Quick hits

Apologies for the sporadic posting lately; given the time of year, there's not a lot of time to listen to albums as fully as I'd like. As such, rather than given inadequate attention to albums that deserve a lot more than just a cursory glance, here are the standout tracks from a couple albums that I don't feel merit much more than a few sentences.



If the picture above doesn't tell you that the Austin James Band really want you to think they're wacky, then maybe the fact they called their EP Goes To Austin James Land should do it. And if that doesn't...just trust me on this one. In any case, it all makes it difficult to take the band seriously. It's not impossible, of course -- the vocal harmonies here, particularly on "Blue, are really, really impressive, and there's no way a band who aren't serious about what they're doing would put in the work necessary to sound that nice. If the band wants to be noticed for that, though, they'll have to tone down the "wackiness".



LoveLikeFire may call California home, but you'd have a hard time guessing that from listening to Bed of Gold. Frontwoman Ann Yu affects a fairly strong English accent when she sings, and musically it's no surprise the band lists a bunch of British artists as influences on their Myspace. They're not exactly bad at the mimicry -- and on "Inner Space" they're actually kind of good -- but it'd be nice if they made some effort to sound a little more original.



Lastly, I'm not sure how Various Chimeras wound up in my mailbox, given that the artist in question, Shinjuku Zulu, hails from Vanuatu. Further, the odds that anyone on this side of the Pacific will stumble across the band are slim, particularly when you consider that nearly every track on the album is generic dance music. I will say, though, that "Shanghai Masai" is a really fun dance song, throwing together stuttering beats, questionable rapping, Gwen Stefani-ish yodelling, and a variety of other qualities that don't seem to reappear anywhere else on the album. It's not reflective at all of Various Chimeras, but it's still worth hearing.