I wanted a junction, and often, there was one.

I have become excited! And do you want to know why?!? Because I have fallen in love with a new band as of today. This is always done on my part with great passion and delight and I have to rush out and tell everyone all about the new band and then make the new band an intergral part of my day to day life. Kind of like dating, except the new band hopefully won't turn out to be a drunk who has a girlfriend in another city that comes to light only after you've "dumped" him- TWICE! Nor will the new band announce with certainity, "I don't care for bread" in front of all your friends, such that they mock you with a glee that indicates this idiotic turn of phrase is certain to be chiseled onto your tombstone! And the new band will never, EVER tell a lame-ass joke about Tarzan "swinging both ways" to your Dad and brother while he's waiting to pick you up for a dinner that YOU end up paying for because he's a bit low on cash when the bill gets dropped off! The New Band, you're the dreamiest!



Here, then, is the new band. They are called The Blow. And the song that has broken my bitter, brittle little heart is called True Affection. You can download it for free at iTunes- it's the single of the week right now. I say go out and get the album, because it's all so lovely and fun and enticing and fresh.


And if my drool-saturated description isn't enough for you, read this excerpt from the fantastic review of The Blow's album Paper Television from Coke Machine Glow's Mark Abraham (worth reading the whole thing, very well written):


Lily Allen’s cute blog pop might have been neat for about five seconds, Regina Spektor might be trying to reinvent herself as a Tori Amos for the khaki set, Justin Timberlake might have dumbed down his squeaky-clean pop to a squeaky-clean message wrapped in boring retreads, the Junior Boys might put all the right pieces in all the right places, Kelis might still be bossy, a Nelly Furtado single might be spinning somewhere right this second, but fuck ‘em all -- this is my pop album of the year. And I might as well give fair warning, because, like with Taiga, Paper Televsion is the kind of album that forces me to take the hyperbulle by the horns. Let’s examine why:

Mark likes post-punk +
Mark likes house and techno +
Mark likes glitchy experimental music +
Mark likes well-developed and executed politics +
Mark likes an album with more than three or four (or two) good songs =
Mark likes whatever the hell it is the Blow is cross-hatching together with the finest nub size available.

Consider: how often do you actually get to hear something that rocks a punk aesthetic with a Prince attitude on a bedroom budget? And then, on top of that, delivers a coherent and specific political message without being polemical? Khaela Maricich and new bandmate and electronics wizard Jona Bechtolt won’t receive any plaudits for “ornate” orchestration, but the tracks here are still busier than Beyoncé’s bedroom hysterics and do something individually and collectively that I haven’t heard pop dance tracks do with conviction in a while (sorry, “Maneater”): say it with some fucking grit.