The Strawberry Jam @ Levontin7, Tel Aviv

The Strawberry Jam, a Tel Aviv-based, post-punk band, were performing at the Levontin7, an underground club in Tel Aviv, along with an 8-bit artist from New York. The all-girl trio is influenced by ‘80s noise rock and contemporary indie rock. Dressed in clashing prints and colors mainly from American Apparel, the girls have made it clear they’re not going to follow the trends and the rules.

They started the set with “Cowbell,” which is a punk track influenced by The Wizard of Oz. Moriel, the lead singer, has the rebel attitude of a good girl gone wrong. She starts out by shouting her lyrics “Somewhere over the rainbow/ there’s a place of freedom/ I wanna go there.” When they finish the first song, Moriel declares in Hebrew that her bands makes music to dance to and at the end she will give a heavy-weight champion belt to the best dancer… no matter if he is fat or not!
They followed with “Do You Have A Pen,” that starts out with a fast intro à-la-Sex Pistols, and breaks down into a slower, rhythmic interlude, then back into the punk tempo. The sonic roller coaster made the audience go nuts. Hadass immediately followed with the drum phrases for “Shoes” so they would not loose the momentum of the crowd. The audience was dancing and clapping in a harmonic trance that intensified at Carla’s guitar cue. The gig felt like an underground noise rock gig in a Brooklyn basement from the 1980s. In the middle of the song Moriel screamed “Stop, Stop, Stop… that fucking sucked!” and the crowed went wild as they went on playing the song in a faster, beat up tempo.
The best song of their set was “Cupcakes.” This track has the best commercial potential and could likely be the first single of an Ep. The guitar licks are addicting and the same goes the lyrics. They don't have an Ep out yet, nor are they selling any tracks yet, but check them out at MySpace

Bitter:(super)Sweet

For too long now, Massive Attack single-handedly ruled the trip-hop scene. And true, they blow your mind away, but it was a fairly easy game for them to share their oligopoly with Portishead and “good-but-not-great” Tircky.

But in 2006, Los Angeles Duo Bitter:Sweet rose up to the challenge. Their August release of The Remix Game is the epitome of mind-fucking-blowing! And not only will trip-hop maniacs get into it, but it will also appeal to Radiohead fans, lounge music aficionados and electro fiends. So shake up the Mojitos, boost the bass in your sound system and pop in their new record, you won’t be deceived…

Welcome the 1990s back into the 20th Century

Cookies is a delicious, feel-good summer record. It’s nothing avant-garde or experimental, but it works. Hell it does more than that, it rocks! Sure you might have heard this type of music a lot, but that’s why it’s called a music genre. But this is more than a simple genre plagiarism, it’s dancing rock, with a glam-trash twist.

From the lipstick graffitied album cover to Jackie McKeown exhaling “my cult status keeps me fucking your wife,” the Scottish newbies take you on a thrill back to the past decade of sex, drugs and total decadence. Let’s face it, who’s ever had enough?

Send it back to the Editors!

What drugs the editors were on during the making of their new album An End Has A Start, I don't want to know, but I can tell they were cheap. This is the only reasonable conclusion I can take after having put myself through
their new record three times already!

It's such a poor follow up to The Back Room, I don't even understand how anyone let them release this! Well maybe I'm being a bit harsh because I had such a high expectation of them. Up until now, there was no song of theirs that really bothered me quite as much as most of the songs on this album. It sounds heavily "popified", entirely soulless and cruelly commercialized. Come on chaps, you can do better than this!

Interpol, All Fired Up!

Interpol has done it again...Bigger and better! Their new album, Our Love To Admire, is this summer's masterpiece! They succeeded in doing it all: The New York quartet brought some great new stuff to the table, powerful beats, topped by some resonating lyrics, but most of all, they did it all in their style. It just works perfectly with our expectations of it (which could have just as easily ripped them apart since some of us were waiting for this record since January!).
Each song is unique and great in a different way than the previous one. "Pioneers To The Falls" is mixed like a labyrinth; you don't know where it's going to take you next but you like the variables! They take you from Fogarino's intense drum track to Paul Bank's haunting solo and back again and you're just grateful to be along for the ride. And "All Fired Up" is a direct, in-your-face kind of track that doesn't play around with you and just gives it to you straight. That's what's so great about it. They make you expect things and right when you think you know where you're going, it's leading somewhere else.
"The Lighthouse" is just the cherry on the cake. It's the most beautiful thing ever. When I went through the tracks in the beginning, I simply skipped it. The build-up isn't satisfying compared to the rest of the tracks. But when you give the whole song a chance, not only will you come to love the song because of the transition in the middle of the song, but when you go back to it, you'll actually enjoy the build-up knowing what's coming next! Not to mention the lyrics are some of the most beautiful I've heard since the Postal Service! " I raised a storm in the Nile/ What do the waves have to say now?/ I let the waves have their way now." The only change I could possibly make to this record would be the cover of the album, which doesn't really fit with all the tracks on this record.

Icky Try

The White Stripes' long overdue record was a bit of a dissappointment. The lead hit, Icky Thump was the rage of bloggers and music reporters alike, but when it came down to it, it fell a bit short. Yeah it's fucking great in a hard rocking way, but if you really listen to the song, it doesn't sonically add up! Effect and Cause was a nice little moral they tried to slip in there, but it wasn't anything we haven't seen in the first album and Rag and Bone was a blast from the past... Van Halen's Hot for Teacher style! The best track on the record by far was Conquest. They picked their brain a bit farther for this one... and it shows!

Victor Bravo @ Club Midway

This local band really gave it all they had. “Victor Bravo,” an indie post-punk rock trio with a powerful drummer a female bassist made the Midway their own last night.
The band’s self-produced, self-released Album contains 4 low sound quality songs with a potential to go farther than the meager audience that cheered to their amazing stage presence.
The best song, “Where are you, you Motherfucker?” really came through as Collin, the lead vocalist was bouncing his eyes from left to right as if he were really looking for “the motherfucker.” This is when it dawned on me: these guys aren’t just your average local-band-trying-to-make-it-big-without-any-real-talent, they are performers who create the kind of atmosphere you might like to find yourself in after a long straining week.