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Passion Pit - “Little Secrets”
With summer almost over and the days starting to feel more and more like that that Adventures of Pete and Pete episode where they try to make the most out of the limited amount of summer vacation they have left, it’s time to look back at the season that was. A lot of it involved people talking about birth certificates and changing their Twitter picture green (which 100% helped Iranian people, for sure.) But it also involved summer music. What was the best song for summer 09? The one that encapuslated sunshine and long days and awkward beers with the President? While Pitchfork keeps spending 10k words a day trying to convince us that “glo-fi” is something that mattered this summer, please allow me to enter this track for consideration.
After being written about on every single blog ever created, (including, somehow, the Livejournal blog you started freshman year of college and haven’t touched since your sophmore year production of Inheret The Wind) Passion Pit blew up, showing up everywhere, including on The Jimmy Fallon Late Night Programme. And deservedly so, cuz this song screams summer as much as that unconfortable feeling you get when you realize you like like either a dad or a toddler everytime you put on shorts.
Children’s choir, catchy chorus and lots of keys? Great. What else needs to be said?
Now get back to back to school shopping.
What if all music was made by these guys?
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Jay Reatard - “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me”
Step 1: Change your last name from the girlish “Lindsey” to the ridiculous “Reatard.”
Step 2: Write some frenetic, delightful, great noisy pop songs.
Step 3: Have the quality of the music make people forget that you chose to go by the surname “Reatard.”
Success!
Good friends of the show The Deadly Syndrome are opening for about 110 pounds of pure adorable Swedishness. Go see it. Support a great LA band while also supporting tiny blonde sexpots from Scandinavia.
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Sunset Rubdown - “You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)”
A show-stopping little number off of their most recent album, Dragonslayer. Go get the album, see them live, confess your love for them and cover your walls with decoupage of Spencer Krug and company with hearts and rainbows and unicorns dancing around their faces as if you were a teenage girl and they were one or more of the Jonas Brothers.
Recently, we finally caved and upgraded from our 14.4K dial up modem (it was the vinyl record of internet, and everyone knows that vinyl sounds better) to a “cable modem” because “the man” and his “cabal” of “cabal companies” used their “PR machines” to pressure us into submitting to their every corporate whim. Also, we wanted to make sure we had AMC when Mad Men comes back and it was pretty cheap to bundle the fast connection with the basic cable.
So, to celebrate we decided that we would start a weblog. We’ve been told that radio listenership is down, and that hurts Smug Rock Nation because our signal only reaches about 275 households, 12 percent of which speak English. So we figured the internet was the place to be. And this was the only “blog” site we could figure out.
But perhaps you want to know a bit about us? Well, ok. Smug Rock Nation is a music-based talk radio show broadcasting on the entirely non-fictional radio station 87.1, KLAB. Hosted by Clint Moore and Lou Carducci, we do the show live on stage on the first Sunday of every month at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles. Here are some more facts about us
Clint Moore (aka the person writing this right now) has been in radio since his college days at the University of Southern Connecticut. He’s dedicated his life to letting people know about good music and disparaging people who disagree. He hates sell-outs and loves denim. His favorite album is one you haven’t heard of.
Lou Carducci has been my co-host since their days at USC. After bouncing around from couch to couch, he finally made the commitment to buy his own futon mattress and is currently saving up to buy the frame. Recently, he disappeared for 4 days, but turned up in Atlantic City eating shrimp.
Check back here for reviews of albums both new and old, discussions of current events and, most likely, reviews of different things Lou has eaten. This is it, guys. Smug Rock Nation is riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave of music criticsm and social commentary. And I say that with all humility.
Sincerely,
Clint Moore
RUMOR!!! Pitchfork Media is owned by Rupert Murdoch and all the writers are Fox News personalities using pseudonyms. Greta Van Susteren loved Bitte Orca.
Celebrate the 4th of July with Smug Rock Nation as we put on our own festival, the Summer-palooza Music Festival Of Music. It’ll be better than Coachella because The Killers aren’t headlining.
With: David Harris, Todd Fasen, Mike Mitchell, James Pumphrey, Scott Rodgers, Marisa Pinson and Josh Simpson.
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Chisel - “On Warmer Music”
The song from which we get our name. Chisel was Ted Leo’s old band before he got himself some Pharmacists. The albums 8 A.M. All Day and Set You Free are required listening.
