indie | Tough Customer // Wire

Benjy Ferree

Old pic of Benjy Ferree

My brother and I are always calling each other with random questions or observations. The random nature of these questions and observations of course dictates that the need to share them comes at random times. Thankfully, we live in the 21st century, which means that we all have portable communicator devices (read: cell phones) on our person at all times – which is how I found myself standing outside a bar at one in the morning discussing outdated colloquial expressions.

My brother thought it was funny that we still use the expression “hold your horses.” Neither of us has ever even touched a horse, much less rode one or, uh, held one. I imagine that this is the case for most people. The majority of us are city dwellers. Outside of childhood trips to the petting zoo, we don’t come into regular contact with horses. We drive cars or take public transportation to get around and we ride bikes and skateboards for fun. But we don’t say, “stop the bus” or “hold the Volvo” when we want someone to settle down. We say “hold your horses” and everyone knows what that means, despite the fact that very few of us have any first hand experience with horses or the effort it takes to hold them.

Another expression that falls into this category is “jump on the bandwagon.” Without Google I wouldn’t even know what a bandwagon is, but I certainly understand that “jumping on the band wagon” means doing something because a lot of other people are doing it. Often times this expression is leveled at someone as an accusation, the implication being that they are incapable of independent thought. Sometimes though, things become popular all of a sudden and it’s hard to say whether you’re jumping on the bandwagon per se, or you just happened to be on another wagon heading in the same direction.

Which is where we find ourselves with singer Benjy Ferree. He’s got a new album out on Domino Records, and that album has been accompanied by the standard new album promotional effort. This means that anybody with an ear to the ground is going to catch on at around the same time. Sure, he made a smaller splash with his first record, which a lot of us missed, but his sophomore effort is a smash.

Come Back To The Five And Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee sounds like an R&B album from the 60s recorded by AOR musicians from the 70s and driven to the record plant in a brand new Prius. The drums crackle with reverb and the piano player sounds like he just came from church. A string section fills out the low end while a guitar grinds through the mids and highs. Above it all is Ferree, singing his ass off about death, fear and a host of other existential concerns. You might say the sound is timeless, which is not just an expression in this case. It’s a compliment and it means that nobody will struggle to figure out why it still sounds good 50 years from now.

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MP3: 'Fear'

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MP3: 'The Grips'

By: Editor

02-03-2009

D.C., indie, rock, soul, Washington

New Villager

How dumb is Chris Brown? He fucked up sooooo bad. It’s like he not only killed the golden goose, but he also roasted it over a pile of burning baby seals and then ate it with his bare hands in front of the entire California chapter of PETA.

Seriously, until very recently his life could not have been any better. If you had stopped any random dude on the street two weeks ago and granted him a wish, he would have basically asked to be Chris Brown. “Well, it would be great to be young again. But wait, I would really like to have a fancy sports car. Although, I’d also like to have a hot R&B singer for a girlfriend. Maybe I could just be a celebrity myself…?”

Chris Brown has (had) all those things. He is 19 years old. He was dating Rihanna and he was on his way to perform at the Grammys in a brand new Lamborghini. What?! That’s like god decided to make sweet love to your life. You literally and tangibly had it better than 99.9% of the other humans on this planet. Why not just sit back and let amazing things happen to you?

Instead, Chris Brown decided to beat up a girl. There is no possible way he can justify that. I mean, what could he possibly say? She insulted him? She insulted his mother? She insulted him and his mother and his grandmother? So what? You’re Chris Brown. You’re in a $250,000 sports car with one of the most beautiful girls in the world. It should be pretty easy to keep insults like that in perspective. If I was in Chris Brown’s position I don’t think I would ever get mad. Rihanna could pee in my shoes and I’d be like, “That’s cool. I’m just gonna drive my Lamborghini over to Beverly Hills and buy a thousand new pairs of shoes. And then I’m going to have sex with, like, ten groupies at once. And then me and Justin Timberlake are gonna go catch a Laker’s game. Peace out.”

I guess it’s just a classic case of too much is never enough. This malady seems to strike a disproportionate number of celebrities – most likely because they are among the select group of people who almost always have too much. For you or me, just having the fancy car or the fancy girl or the fancy friends would probably be enough to make us feel pretty good. I’m sure plenty of people get a vicarious thrill just from imagining that they have those things. But for people like Chris Brown it probably takes more than a fast car and a hot girl to get his pulse pounding.

Unfortunately this seems to be a sad, but true fact of the human condition. The more we have, the more we want. This makes the pursuit of happiness an essentially futile task, since it will always be just out of reach. Which is a depressing thought, since I’m told that the pursuit of happiness is basically the whole point of life. Still, that’s no reason to go beating up your girlfriend. Why don’t you channel some of that anger into your art? You know, write a song about it or something.

That’s what New Villager did. The duo, which is equal parts California and New York, has composed a pensive little dance nugget called “Rich Doors.” This should have been the song they played during the meta-futuristic rave scene in The Matrix 2. The drums have a tribal pulse and the sparse lyrics have the quality of a poem spoken in the back of a long, dark cave. They seem to tell the story of someone who has it all and yet still searches for more, if only because there isn’t anything else for them to do.

