BUY: $10 - CD | $12 - LP

It was a pleasant surprise stumbling across this artist. I was running around YouTube, looking for music video directors when I found Loney, Dear’s video for their track “Saturday Waits”. It consisted of dogs doing things with human hands, reminiscent of the Swedish Chef skits on the old Muppet show (not really, but my brain made the association). Creepy! Since then I’ve been hooked. Their delicately crafted songs and jangly hooks bring no other artist to mind when trying to compare them. All I can really say is that they’re Swedish (like the Chef) and the song below will be caught in your head for at least a few weeks. It’s off of their new album, Dear John [polyvinyl], in stores January 27th, 2009.

Loney, Dear - Airport Surroundings

Sleep Station - shown here touring America’s shadier venues since the late 1800’s

If you’re like me, you probably have the radio on all day tallying versions of Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree (There’s 3,212). But quite frankly, after 2 months of 24/7 listening in the car, on the bus, in my sleep and during sex, it’s all starting to sound the same.

That’s when I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if some sweet indie artists we listen to made up their own Christmas music? Then I was like, “Shit! Dude, that totally already happened!” So in honor of the impending gift-giving bonanza, check out our friend Dave Debiak’s (Sleep Station, New London Fire, Hell’s Angels) take on Christmas in this 2006 track for a PureVolume promo album.

01-our-christmas-in-the-dark

How do we know it was a total success? PureVolume.com still exists for some reason.

If I’m not mistaken, I believe Dave was inspired by this one time me and Jason got lost in my kitchen on Christmas Eve and tripped all over each other as we felt the walls looking for that damn light switch. (Note to Jason, It’s next to the fridge, not my crotch)

Seriously, I love these guys, and have for quite a while now. But when the heck is the album coming out? How can so much awesomeness be constrained to a Myspace and Purevolume page?

If you’re not familiar, the Philly natives sound like the soundtrack to your freshman year of college. It’s well refined synth pop that was clearly designed to get stuck in your head all throughout whatever boring thing it is you do during the day to make money or simulate the act of making money (school).

Basically, what I’m saying is, I need a version of this awesomeness to go, so let’s work on that. Click the links below to join me in bewhilderment.

Stream Liam and Me | Stream more Liam and Me

p.s. for my fellow New Yorkers, they’ll be in @ Webster Hall (between 3rd and 4th ave on 11th street) on Dec. 19 at 10 pm with Duran Duran DJing (seriously)

Let’s face it, this year your company is probably canceling the Holiday party or demanding you pay for your own booze and your own payoffs to avoid that sexual harassment suit from when you put the lampshade on Jane’s head, fondled her breasts and asked whether she would like “to be further harassed sexually in violation of state statute 32.6.7b”

Well, your worries are over. That’s because tomorrow (Wednesday) night in Hoboken, New Jersey at Maxwell’s, Kiss Kiss, and our good friend David Debiak of Sleep Station will join a fab cast of performers at the Eyeball holiday party. Bring canned food for the homeless, and enjoy good karma with your music. (I will bring the Karma reader, just ask around for Bassey)(I’ll be the guy with the 300 pound, 20 square foot karma reader)

by Tim Williams - A&SB Contributor

In the theater world, which is a lot like our own but with more petticoats, there is the singular phenomenon called the “problem play.” Why only plays, and not other narrative mediums, are allowed identity crises is only a mystery to those who have never taken part in one. I said in my first column (which hopefully piqued your interest enough to read several hundred more words about a video game) that Mother 3 was a Shavian tragicomedy. Specifically, it’s Heartbreak House, one you won’t find in many anthologies. Mother 3, too, is about smiling at the apocalypse.

“Willing suspension of disbelief” is easily invoked when people question why the titular character can talk on the moon in Le Petit Prince. But when you have to walk the talk yourself, the giant gaping details that come from a writer’s universe, not honed like ours to mundane absurdity over billions of years, suddenly seem infinite. It is in that infinite, however, in the irrational, that we can enjoy art as art.

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by Tim Williams - A&SB Contributor

If you want to experience the sequel (“sequel” is too crass a word; Mother 3 makes everything that came before it look like a basement experiment) to the beloved SNES game Earthbound, you’ll have to work a little, although you won’t have to leave your computer. (See the bottom of this column for instructions). This is a shame, because once you start playing Mother 3, it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Do you remember the first time you played a video game, in your own living room? Although, if you’re of the Playstation generation, maybe this seems as ordinary as your cell phone being your alarm clock.

Let’s start over. This is not about video games. This is not about nostalgia. But I want you to remember the first piece of art (lowercase) that seized you by the throat, and said: “This! This is what it means to be alive.”

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