Junius - "A Word Could Kill Her"
(Radar Recordings, 2006)
Yes, guitar heroics are back in indie rock, since post-punk kids in tight clothing have been rediscovering Dinosaur Jr., The Wipers, Soundgarden, and other axe-friendly '80s bands. I prefer my songs to be driven by bass and drums rather than by guitar, but sometimes a band just nails a guitar riff, and this is one of those times. Junius wear all black, which makes them look like anarchist ninjas, and are Very Serious about their bombastic forging of epic rock. For this song, their guitarist came up with a hybrid surf-meets-goth riff that is as addictive as it is improbable.
The singer has said that his favorite album is Fantastic Planet by Failure, and does a good job of channeling Robert Smith, though I'd have to say the lyrics in this song aren't much to write home about. I also recommend the very Joy Division-ish title track from this EP, Blood Is Bright. I almost saw Junius in Baton Rouge in March '08, with a few other great bands, all of whom I ended up seeing separately over the ensuing few years: Ghastly City Sleep, Constants, Pygmy Lush. Seriously, that's a jaw-dropping slate of bands, but hindsight is always 20/20, right? Dangit. It was a house show in Baton Rouge, and I didn't feel like hanging around at the house of someone whom I didn't know for 5 or so hours. I'm excited to finally get to see Junius this March at the Circle Bar in NOLA, a venue the size (and temperature, since it lacks A/C) of a fireplace. I've never posted tour dates for any band on here before, but I'm going to for this tour, and for another fine band in my next post. I rarely post songs by bands that are currently active, so when I find one that's on tour, it's only logical to tell you folks about it:
02/15/12 New Haven, CT @ Bar
02/16/12 Washington, DC @ DC9 w/ O'Brother, Black Clouds
02/17/12 Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall w/ O'Brother, Ribs
02/18/12 Brooklyn, NY @ Knitting Factory w/ O'Brother
02/19/12 Philadelphia, PA @ North Star Bar w/ O'Brother, Val De Val
02/21/12 Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE w/ O'Brother, Sainthood Reps
02/22/12 Columbus, OH @ Basement w/ O'Brother, Sainthood Reps
02/23/12 Grand Rapids, MI @ Pyramid Scheme w/ O'Brother, The Soil And The Sun
02/24/12 Chicago,IL @ Beat Kitchen w/ O'Brother
02/25/12 St Louis, MO @ Firebird w/ O'Brother, Time & Time
02/26/12 Lawrence,KS @ Jackpot Music Hall w/ O'Brother
02/28/12 Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre w/ O'Brother, Lucida Tela
02/29/12 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court w/ O'Brother, Loom
03/01/12 Reno, NV @ Jub Jub's Thirst Parlor
03/02/12 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill w/ O'Brother, Happy Body Slow Brain
03/03/12 Los Angeles, CA @ Satellite (formerly Spaceland) w/ O'Brother
03/04/12 San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar w/ O'Brother
03/05/12 Las Vegas, NV @ Bunkhouse
03/06/12 Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress w/ O'Brother, Sleep Driver
03/07/12 Mesa, AZ @ The Nile Underground w/ O'Brother
03/08/12 Midland, TX @ Pine Box
03/09/12 Austin, TX @ Red 7 w/ O'Brother, Brother Ghost
03/10/12 Dallas, TX @ Bryan St. Tavern w/ O'Brother
03/11/12 Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live w/ O'Brother
03/12/12 New Orleans, LA @ Circle Bar w/ Steve Eck And The Midnight Still
03/13/12 to 03/18/12 Austin, TX @ SXSW
These U.S. dates are followed by a lengthy European tour, whose dates you can see here. The New Orleans date is not even listed on their website, so hopefully noladiy.org got their facts right. By the way, my next post will be about another band that is on a big tour.
