Everyone knows that _____ was the best year for pop music, when they were 16 (or 14 or 18) and when "______" was on the radio and MTV constantly. It's a scientifically proven fact. And now there's a website, where, thank god, you can relive the best pop music of your lifetime without even having to remember what it was. Simply hit up The Nostalgia Machine and enter a year. The site then loads up the music videos of the Billboard Hot 100 chart from the given 12-month period, so you can bliss out to the sounds of your youth while thinking of Johnny or Jane, your swoonable Junior Prom date, or whoever. We'll warn you that this might get a little addictive, especially since you can go all the way back to 1960. But that's the power of nostalgia for you. And as for the actual true best-ever year in pop music? Why, it's 1997, obviously.
Berkeley duo Street Eaters define themselves as a "truewave/punk" band. What "truewave" means, exactly, we can only infer -- but "Empty Rooms," for which bassist/guitarist John No and drummer Megan March just made their own video, is some seriously ear-exploding, vein-snapping punk rock. The guitars are a deathly rumble; the shared vocals are never less than strained, and the drumming is hyperactive. It's a scuzzy, frantic, fearsome three minutes of song. The accompanying video, out today, sets this sonic bombardment to scenes of the Berkeley shore in the daytime and a dim studio filled with eerie images -- a fitting sort of light/dark binary for a song that employs a stop/start, almost Jekyll/Hyde dynamic. Watch the video for "Empty Rooms" below, stream their entire new album Blood::Muscles::Bones below, and catch Street Eaters Aug. 14 at Hemlock Tavern in a free show with No Babies.
Vancouver punk quartet White Lung released its third LP, Deep Fantasy, last month to what the smart money says will be universal acclaim: It's a 23-minute wallop of stridently in-your-face riot-grrrl paranoia, superficially led by Mish Way's declamatory yawp but actually propelled by a tireless undercurrent of threatening screech and caustic rumble. The whole thing comes together in an irresistibly abrasive but surprisingly tuneful mix, a Molotov cocktail ignited by the shreds of every T-shirt you ever bought at Hot Topic.
