Denizens of the blogosphere often seem to be engaged in a constant battle for content exclusivity and “I heard it/posted about it first” one-upmanship. This often leads to blogs running features on artists who have little to no actual output, in either commercial form or that of downloadable demos, available to the public and reviews of albums that won’t hit store shelves, either terrestrial or digital, until months later.
This can be attributed both to an inundation of loose MP3s, streaming audio, demos & advance promo CDs from bands, promoters & labels as well as ever-earlier leaks onto the internet. As such, we bloggers are often assumed to be savvy opportunists who milk our “connections,” industry shills happy to ass-kiss anybody who’ll send us a promo or filthy downloaders and file-sharers who are killing the recording industry even as we prop it up. For many of us the truth of the matter is that we’re just people; music fans like anybody else. And even if we do get hit off with promos or indulge in our (un?)fair share of downloading we still have to learn about and obtain music like anybody else.
I can say as much about myself at least. I dig and hunt for new music that I might enjoy all the time. Sometimes I’ll get lucky and something I’m really looking forward to or searching for will fall right in my lap. Other times I’ll get even luckier and something new and incredible I wasn’t even looking for will fall out of the sky and on to my MP3 player. In both cases I inevitably end up passing on word about them in my blogging. I also have stacks of CDs sitting around my apartment that don’t interest me in the least which you’ll never hear anything about. And then there are the albums by bands whose names I write down and plan to look for who I either forget about, lose track of or just never find. That was almost what happened to Portland, Oregon’s all-female Post-Punk trio The New Bloods and their debut full-length The Secret Life.
If you’d heard about a stripped-down Punk band comprised of three multi-ethnic women (Adee Roberson on drums & vocals, Osa Atoe on violin & vocals and Cassia Gammill on bass & vocals) from one of the nation’s most prolific indie music cities, and then seen a picture of them in all their stereotype eschewing arty Punk-chick glory, you’d write their name down too! Hopefully you’d be a little more proactive about getting off your ass to cop their album when it finally dropped and it wouldn’t take you five freakin’ months to get yourself a copy like it took my lackadaisical ass though.
Once you had a copy of The Secret Life in your hands and the music on it was in your ear canal you’d be hit with a sudden understanding of the heretofore unacknowledged compatibility between the Gothic String-Rock of Brooklyn’s Rasputina and the bass-heavy Punk-Funk of the South Bronx’s ESG. And you’d be really happy that somebody discovered that the violin could and should replace the guitar in a traditional Rock combo setting. You might also hear echoes of the dark, dub-inflected, minimalist Post-Punk of Joy Division (as well as that of their peers such as The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees), the tribal New Wave of Bow Wow Wow and the geometric-shaped party-ready Art-Punk of the Talking Heads. And with all the lo-fidelity grime, gristly basslines, crunchy beats and shape-shifting vocals (all three members contribute spoken-word oratory, drones, lilts, growls, shrieks, shouts and gorgeous multi-part harmonies) you couldn’t help but be reminded of any number of old-school Southern Soul or Swampbeat Funk sides, Dub Reggae “riddims,” Afro-Carribean-flavored Funk LPs and even a Disco stomper or two in addition to the afforementioned proprietors of punkiness.
The New Bloods “Doubles”
If I have anything to gripe about it’s that so many of the album’s standout tracks — like the propulsive “Doubles” (which reminds me as much of a sped-up RZA beat from the Forever era as it does something off A South Bronx Story) and the dramatically thumping “No. 17″ for example — are so short; clocking in at just under two minutes in length. But it’s a small complaint when the music, as quickly as one might be able to take it all in, is so freakin’ good.
If you’ve ever enjoyed a record by any of the aforementioned acts — or the output of the New Bloods’ Kill Rock Stars labelmates The Gossip, female-fronted Canadian Indie/New Wave/Post-Punk bands Pony Up! and Metric, experimental New York art-Rockers like TV on the Radio and Dragons of Zynth, and even the punky New Wave-inflected electronic Pop of Santogold — you shouldn’t waste any time in obtaining your own copy of The Secret Life.