Some reviews of Blood Is Bright:
"They wear their brooding Eighties swirling darkness on their sleeve, yet still manage to conjure something fresh, majestic and uplifting. The vocal drips onto a textured canvas of chiming echoed guitars and a throbbing backbeat reminiscent of Pornography-era Cure, with the bombastic crunch of My Bloody Valentine." - The Noise
"Breathtaking atmospherics and dark sensibilities deserved of being likened to The Cure's Disintegration punctuate this EP. Vocalist Joseph E. Martinez deadpans a brooding style that clashes at the perfect angle with the swirling sounds that rise around his words. Without straying into anything too heavy, Junius manages to maintain an intense presence that is as stylish as Interpol but carries a sincerity and distinction not found in enough young acts. This band seems to have borrowed just enough from previous decades to build and shape something all its own. This Boston-based quartet approach New Wave tendencies with a shield of spacey guitars and artistic vocal stylings to create something that is not soon forgotten. With high energy emanating out of a pensive sound, Junius punctures each track with unshakable singularity until it turns into something addictive and encompassing." - Exclaim! magazine (Canada)
"Genius as far as contemporary New Wave / cinematic Art-Rock goes... [an] epic audio masterpiece." - The Big Takeover
I had never experienced symptomatic sports-related heartbreak until the last minute of the Saints' loss to the Niners on Saturday. It was almost identical to the ending of the Steelers-Cardinals Super Bowl three years ago. To get over the shock, we watched a move called Flame And Citron and some SNL and an apparently-legenendary short film called C'était un rendez-vous. I was also shocked that Lana Del Rey didn't sing her superb new single "Born To Die" on SNL. The only reason I slogged through the whole episode was to see her do it. She did "Video Games" and some other mediocre song, and was brutally panned by smug news robot Brian Williams, who called her perhaps the worst performer in the history of the show. Ouch.
On Monday, the always-classy Spike network did the only thing any reasonable channel would do in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day: It aired a marathon of Steven Seagal films. I was lucky enough to tune in and catch a hilarious fight scene in his 2003 effort Belly Of The Beast. I looked it up on YouTube to watch it again, and learned that I missed an even more hilarious beginning part of this very fight:
1.) Is this the worst scene in the history of cinema? Y/N
2.) Is this the apex of the S. Seagal canon? Y/N
(Note: By answering question 2, you hereby admit to having viewed the entirety of the S. Seagal canon.)
I watched the pilot episode of a new show called Alcatraz, mainly because our dad used to always take us around Alcatraz whenever we'd go out on the little sailboat (The Green Toad) that our family briefly owned in the '80s. The show was pretty good, but I was just totally enraptured by the lead actress, Sarah Jones. Just watch an episode and you'll see what I mean.
On Wed., I got a gigantic cheeseburger for only $4 at this little soul food place in Morgan City called Rita Mae's. Before eating it, I played some hoops at this court a few blocks away situated directly under Hwy. 90. There was a rail-thin tween biracial girl riding erratically around the court on a bike, lost in her own little world, warbling some song at low volume. After she almost crashed into me a few times, I asked her what she was singing, and she said it was a song by Adele. I remember it had "Rain" in the title; I just looked it up and it must've been "Set Fire To The Rain," which iTunes says is her most popular song at the moment. She then sang "Someone Like You" and "Rolling In The Deep" at my request, like my own little rolling jukebox. It was kind of like a scene out of Gummo or something, with the sound of cars rumbling up above our heads. "She's kinda weird, isn't she?," I asked one of her friends, who smiled broadly and nodded her head as the girl pedaled away down the street. Then I drove over two of the city's epic bridges as the sun set while listening to Poem Rocket. Perhaps subconsciously inspired by C'était un rendez-vous, I filmed it:
Planets with similar climates: The Chameleons - "Return Of The Roughnecks" (1985), The Cure - "Burn" (1993), The Comsat Angels - "The Eye Dance" (1981), Juno - "All Your Friends Are Comedians" (1998), The Wipers - "Against The Wall" (1987).
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