amanda woodward

if you ever find yrself cooking a breakfast of slightly crispy cubed hash-browns and cheesy scrambled eggs with diced kielbasa, onions, and green peppers at noon-thirty on a wednesday, remember yr not alone. if you ever find yrself craving such a meal, remember state meats on state road in parma, ohio for all yr slavic culinary necessities. and don't forget the loaf of rye, chum.

i've just slammed a mug of ginger herbal tea and topped off venae cavae with a delicious treat of grey-green that sidles up sweetly on you like a silver-bearded forest-sage wizard. the day was just peeled like an unwashed orange about fifteen minutes ago and all traces of an inked and stained sky have been swept into a far northern corner. my windows are scaled with white blinds, cutting slits in a soft, quivering sunshaft like a grater shaving rinds. amanda woodward is working perfectly.

let's get me some more tea for this, son. orange herbal sounds appropriate.

from the humid french commune of caen come amanda woodward with hardcore in hand. some would call their music screamo (as one might say of you&i or kodan armada, perhaps), but i see it more as frenchy hardcore. not french. frenchy. all generalizations, stereotypes, and prejudices present, prominent, and paraded, amanda woodward play hardcore like french people. or here's a slightly less depricating manner of stating it: if i requested that my good pal mookie ninjak (man-of-intrigue/maker of frenchy films/musical compatriot) whip up a debord-esque cinematic dime-piece, amanda woodward's music would appear in the movie. because i said so. or if a band had to be french and play hardcore in a movie the music would sound like amanda woodward. there.

gerome's cries sound-out from a distance almost, across a channel, behind the drums, with fervent romantic grit and a bit of spit-flecked dirt. what i hear are beefy bass lines dancing, bouncing alongside angular, aromatic chords--a stinging sweetness that leaves bitemarks. shimmering cymbals sound like someone splashing around in a sugary stream of oiled melodies, breaking the surface of drugged harmonics to reveal bright, ghostly guitar tones swimming fluidly at the unpredictable pace of a human heart.

like biting into an unwashed orange.

quite like it.

i've listened to all that i have by amanda woodward (which i believe is everything) repeatedly, uninterrupted for most of today. for hours, everything else fails to satiate. it sticks in yr ears like pulp on yr tongue. it coats yr cheeks with a sour taste that keeps you from being able to enjoy anything else. and lord knows i like my sour tastes. they have a couple small releases, a full-length that i'd say is the masterpiece of the bunch, a cd that compiles some older or more elusive tracks, and supposedly another LP on the way at long last. a smattering of songs appears below.

additionally, i have listened to cursed at last. i knew of their existence but shied away. i'm a punk guy, i'm a metal guy, yes, but i'm only very selectively a hardcore guy. however, cursed are good at what they do. real. [sic]. good. it's the way straight-forward hardcore should be done. i think they might double-track the bass on certain songs. listen. (sick).

i've been considering putting up more songs by bands that remind me of amanda woodward but i truly believe that i have none. i imagine i could read some reviews and see what dudes have to say about it, but i'd rather sit here and convince myself that all other bands that share amanda woodward's sound are unappetizing and painfully mediocre.

got it! i got it! jr ewing! maybe a bit of their stuff? a little hot cross even? i think i sense some similarities here. (the interplay of the two guitars reminds me a little of the first pretty girls make graves album too, i suppose.) it seems i jumped the gun. good. i'm excited. get excited. amped. turn it up.

scare yr neighbors.