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Deep and rich: are these words you would use to describe a band that creates music that’s a bit on the goth-y, synth pop-ish, and new wave sides? This is what I hear in this very cool video by the Dangerous Boys Club, and this one is an endurance test but one that will be worth the 11 minute viewing. It’s called “Tranzilvania”, but you do not have to fear its grasp.
Seattle duo Lux will be releasing their We Are Not The Same album on April 3rd (you can read my full review here, but you’re now able to hear a bonus hidden track from it. It’s a cover of Black Tambourine‘s “Black Car”. If you’re not sure if you’ve heard the original before, here it is:
Now the cover.
If you are a fan of the type of gothy, new wave pop that was present in a good amount of movies in the early to mid-1980′s, you will enjoy the debut by Lux, We Are Not The Same. It seems to capture the vibe of what made a lot of those British and American records great, a slightly punk attitude to a world they did not want to be in, and found hard to try to conquer/defeat. Think of Love & Rockets, Depeche Mode, and Let’s Active and you’ll hear it here. While the songs are decent, it seems that they’re doing it just for the sake of being retro. In fact, as a Seattle group they remind me of my first exposure to the Seattle music scene way back when, which suggested that if the city was going to be nothing but rain and gloom, then decades later it’s still rain and gloom today. Another way to look at it is that this sound that held up so well in the early to mid-80′s holds up well today, but it might make some wonder if this is actually an 80′s recording.
If there was something I didn’t like, it was the order of the tracks. I played around with the track order and I found this to be a decent way to listen to them:
04. Valerie, They’ll Never Understand
03. The Window
09. Cachexia
10. A Study In Apathy (Drugs, Etc)
02. Out Of Love
05. Little Cripple
07. Cerebellar Ataxia
01. Coroner’s Office
08. Candy Lux
12. I’ll Try To Ignore The Fact That You’re Drowning
11. 1000 Airwaves
06. X
13. Blackout
To my ears, I wanted the better songs to hit me immediately, but those were tracks 4, 3, 9, and 10. The album opener felt better if it was in the middle or at least somewhere in the second half.
If I had to pick stand-out songs, it would be “X” (which I would not mind seeing in movies) or “Blackout”, which is nothing more than a drone but it works well to exit the album. There is a bonus/hidden track after “Blackout” and I could see that being chosen as a single if they felt motivated to do it that way.
I like it when an artist comes in with little to no explanation and then boom, like Kwest The Madd Lad and James Brown, there it is. This is “Tough Love” by Sex Worker (a/k/a Daniel Martin-McCormick), who is currently on tour with Psychic Reality. If you like the track, check both of them as they make it through your city:
NOV 15 – St. George, Utah @ GOGO37
NOV 16 – Denver @ Rhinoceropolis
NOV 17 – Lawrence KS @ 8th Street Taproom
NOV 18 – Chicago @ Rueben’s Palace
NOV 26 – Chapel Hill @ the Nightlight
NOV 27 – DC @ the Cherch
NOV 29 – Baltimore @ The Golden West
NOV 30 – Philly @ Elena’s
DEC 1 – NYC @ the Cake Shop
Sex Worker will be selling his album, Waving Goodbye, at these shows (while supplies last).
