Surf & Spell

Kimya Dawson and Tone Tank

As I mentioned last week, I don’t have kids. I’m sure some of the people out there on the internets who might read this do though. And it could be said that I am in fact a “kid at heart,” whatever my chronological age might be. So it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for me to blog about a record for kids, right? Why would I want to blog about a kids record? Well, one of my favorite recording artists is putting one out this week. And I guess I’m kind of missing my mom — a woman who dedicated much of her life to the care and education of very young children — as well. So a record for kids is sentimental salve for my emotional boo-boos as it were.

Kimya Dawson ‘Alphabutt’I also share my living space with someone who has spent more than a few years working in early childhood development and is known to sing all the wacky songs she used to regale her young charges with around the house. Coincidentally (and much to my envy) she was also lucky enough to meet the artist responsible for this seemingly incongruous children’s record, Kimya Dawson (and her daughter Panda), earlier this Summer. In addition to meeting the Washington-based Anti-Folk singer/songwriter and guitarist she got to see and hear her perform as well and came home raving about a song called “We’re All Animals.” She was saddened to learn I didn’t have the song. But that was only because it was from her then forthcoming album of children’s songs Alphabutt, so it wasn’t out yet.

An ode to body hair that’s just as likely to piss off advocates of creationism and intelligent design as it is to gross out the uptight and hippie-hating, “We’re All Animals” quickly became my favorite song on the disc. The only thing that distinguishes it from her more adult-oriented output, which has always been cute and whimsical even when it deals with serious subjects, is a total lack of expletives and the inclusion of a chorus of children making animal noises. The same can be said for most of the tunes on Alphabutt, which retool her stripped down, DIY/Punk-influenced, Twee-ifused Folk for the ears of other “alternative”-leaning mothers and their kids rather than the dirty Emo Punk/Hippie kids who populate the art spaces, coffee shops and house shows that have until recently been Kimya’s domain. “Sunbeams and Some Beans,” a tune that advocates communal humanism, and “Happy Home (Keep On Writing),” a song about living one’s dream regardless of where you come from or what obstacles might be in your way, are especially evocative of her not-so-kiddie-friendly music. They also remind me of my mom.

Kimya Dawson “Happy Home (Keep On Writing)”

Tone Tank ‘The King of Surf Guitar Rap’I don’t really need any excuses to write about a rapper from Brooklyn. Especially one like Tone Tank who’s down with the Nuclear Family, a crew who’ve made multiple appearances in this space. But when that artist makes a record based conceptually around life in Southern California, beaches and surfing (among a few other things) where he raps exclusively over Surf-Rock instrumentals I can’t help but be reminded of my own SoCal origins, my childhood (when I thought surfing was super-cool) and my mom, who was known to hit the waves on a board in her own sun-bleached youth. Did I mention that when my housemate heard the title track “King of Surf Guitar Rap” she remarked that “you can do the swim to this” and started dancing around the apartment?

Yes, the record (which is not for kids) is called The King of Surf Guitar Rap. And to be perfectly honest it’s not a record at all. It’s a free four-track digital EP you can download from Tone’s clothing company Scum Life’s website for free! Everything else I said about the Surf-Rock samples and the songs about parts of California that don’t have anything to do with locs, Raiders caps and “mark ass marks” is accurate though. And you can bet that the atypical themes and locales intrinsic to such a concept put Tone in a position to flip an array of unusual pop-culture references and flex his storytelling muscle. The From Dusk Til Dawn-esque “The Case of the Reptilian Roadhouse,” where Tone poses as a pulp superhero facing down a barfull of half-man-half-lizard desert rednecks and biker types, and “Mala!,” a MexiCali-flavored story about a phantasmal hitch-hiker with a dark past, are particularly colorful. While “Arthur Brown” stands out for the slurry MF Doom-ish cadence Tone freaks over the speedy track’s tom-tom rolls and guitar shrieks. It’s an unexpected, and unforeseeably dope, companion piece to his Punk-themed Black Six Sessions EP.

Tone Tank The King of Surf Guitar Rap (Download)

My mother never did get around to teaching me how to surf — although she did make me listen to an unfortunate amount of ’60s Surf-Rock when I was a kid — so I guess I’ll have to live vicariously through Hip-Hop on that one. And why not? If California gang culture can inspire a whole industry full of fantasy gangsters a few imaginative tales of foaming oceans, territorial locals, desert hallucinations and youth gone wrong spurred by California surf culture can’t be a bad thing.

This entry was written by El Keter, posted on September 8, 2008 at 11:07 am, filed under Music and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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