If nothing else, it’s a beautiful song that is definitely celebrating something bittersweet. It could be celebrity excess or the meaningless pursuit of happiness in this lifetime. Their website leads me to believe it might also have something to do with The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, but I don’t really know what that is. So instead I will just assume it is a searing indictment of Chris Brown and domestic abuse. Listen to your fellow artists Chris. Stop the violence.

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MP3: 'Rich Doors'

By: Editor

20-02-2009

electronica, indie, New York, post-rock, San Francisco

The Marches

Richard Conti of The Marches

Have you heard about this Obama guy? He was recently sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America. It happened on Tuesday, and according to a news stand I passed on the way to work on Wednesday it was an historic event. Lots of people are excited, most of them because of the color of his skin. After hundreds of years of codified, subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination this country has finally embraced racial equality in the highest office of the land. Can I get an Amen?!

That said, I think that if we’re all really being honest with ourselves then we have to admit that Obama’s presidency represents more than just overcoming the racial barrier. If there’s any truth to the propaganda I’ve seen all over the city, Obama’s followers also believe in the abstract concepts of hope, progress and change. Which is just another way of saying, “If you put on more one more lying, cheating, morally corrupt politician in charge of this country we are going to start a fucking revolution.” As a hater of politicians and a supporter of revolutions in general, I have to say I agree with this sentiment.

But I’m also picking up on something else, something that is just under the surface that has not gone unnoticed by a lot of people. The honesty conveyed by our new commander-in-chief seems genuine. It’s not the fake-ass, I’m just a regular kind of guy “honesty” (with air quotes) perpetrated by inbred aristocrats who cut their teeth in Ivy League secret society. It’s more like the Chris Rock Head of State kind of honesty, where he simply declaims what people already know – or suspect – to be true. I’m not saying he’s gonna tell us who shot Kennedy or anything, but at least he admits to trying drugs when he was young. For a politician, this is a huge step.

I would like to see a little more of this from those among us who have a high profile public persona. With the exceptions of rock stars – who are supposed to live like travelling hedonists – nobody can seem to admit they are human, that they have human weaknesses and desires. Young people fuck up. They smoke pot and crash their parents’ cars. Old people fuck up too. They get drunk and lie to their wives and sleep with young people. It doesn’t mean that they are unfit to do their jobs. It just means that they’re not good at hiding the parts of their lives that most people can be discreet about because they don’t live under a spotlight. Again, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we wouldn’t be so quick to string up politicians for having sex or doing drugs. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.

At best this is an abstract philosophical concept, one better left to bar stool poets and homemade rock albums. I can’t say for sure, but I think The Marches may have heard this call. Their new album 4 a.m. Is The New Midnight wraps the slippery underbelly of humanity in a warm embrace. The lyrics are hidden by an intentionally Beck-esque veil of nonsense, but the theme is unmistakable: decent people sometimes like to do dirty things.

This is an electro-indie soul nugget made for creatures of the night. The band swings back and forth from classical syncopation to Motown soul braced with lusty synthesizers. The lyric sheets are rife with unspoken sexual desires and odes to celebrity crack habits. It’s kind of like The Marches are singing to you about something you won’t even admit to yourself.

Remember though, this is a new era, one in which hope and honesty are supposed to have the upper hand. Well ok. Since we’re being honest, I’ll admit it. This album is weird and perverted in places, and that’s what I like about it. Barack Obama to all, and to all a good night.

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MP3: 'Bad Touch'

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MP3: 'Need Me Back'

By: Editor

23-01-2009

electro-pop, indie, LA, soul

Ill Ease

Elizabeth Sharp

I really like going to movies by myself, especially in the middle of the day when there’s hardly anybody else in the theater. A lot of people think this is weird, but I don’t really understand why. If you’re sitting in the dark for two hours giving your undivided attention to a giant screen, does it really matter if there’s somebody you know in the seat next to you? I can understand if you’re on a date and looking to do some serious hand-holding, but otherwise being by yourself helps you concentrate. This in turn helps you lose yourself in the story and suspend your disbelief when necessary. The latter is especially important when watching anything from the sci-fi, action or dramatic thriller genres.

Speaking of movie dates, for some people the idea of sitting in a dark theater is inextricably linked to time spent with the opposite sex. Perhaps this is a holdover from the 50s, when not everyone had a car and a movie theater was one of the few places a horny teenager could get some time alone with his date. In some cases I think it’s just sublimated fear of homosexuality.

For example, I have a group of friends – all male – who refuse to sit next to each other in the theater. They insist on sitting at least two seats apart from each other. If we go in a large enough group or to a small enough theater, this means that we can take up a whole row with just a few of us. When I first went to a movie with these guys and I tried to sit next to one of them, I was firmly rebuked. “Dude,” I was told, “don’t sit there. Slide over one.” When I asked why it was revealed to me that sitting next to another guy at a movie is “totally gay.”

