Donde Esta La Playa

Walking down the street the other day, headed back to work, listening to the new Walkmen album. Its pretty similar to their first album in a lot of ways: cold, delayed guitar and keyboards that sound miles away from the rest of the band, Hamilton Leithauser's crooning vocals (you can imagine that he probably has his eyes shut the entire time he's in the booth), booming, slightly overdriven drums. Their albums do an incredible job of creating a very tangible space for the Walkmen to inhabit.

I also realized that The Walkmen are like the older, more aloof brother to Vampire Weekend. They moved to New York City too young, became jaded and overly self-aware, dated dark-haired girls they met through friends, worked 10 different jobs in 2 years time. Vampire Weekend, the younger brother, got the college fund, spent spring break in San Francisco, ultimately chose an Ivy League school, not yet married but was close several times, interning at a very prestigious investment firm, has 1 cat (a tabby), doesn't want kids. Listen to them back to back, you'll hear it.

Donde Esta La Playa - The Walkmen

Boston - Vampire Weekend

Best license plate in VA

I Wanna Party

I've been meaning to post about this band, 28 Degrees Taurus, for some time as they were nice enough to send me their most recent disc, "How Do You Like Your Love?" The album is like a drunk, sexy dream that verges on becoming a night terror. I think I see it that way because I have these recurring dreams where I feel extremely drunk and everything is way too dark. There's this sensation of being out of control and attempting to push even that level of craziness to the hilt. 28 Degrees Taurus is kind of like that but sexier and very much in control. The guitars delay out into the stratosphere but their tight rhythm section grounds everything, allowing Karina and Jinsen's vocals to float and wither somewhere in the middle.

Listen and buy.

WANT

NOW. K? Thx. Check out all of String Republic's stuff here.

Scanner Camera

Found an article on Makezine that seemed intriguing: turn a typical flatbed scanner into a medium format digital camera. You can read the article here. The Cliff's Notes version: you attach a 7"x7" square box to your scanner and put a magnifying glass at the end. When you hit scan, you take a pretty wacky looking picture. Because of the nature of the scanning process, any movement becomes distorted. Pictures of the camera and the fun it produces:

TRAINING WAY FTW!

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YES WE WON THE ATOM SHOWDOWN! WHY SO SERIOUS!!! BURN BABY BURN!!! ATTICA!!!!!

08.10.08 - 1:50am

I’m sitting out on my new, pseudo-balcony. It’s an 8x6 slab of rooftop with a door attached. Its last call at the local bars that populate this stretch of Main Street and young, drunk kids are funneling out. I notice this couple that is in the middle of a typical spat; impossible to tell the details but its certainly a familiar scenario. The girl has planted herself on the stoop of a stranger’s house and the man, a fellow named Wes, is pacing back and forth, unable to make a firm decision on leaving this girl or hearing her out. He leans against another stranger’s car for a few moments as she yells at him. I still can’t tell what this argument is about. Eventually, the guy storms off amid the cries of his girl: “WES! WEEEESSS! YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE ME HERE??!??” In fact, it appears as if he is doing just that. Wes disappears from my view as the girl begins searching her cell phone for anyone she can call. Throughout this entire time, she has remained in the pitch black shade of a tall tree but I can tell she is slightly overweight and unattractive. There’s something in the way that she speaks that makes these traits unmistakable. After a couple of minutes of angry dialing, a rickshaw pulls up on the street, Wes seated in the back. He signals her with a hand motion that says, “Get in this wacky little rickshaw and come with me.”
She yells at him, “Who are you?” She says it like she really doesn’t know who he is but she’s actually just angry and hurt. She screams again, “Who are you??!?”
At this point, Wes nudges the pilot of the rickshaw and he yells, “Andy!” This is clearly not what the girl was looking for.
“No, who are you??!?” she screams. Wes just signals for her to come to him. Its really sad and gross because there was never any doubt that she would come, even to me, a novice at this relationship that these two share. Predictably, she trots over in a bizarre dress and heels, and jumps in the back of the rickshaw next to Wes. She even puts her arm around him before quickly removing it from his shoulder. The two ride off, tethered to the back of Andy’s bike. I really feel the worst for Andy, because he’s going to hear horrible, ridiculous things tonight. I guess that could be fun but, for a guy pulling a rickshaw at last call, it sounds just awful.