately, especially in regard to their first album, The Pink Album) be characterized as overly poppy, saccharine and vacuous. But that's only on the first listen. There's something very compelling in the exhausted, inured tone of "Hot Head" and "Temper Temper" is something of an ode to mercurial moments that periodically seem to doom relationships. I didn't realize it at the time, but I doubt that at the age of 15 I could have found more positive lyrical messages than "Paper Dolls" or "freak Magnet." "Mutiny," the closing track, is the real clincher though. Even though it's long and difficult to sing along, it is my favorite break-up song, it is quixotically playful and musing, and I have put it on almost every mix tape/cd for the past ten years.
Tuscadero releases my inner flapper, it makes me rebound from things I didn't even realize were bothering me, it keeps me on the lighter side of wistfulness.