The massive hype about Girl Talk just flat out baffles me. When I saw him at the Spin holiday party a few months ago, his act consisted of dressing like he was about to be photographed by the Cobrasnake, hitting ‚”play” on his iTunes, and spitting glitter at the audience while hopping around. People have since pointed out to me that he actually ‚”mixes,” or something, but really, it’s mostly just a cult of personality and pure spectacle.
If Girl Talk is all hype and no substance, Parts and Labor are total professionals with no pretension. Anchored by the monster drumming skills of Chris Weingarten, Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw layer walls of distorted sound upon wailing vocals, resulting in furious, manic noise. The press loved on their last record, the brilliant, paranoia-driven ‚”Stay Afraid”, and the word on the street is that their upcoming album, ‚”Mapmaker” will be even better.
Parts and Labor mp3s: http://www.partsandlabor.net/av.html
Girl Talk mp3s: http://www.myspace.com/girltalkmusic
Studio B is at 259 Banker St in Greenpoint. Doors are at 9pm, Parts and Labor are at 11pm, and Girl Talk is on at midnight. Cover is $15.
-Cortney Harding

We’re lukewarm on the new Shins record, Wincing The Night Away. We like it, but it just doesn’t compare to Oh, Inverted World or Chutes Too Narrow. On the other hand, the tracks on this Bluegrass Tribute to the Shins are blowing us away. Care of [Underrated Blog]
The Shins Bluegrass Tribute – Know Your Onion!
The Shins Bluegrass Tribute – Kissing The Lipless
On an unrelated note, Aries Spears is the shiznit:

We love you M.I.A.

And given journalistic trainwrecks like Judith Miller, Arthur Sulzberger’s apathy shows: [From haaretz via Gawker]

Arthur Sulzberger – Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?
“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care, either,” he says. He’s looking at how best to manage the transition from print to Internet.
[...]
The New York Times is on a journey, Sulzberger says, and its end will be the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will be the end of the transition. It’s a long journey, and there will be bumps in the road, says the man at the driving wheel: but he doesn’t see a black void ahead.

Alice Lee’s sweet little EP, ‚”The Art of Forgetting,” is totally the cure for burnout-induced cynicism. She has a lovely, airy voice that she layers over mellow beats that somehow never descend into the annoying techno realm. She’s doing the Dido thing, only without all the big slick production, and the results are sweet and sincere. She also has a cute, effusive website that includes a diary she’s been keeping for the past five years, with random musings on music, politics, and life as a Brooklyn artist.
Mp3s at: http://www.myspace.com/justalice
Blog at: http://alicelee.com
Alice plays tonight at Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer Street. She’ll be on at 11pm. Admission is free.
-Cortney Harding

A Non-Review by J. Stefan-Cole

Sigrid Nunez’s fifth novel, The Last of Her Kind, reissued 2007, Picador, is the story of two women colliding in the culture wars of the nineteen sixties and seventies. George-short for Georgette-is a Barnard freshman in 1968, the year of the Tet offensive that unraveled LBJ’s Vietnam War, and saw Martin Luther King assassinated in April, followed by Robert Kennedy in June. Throw in pot, acid, hippies, race riots and the feminist movement and you have the cauldron George steps into when she arrives at New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. Five minutes later she is robbed by a guy who offered to help. Then she meets her roommate.
Dooley Drayton, known as Ann, is a rich kid from Connecticut who’d asked to be paired in the dorm with a person of color, but got George, white-trash breakout from upstate New York, instead. The Dooleys had been Southern slave owners. Ann dropped her given name to atone, longing to prostrate herself before the underprivileged. She assumes George comes pre-packaged with outrage. She’s wrong, and never figures out there are no necessary heroics to being poor or black or female.
Ann mercilessly berates her parents for the crimes of being moneyed and oblivious. In a deliciously awkward scene, Ann drags George to a posh restaurant she would never dream of entering on her own. There, a wide-eyed and hungry George meets the Drayton parents. After tossing a handful of verbal grenades at Mom and Dad, Ann refuses to eat, which precludes George from eating. Livid, Ann drags George back outside, only to leave her on the sidewalk confused as to what just happened. George’s mother, abandoned by George’s father, with three kids to feed on a school cafeteria worker’s pay, is hellish. Mrs. Drayton is benign royalty by comparison. The contrast eludes Ann, unacquainted as she is with complex emotional textures and firsthand hardship.

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Tonight marks the beginning of Katie Eastburn’s month-long Monday night residency at Monkeytown. Eastburn is best known as the lead singer of the psychedelic indie rock outfit Young People, and her voice has been compared to everyone from Bjork to Cat Power. She’ll also have super secret special guests joining her for each performance, and will even try to learn requested cover songs.
Mp3s: http://www.myspace.com/flockingassociates
Monday, February 5, 12, 19, 26
Admission: Free, $10 minimum
Showtime: 9pm
Reservations are recommended
Monkeytown is at 58 N. 3rd St
-Cortney Harding

Mike Wexler does the standard freak folk/ psychfolk thing, but what really sets him apart from everyone else in the scene is his amazing finger picking guitar work. His voice is lovely, in the way that Joanna Newsom and Tom Waits’ voices are lovely; if you dig it, you’ll be in heaven, and if you don’t, it’ll sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. He’s been MIA recently, but is returning with several shows in February and March. If you like M. Ward and Doveman, Wexler is definitely worth checking out.
The show is tonight at Uncle Paulies, 8pm, $8, with MV & EE with the Bummer Road, Stars Like Fleas, and Theo Angell. Directions at http://myspace.com/unclepauliesnyc.
Mp3s: http://www.ierecs.com/mike_wexler/
-Cortney Harding

by Dave Thomas

Factory Girl
By the looks of things, February is going to be a great month to catch up on new episodes of Lost, Heroes and 24.
February 2
THE MESSENGERS
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Kind of like The Grudge except, um…okay, it pretty much looks like The Grudge.
WILL IT SUCK?
Directed by the guys who did The Eye, but there’s no evidence that that’s going to help. But, hey, Cancer Man’s up in here.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Will be wiped out by Hannibal the following week. $16mil.
————————————-
BECAUSE I SAID SO
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
The synopsis says it’s about trying to set up Mandy Moore’s character with a beau, but the trailer makes it look like it’s all about setting up the mom (Diane Keaton) with that guy from 7th Heaven.

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