I Heart Myspace, Part 2

I think one of the best things about the whole Myspace thing, at least w/regards to bands & music, is that it brings me back to the experience of actively looking for new music that knocks me on my ass. When I was a kid I’d scour tape bins for that ultra-obscure band (mostly cheesy metal, mind you, ’cause that was my passion those days) that I’d never heard but who just might change my young musical life.

It was frustrating a lot of the time, esp. given that this was pre-Internet, pre-order-anything-online, and pre-iPod, but I stumbled across a number of bands that way that I probably never would’ve bothered with otherwise, like Queensryche, Anthrax, or Suicidal Tendencies. Any time I found something that was actually good, it felt like I’d just lifted up a manhole cover in the street to discover pirate gold beneath. It was a great feeling.

The past several years, though, I’ve spent my time just kinda relying on whatever comes my way, not actually bothering to put any effort into the music search. Sure, I’ll read CMJ and the handful of blogs I check on a quasi-regular basis, but even then the gems (Peter and the Wolf, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings) are few and far-between.

Enter Myspace. Now I can spend endless hours blipping from one profile to another, sampling band after band after band that I (and, most likely, you) have never heard of. This is especially cool when it comes to local folks, since odds are their music’s not available on Amazon (yet, anyway), and yours truly doesn’t get out of the house much lately.

At any rate, here’re the latest extremely cool local bands I’ve tripped over while following some link or another in the Great Web of Myspace Friends:

• The Factory Party: Okay, so I wondered at first how these guys could’ve just popped up out of nowhere like that without me hearing about ’em before now. Except that, uh, it seems they didn’t — The Factory Party’s the new name for Thieves Like Us, a band I’ve been curious about for quite a while now. With new name in hand, the band’s apparently readying an actual EP, and going by the songs they’ve got on their profile, it’s gonna be great — droney, chiming, dance-friendly indie-rock with a nice Silver Scooter feel to it. Looking forward to the EP, y’all…
• Glasnost: Honestly, I’m not that big a fan of the whole nu-New Wave schtick — I missed out on it the first time around, for the most part, so it doesn’t have the nostalgia hold on me, and while there are a handful of folks out there who do it well, there are far, far more who just plain suck and yet keep on putting out albums. Locals Glasnost (which includes members of Das Automatik & DJ Cuba Gooding Jr.), happily, are in the former category, in my book — they do the disaffected, jaded pose as well as anybody, the vocals come off like Morrissey at his best, and they layer some nice beats & synths that sound menacing and melodic at the same time. A good damn time.
• Rustler: Oof. I’d heard these guys were good, metal in the best possible way, but I didn’t expect the rumors to be all that accurate, y’know? Well, that shows what I know. Full-on instrumental metal with a weird backwoods-Texas twinge to it; lots of intricate basslines, alternately nimble and heavy guitars, and stomping, thundering drums. Like Mastodon without the D&D imagery.

• The Loving Ones: Damn…there’re only two songs up on these folks’ Myspace profile, which is somewhat frustrating when it’s actually good, y’know? On the vocal track of the two, I can’t claim to get what the heck vocalist/guitarist/mini-viola (what?) player Sally is singing about, but I like the washes of noisy melody and the rhythms behind it — it reminds me of a less-funky Morcheeba, weirdly enough (and I mean that in a good way). The other track is all rhythms and spacey noise, a slow-building Explosions in the Sky-esque bit of cinematic rock, and it’s quite promising for that, as well.

Enjoy…