Bollocker’s Neighborhood

ELIZABETH & THE CATAPULT
elizabethandthecatapult.com ♥ myspace.com

The last time we mentioned Elizabeth and the Catapult, the song "Race You", went straight to the top ten on The Hype Machine. And it's easy to see why, the song is such a fun and cute pop song.

This Christmas song, "Christmas with the Jews", is also fun and cute (and not to mention quite short). But what you're thinking when you're listening to this song, is "er, aren't you forgetting Hanukkah?"

Maybe you can ask them if you see them live:

01/28/10 The Barn Clinton, New York
02/05/10 World Cafe Live Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
02/06/10 8x10 Baltimore, Maryland

THE JOY FORMIDABLE
myspace.com ♥ twitter.com

When I first heard of The Joy Formidable last year, I was impressed. I said I saw "lot of potential" in this band. Based on the free Christmas song, "My Beerdrunk Soul is Sadder than a Hundred Dead Christmas Trees" (available at musicglue.com), I'm still loving the vocals by Ritzy.

Maybe there was a problem with my download, but the MP3 track is 4:56, where the last 30 seconds of the song is complete and utterly garbage... it sounds like it was encoded in error and not part of the song. I've edited out the crap part for you.

The tour information they sent me is as follows:

January 2010.
Fri 8 USA New York Terminal 5 w/Passion Pit.
Sat 9 USA New York Terminal 5 w/Passion Pit.
Mon 11 USA New York Union Hall.
Tue 12 USA New York Pianos.

February 2010.
Sun 21 Norway Oslo John Dee w/The Temper Trap.
Mon 22 Denmark Copenhagen Vega w/The Temper Trap.
Tue 23 Denmark Copenhagen Vega w/The Temper Trap.
Wed 24 Sweden Stockholm Debaser Slussen w/The Temper Trap.
Fri 26 Germany Hamburg Molotow w/The Temper Trap.
Sat 27 Germany Berlin Postbahnhof w/The Temper Trap.
Sun 28 Germany Cologne Gloria w/The Temper Trap.

March 2010.
Tue 2 Germany Munich Atomic Café w/The Temper Trap.
Wed 3 Germany Frankfurt Nachtelben w/ The Temper Trap.

THE MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA
themanchesterorchestra.com ♥ myspace.com

We're on Day 10 of the 12 Days of Christmas, so hurry on over if you're a fan of the Manchester Orchestra. Each of these songs are acoustic live versions of their song. My only complaint is that you have to listen to these songs on the computer - so if you've got 30 minutes to spare, sit and listen away.

My favorite track is "One Hundred Dollar", you can simply hear the anger as singer Andy Hull asks to borrow $100. While the song is short and doesn't offer much explanation, you, as the audience makes up your own background to the song. Anyway, the song is from their latest album, Mean Everything to Nothing, they'll probably be playing loads of their new songs on tour:

01/29/10 Salt Palace Convention Center^{^} Salt Lake City, Utah
01/30/10 The Fillmore^{^} Denver, Colorado
01/31/10 The Black Sheep* Colorado Springs, Colorado
02/02/10 The Marquee* Tulsa, Oklahoma
02/03/10 Juanita’s Cantina Ballroom* Little Rock, Arkansas
02/04/10 New Daisy Theatre* Memphis, Tennessee

^ with Brand New
* with Harrison Hudson

SIA
siamusic.net ♥ myspace.com

Finally, we have Sia. This actually has nothing to do with Christmas, unless you count getting a new music video as a holiday gift. But just talking about the video for "You've Changed" isn't enough to warrant its own article, so I thought I might as well stuck her here.

Sia has always seem to me to be this child trapped in a grown-up's body. The latest video is wonderful, it features this weird stop-motion, "dress up" video-gamey feel to it. I don't know who's idea it was, I'll bet it's a combination of Sia's child-mind and director Dennis Liu of @radical.media, but it came together pretty great.

Be sure to watch the high-resolution video of it (you'll need it to read the song lyrics scrolling at the bottom).

Normally, the duck keeps its penis inside-out within a sac in its body. When the time for mating arrives, the penis explodes outwards to a fully-erect 20cm, around a quarter of the animal's total body length. The whole process takes just a third of a second, and Brennan captures it all on high-speed camera. This isn't just bizarre voyeurism. Duck penises are a wonderful example of the strange things that happens when sexual conflict shapes the evolution of animal bodies.

Full article here - and it really is worth the read. Fascinating stuff to learn whilst eating toast and marmite!

Manchester was spot on, Oz was pretty neat but Cheryl Crow - that was fantastic!

Straitjacket Escape ♥ photo by Dave

Indie pop isn’t usually described as epic. Adorable, precious, and cloyingly cute? Yes. But epic? Not so much. Fanfarlo seems to be the exception, and they proved this point on Friday night, when they had a man suspended upside down from the rafters and escape from a straitjacket. This happened within the first five minutes of the show, during the orchestral behemoth that is “The Walls are Coming Down.” It was like a Bruce Willis movie, but with less explosions and more glockenspiel.

The straitjacket incident was obviously the most epic moment of the night, but the theatrics didn’t end there. There was interpretive dancing, rogue boomerangs, and a pretty intimidating box accordion. Throw in a picturesque stage setting and a watering can attached to the drum kit, and it wasn’t an average Webster Hall show. The band managed to take a spacious, relatively normal venue and shift the atmosphere to match that of the album: warm, enthusiastic, and frenzied.

