Tuesday, January 22, 2008  8:31 am 

You don’t need to be a ghost to come alive.

You know we love indie, we are always complaining about indie schmindie this, and indie dance remixes that but then we are being lazy and incorrect with our terminology, you know that what we slate, that indie, is not really indie but revivalist fashion driven corporate Middle of the Road derivative crap, actually almost everything we talk about here in 20jazzfunkgreats is indie be it indie-rock or else, major labels gave up on surprises a long time ago and filter most interesting stuff out of their roosters with a skill that some would call blindness, so kids with an idea start labels to put out the music they love, and that is the (indie) beginning of a myriad stories we attempt to report dutifully, it is difficult sometimes because there is so much good shit out there, say:

For example Chicagoan outfit Loto Ball Show, about whom we wouldn’t have found out perhaps in a long time if it hadn’t be for a fortunate coincidence on the myspace place, another object of constant derision which has nevertheless been a steady source of goodness.

Loto Ball Show look and sound business, they are the sort of band you would expect to see playing in some dingey and damp basement cellar where people dress in black jack it old school style, you know, get sweaty and dance the mess away, that is the way to go. They make a dark, muscular and intense hick garage blues racket with the relentless gusto of The Bad Seeds fucking Deanna, sharpened by the non-cliched post punk apocalyptic edge one finds in Public Image Ltd. (also exemplified in early-day Liars), sexy horns add an extra bit of epic omph to their clanging and banging onslaught, the outcome sounds awesomely instantaneous in the same excellent way as, for example, the Black Lips or In The Red days Deadly Snakes, now kids, that is a rare thing.

Loto Ball Show- Dead Kiss

This is from their ‘I Can Be Your Eyes’ EP, out in Reversible Records.

We have loved Abe Vigoda for a long time, we first heard them in a wild split with Hot Girls Cool Guys, and then saw them trashing LA in the fantastic 40 bands 80 minutes DVD, since then they have continued changing and evolving from their initial greatness to absolute incandescence, in the way becoming one of the two or three ‘indie’ (see above) bands out there who seriously kill it on every side, as DJ Rick has dutifully documented, we grabbed a copy of their Animal Ghosts 7” at a No Age show (also fucking out there, napper) and this is what we found in it,

Abe Vigoda- Animal Ghosts

Which is, together with El Guincho’s stuff, one of the sweetest things to blow us away for a while, listening to this music makes us happy because we realise that it is not that we are eternal pop-hating obscurity loving geeks, but that good pop stuff is fucking hard to make, and hence to come across, Abe Vigoda have struck gold here most undoubtedly, Animal Ghosts pounces simultaneously joyous, jangly and powerful like Unicorns trapped inside a Liquid Liquid loop, or Animal Collective doing the post-punk splits with Q and not U, it sounds like it was recorded by people jumping up and down and smiling which is coherent with its contagious impact on our winter-afflicted spirit, this tune shines rays of Californian sun on us withered nerds and that’s all we could ask for, thank you Abe Vigoda.

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Post title taken from a song by the mighty Hands on Heads

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Talking about California, if you are in San Francisco on Thursday, go to this:

labels >> Loto Ball Show, abe vigoda, real indie, roadtrip, xxjfg