Almost Famous
25 April 2008Jordan called me at 8:30 this morning, something he has never done in our 13? 14? years of being friends. “What happened?” I asked immediately, convinced it was his parents or my parents or his sister. It wasn’t, though– it was my brother.
“Peej’s band just got Best New Music on pitchfork!”
Okay, I listen to Kelly Clarkson, and even I know what a big deal this is. My musical tastes right now could be described as ranging from George Michael to the Guys & Dolls soundtrack, but I still know enough to get excited when pitchfork compares my brother to the Boss. I called our other brother even though it was before 9 am.
“Did I wake you up?”
“No, I’m at the onion festival in Georgia,” he said sleepily.
“Like, the newspaper? or like, the food?” I asked. “The food,” he confirmed. He’s doing an airshow today for all you lucky georgia onion enthusiasts.
And then I read him the entire review, pausing every few sentences so that we could laugh maniacally or yell “OH, MY GOD!” This was after I’d gotten peej’s voicemail and left him a “patrickitscristin– go check pitchfork!” voicemail. “Peej is still sleeping, he didn’t answer,” I told Jordan sadly afterwards. “Maybe he just went to bed,” Jordan guessed. Rock. Star.
From Pitchfork: So far Titus’s rowdy live shows have generated the most buzz around the group; check your local listings, they’re probably playing in a friend’s tool shed near you. Those small venue acoustics translate wonderfully on the band’s debut, its muffled mixing reminiscent of listening to a bar band from the men’s room. Yet this inebriated aesthetic only intensifies the literary streak running through Stickles’ easily excitable veins. A brusque “fuck you!” cues the band on Pogues-like opener “Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ”, but once the rubble clears it’s a villainous quote from Titus Andronicus’s Aaron the Moor that most elegantly expresses Stickles’ bile: “I have done a thousand dreadful things/ …And nothing grieves me heartily indeed/ But that I cannot do ten thousand more.” As if the dreary title and playful, mock-optimistic guitar riffs of “No Future Part II: The Day After No Future” aren’t enough to wrench your soul, the song ends with the closing passage from Albert Camus’ The Stranger, in which the narrator wishes to be jeered by a large crowd on the day of his execution.
From Insound: The blogs are talking, and the comparisons to The Kinks, The Pogues, Bruce Springsteen, and even Arcade Fire are all getting thrown around. What you hear is three years in the making through over 18 different band members and touring by playing basements in North Carolina or a guy’s living room in suburban Illinois or a college in New Jersey. They will play anywhere and they will blow you away no matter where it is, or whether its 12 or 1200 people. That’s a good sign of character in my book, and a sign that this band may be the one!
2 Responses to “Almost Famous”
April 25th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Yay!!!! And you can say you knew him when…
April 28th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Ok, now I wanna hear this album. But tell him not to flame out on his follow-up album like 80% of the bands that get Best New Music on their debut.