Frontman, Simon Balthazar, led the charge in a bowtie and further proved my belief that Swedes are musical messiahs when it comes to penning a good pop song. Though he was the lead singer, the audience seemed to focus on the band as a whole as they constantly exchanged instruments and shared singing duties. The arsenal of instruments that night included a banjo, mandolin, violin, clarinet, and a brightly colored melodica – the required instrument for every chamber pop band out there. True, they occasionally succumbed to a few clichés (see: the rampart Arcade Fire comparisons), but their sincerity shone through. When you take away the fanfare, there’s still a pulse to their music that drives it past most conventions. Hence the epic-ness.

With only one album, they had a limited supply of songs to play. My personal favorite, “I’m a Pilot,” drew from the band’s most appealing quality: their infectious camaraderie. This was most apparent during the encore, when they had run out of songs to sing, so they resorted to the obligatory cover, Low’s “Just Like Christmas,” featuring opening band, Freelance Whales. Anything holiday-related is instantly a cheese-fest, but throw in a cavalcade of instruments and a dozen earnest musicians and it becomes easy to suspend any cynicism.

(I really wanted to end this review by writing, “...and by the end of the night, you could say that the entire audience had shed an emotional straitjacket – and put on a fringed vest of love.” But I won’t. Swearsies.)

Photos by Dave: 

And, thanks to Pinfreak, I have put together a playlist of the entire film. I do love YouTube!

Sanctuary - Rubbish, really. But I finished it anyway, cos it was not badly written. Just poorly plotted with mediocre characterization that somehow left me still wanting to know how it all ended. I suppose that really makes it a successful book.

Review from eZine: (cos I am feeling lazy today)

The story line was very well done, and the characters were interesting, although fairly predictable. I believe Raymond tries to have the same writing style as Dan Brown, but in my humble opinion, he doesn't do as good a job as Dan.

The worst thing about The Sanctuary is that it takes a long, long time to get to the point. There are an inordinate amount of chase scenes and shoot-outs, which ruined it for me a little bit. I don't mind a bit of violence, but when one man can out shoot 6, I find it a tad ridiculous. When they can out shoot that many people more than once, it becomes even more ridiculous.

When I first started reading the book, I thought that it was going to be just another book about chasing a mysterious elic of unusual, Godlike power. While in some sense, that is what this book is about, it is deeper than that.

If you like historical fiction that's jam packed with car chases, diabolical villains, shoot-outs and action, then you can do worse than buying The Sanctuary

Just a Geek - Just buy it and read it. You will thank me. Whether you are a Star Trek fan, even of the sub-genre Let's all hate on Wesley ilk, or like insights into another person's life, you will love this. I will buy you a drink if you don't!  I am hoping for an e-reader for Christmas, so I can get more of his writings on pdf.


Strange Angels and Betrayals - I enjoyed Angels more than Betrayals initially. Dru came across as a stronger female character in the first book, though by the end of Betrayals she was once more kick-ass wild. Love her. Waiting impatiently for more in the series.

From Powell's Books:

Angels:  Dru has always known about the poltergeists, vampires and werwulfen that inhabit the Real World since her father has traveled the country battling them, often with Dru's help. But when he is killed after they move to the Dakotas - and is sent back as a zombie to kill her - Dru digs deeper into her history, trying to find out who murdered her mother and who is after her.   Graves, an orphan, joins up with her, and Dru is able to get some answers from Christophe, a djamphir (part human, part vampire).

Betrayals:   Poor Dru Anderson. Her parents are long gone, her best friend is a werewolf, and she has just learned that the blood flowing through her veins is not entirely human. (So what else is new?)

Now Dru is stuck at a secret New England Schola for other teens like her, and there's a big problem she is the only girl in the place. A school full of cute boys wouldn't be so bad, but Dru's killer instinct says that one of them wants her dead. And with all eyes on her, discovering a traitor within the Order could mean a lot more than social suicide. . .

Can Dru survive long enough to find out who has betrayed her trust and maybe even her heart?

That's Another Story - Autobiography of a working class girl who made it as one of the best actresses of my generation. Well written, funny and intimate.

From Powell's Books:   

Julie Walters has been delighting audiences on screen and on stage for more than 25 years, and has been described as Britain's most popular actress and comedienne. Now she tells us her own story, in her own words.

She was born in 1950s Birmingham, daughter of an austere Irish Catholic mother, and was sent to school in a convent. She wanted to be an actress from a young age, but to appease her mother she first went into nursing--that didn't last for long, and she soon joined Liverpool's Everyman Theatre. West End success followed, and she quickly replicated her success on film, earning an Academy Award nomination for her role in Educating Rita. Julie's collaborations with her close friend Victoria Wood have given audiences many unforgettable characters, and she's recently charmed a new generation of fans playing Mrs. Weasley in the Harry Potter films, alongside Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia , co-starring with Helen Mirren in Calendar Girls, and co-starring in Billy Elliot.

A natural writer with an instinctive sense of timing, Julie's memoir is warm, moving, painfully felt, fiercely intelligent--and totally entertaining.

Freak the Mighty  - The story of Kicker and Freak, and their summer together. One of the best books I have read this year.

The Brief but Excellent Synopsis from Powell's Books: