Alright. I didn’t want it to come down to this. I tried to be nice about the fact that I didn’t much like the Be Your Own Pet album that Universal sent to us. I tried not to be too annoyed by the constant references Jemina Pearl makes lyrically to, well, whatever movie she watched the night before. I even did my best to find a decent reason to not trash their new album in print, right?

But no. I just can’t let this shit go by unnoticed. In an interview given to Pitchfork earlier this week, Jemina Pearl actually got a little upset when the journalist pointed out that the band would be playing this years Warped Tour… and it kinda makes sense. Seriously, this conversation took place:

Pitchfork: Are you guys psyched to play the Warped Tour? It seemed like a weird partnership at first, but it’s kind of perfect for you guys.

JP: No! Oh my God, you’re going to make me kill myself! Warped is perfect for us?

Pitchfork: I mean, in the end, it’s just about having fun and being a teenager, right?

JP: Yeah, I guess. I just associate it with a certain look and a certain style and the kind of kids at school that I thought were– this is really bad, I’m sure– the kind of kids that were dumbasses wearing Rancid t-shirts who thought they knew what punk rock was and threw things at people in the cafeteria.

Uhhhh… I can’t even believe that really happened. Seriously. No, fucking really. Who the hell did you think was gonna buy your albums? Serious fans of experimental post-rock? Way to go, bitch about your core audience while acting like one of them in public all of the time.

Exhibit A (i.e. Don’t bitch about food fights when you kinda glorify them.):

Exhibit B:
from the aforementioned Pitchfork interview:

Jemina Pearl: “We just do the things we like to do– like set things on fire. That’s what we did last night. We set a box on fire on the steps of the venue. It was really fun. We had a bus call at four in the morning, and we were really bored. We didn’t have anything to do, so we set stuff on fire.”

I rest my case.

Jemina? You are the audience you’ll be playing to at the Warped tour. Get over yourself, and you may wanna get a new PR agent that keeps your feet out of your mouth in interviews.

Okay, the new compact disc by Cartoon Monster can only be a good thing. Not only because we really dug the split album the act did with Wabash on the Cass_et_tape Records label, and not just because Now Hereness distributes those bitchin’ Lost Sound Tapes box sets… but because Cartoon Monster drew an awesome picture for us to spice up their package. We’d show you, but… we’re selfish.

The Dying Sea is a hypnotic little slice of lo-fi pulsations. Cartoon Monster is still rife with vocals that are mixed low enough to be their own instrument, offering new counter-melodies to an EP coated in xylophones, mini pump organs, and a few instruments that aren’t even easily defineable. I’m sure that many of them originate from some type of synthesizer, and yeah… I suppose you can pick the guitar lines out of “What You Say”. But overall? Imagine a more bedroom-oriented Big Science-era Laurie Anderson. One that is even more low-fi and hard to penetrate, but sort of creates it’s own murky and otherworldly underworld.

Now you’re getting the idea.

There’s not a lot of other acts today that sound like Cartoon Monster, which is all the more reason that you should be fascinated with the output of the project. It’s wonderful for late-night listening, and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. This record gets total RetroLowFi approval, folks.

Cartoon Monster - Towne Song.mp3

Buy the new Cartoon Monster Cd here… if you like good things.

Damn it! Just three months after I belatedly get into a band, and it’s already uncool to like them. How do I know it’s uncool to like Vampire Weekend anymore? Because of the procession of backward-baseball-cap sporting Cro-Magnons that do like them – a flavor-of-the-month fratboy contingency that surely helped sell out the band’s June 9 appearance at the Fillmore at the Jackie Gleason theater.

On the one hand you had the idiotic jocks shouting requests for Def Lepard and Lynyrd Skynyrd songs (The Vamps, mercifully, did not appease them). On the other were the plugged-in, gen-Y scenesters more interested in preserving their appearance for MySpace posterity at this glamorous to-do than actually enjoying the music. “Punk-A” rocked the house behind them, but these girls were ignored the preppy ruckus to smile for a camera, proof that, yes, they did get to stay out past their bedtime on a Monday night to see that cool pop group with the dreamy lead singer that played Saturday Night Live. Oh, how I yearn to have been one of the select few audiences to have seen Vampire Weekend at those now-storied Columbia University literary clubs where the band drew its first blood – to join the other polite, well-groomed, pale-as-fuck hipsters for whom Chuck Klosterman is so passé in those kumbaya moments of elitist harmony. Or at least that’s how the band’s early shows play out in my mind.

Still, it’s a testament to how exciting this band is – still is, my reputation be damned – that despite the inordinate influx of the kind of audiences that discovered Death Cab for Cutie in 2006, Vampire Weekend put on a hell of a show. Opening with the “Mansard Roof” – a song Rufus Wainwright would have written if he was any good – the band played virtually all of its sensational self-titled debut. Closer “Oxford Comma” and encore number “Walcott” blew the roof off the place, leaving their studio-recorded counterparts in the dust. Ezra Koenig’s voice scaled new heights of confidence, bravado and rock gusto as the band scorched through tracks like “One,” which featured a thunderous call-and-response of the chorus “Blake’s got a new face,” and personal favorite “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” the best song David Byrne never wrote.

The between-song banter could use some improvement, with Koenig’s witticisms (some nonsense about robotic chandeliers, etc.) failing to approach even Bob Pollard’s worst clunkers on Relaxation of the Asshole. But luckily, the band has yet to succumb to pompous rockstar affect: When they said we were one of the best audiences on the tour and that they’ve been longing to perform in Miami, I believed both statements were genuine. Hell, it was an incredibly lively crowd, bopping along with every snare drum pang in the “pit” area and singing every word to even the pair of the mediocre songs on the record. And, per the Fillmore’s standard of quality, the sound was absolutely flawless.

You can’t blame this band for its meteoric rise to pop stardom. It’s hard to fathom that just three months ago, they were opening for The Walkmen, and now they’re bigger than those bombastic brooders ever have been and ever will be. Unfortunately, with great power comes great douchebags. But at least the Vampire Weekend die-hards can sleep soundly knowing that once the group’s 15 minutes of MTV fame are up, the jocks will have moved on to something else, leaving Vampire Weekend the in enviable status of weathered elder statesmen returning to the indie fold. They’ll be post-“Popular” Nada Surfs, and liking them will once again be hipster-chic.

I tried to review Connecticut’s Bottle Up & Go objectively, but I simply couldn’t. I didn’t dislike their EP or anything, but… okay. I’ve seen Ghost World. Remember that “authentic, down in the Delta blues” band called Blues Hammer? If not, let me refresh your memory:

That’s all I thought about while listening to These Bones. Uncontrollable laughter ensued.

So yes, add a pinch of early primal White Stripes to that, some free jazz for the occasional pointless sax solo, and you’ve got Bottle Up & Go.

Feel free to contrast and compare at Bottle Up & Go’s MySpace.