I wonder if Elizabeth Sharp ran up against this kind of resistance when she started her one-woman band Ill Ease. Did anybody look at her funny when she insisted on playing all the instruments herself? Did they label her an outcast when they heard her symphony of overdubbed tambourines and hand claps? Perhaps they declared “Jangly lo-fi bedroom pop is group activity! You can’t make songs that are catchy and broken in all the right places by yourself!”

I for one don’t think it’s weird at all. Hey – I listen to music by myself all the time. In fact, I often do so when I’m waiting for a movie to start. And if anyone can ever lower their inhibitions enough to sit next to me, I might just tell them all about this great one woman band I just discovered. That’s not so weird is it?

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MP3: 'Here Comes Trouble'

By: Editor

21-11-2008

Brooklyn, indie, lo-fi, New York, pop

Starfucker

Back when I was a late night DJ on college radio, I paid more attention to profanity. This was because the FCC, in their attempts to be total fucking dicks, focused an inordinate amount of their scrutiny on college stations. Apparently any time a profane word made its way onto the air, the station was slapped with a prohibitively expensive fine. Needless to say, college radio stations aren’t exactly swimming in cash, so these fines really hurt. Fuckers.

As a result, every track on every album in the library had to be screened for words like “fuck,” “shit,” “pussy,” “ass face,” “cock smoker,” and “anus loving goat raper.” If these or any of the many other officially recognized profane expressions appeared anywhere on a track, that track was banned from the air. As you might imagine, this put a shitload of hip hop, metal, and punk rock in the off-limits pile.

As we’ve discussed before here at //Wire, this whole ban on profanity thing makes no sense. It’s the intent behind the use of the word that matters. For example, when The M’s sing “get your shit together” on their latest album, the profanity appears as the result of a stylistic decision. Could they have said “get your act together” or “get your stuff together?” Yes, technically they could have. Should they? No, they should not. Use of this particular colloquialism just sounds cooler than any of the other options. Note to the FCC: It’s a fucking rock song. Sounding cool is the whole motherfucking point.

On the other hand, a “radio friendly” version of an inherently profane and offensive song does not make it any less offensive. The message behind “I’m gonna smack you across the face with my *beep* and then *beep* you in the *beep* and then wipe it on the sheets” is not lost on anyone. Yet between these two songs, The M’s track is the one that would draw the fine. The imaginary hip hop song quoted above would be FCC approved for 8 year olds.

Fortunately, it appears that the rust is starting to show on the FCC. Sooner or later enforcing their profanity guidelines will be be dropped from their priority list. Until then, we have bands like Starfucker that exist to serve a glorious dual purpose. On the one hand, they play dreamy pop rock that conjures images of missed opportunities, teenage love, and sitting on the fire escape early on a summer evening. This particular track does more with a single verse than most bands do with an entire album. Listening to it makes you feel like we all somehow share some of the same memories

On the other hand, their name helps rub the futility of the profanity regulations right in the stupid fucking cunt face of the motherfucking FCC. Fuck yeah Starfucker! That’s fucking awesome.

Also: Titties! -ed

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MP3: 'Rawnald Gregory Erickson The Second'

By: Editor

23-10-2008

indie, pop, Portland

Pacific Division

Next time you find yourself looking for silver linings, here’s something to consider: the one good thing that came out of the deaths of Biggie and Tupac was the end of the West Coast/East Coast beef. While Americans certainly love a good fight, I think it’s safe to say that a nationwide gang war is not what anybody wants. When these two iconic rappers died, it forced everybody to cool their jets a little. Sure, things got strange in the aftermath – Diddy became an overblown caricature of himself, Jay-Z stabbed a dude, and the dirty south blew up on the strength of beats inspired by cough syrup – but all in all hip hop moved in a better direction.

Another interesting effect was that hip hop sounds simultaneously became a little more homogeneous and a little more unique. Dirty south trap music and crunk melted together to form the template for radio friendly club tracks everywhere. “East Coast” became the de facto style for most people outside of that mold. The remaining groups took off in wildly different directions: ghetto tech, neo old skool, grime, etc. And of course there was still the West Coast doing its own crazy-ass thing.

Hyphy was here for a hot minute – just long enough to get its own sports drink, documentary, and vernacular. You still have plenty of up and comers trying to sound like E-40, but hyphy pretty much died on the vine. This disappointed a lot of people who were holding their collective breath, waiting for hyphy to put Northern California back on the map. For better or worse that didn’t happen, and people turned their attention elsewhere.

The thing is, you can’t really ignore the California influence on hip hop. This is the land of big stars, small bikinis and perennially temperate weather. California has some of the richest, most beautiful people in the world. It’s also home to some of the scariest prisons and the most violent street gangs. It is inevitable that this influence would seep into the music and make it that much more attractive to people who live in flat, cold parts of the country.

The aptly named Pacific Division perfectly embody this Left Coast vibe. Their blissed out beats shimmer from the speakers, practically begging the listener to take the day off and head to the beach. The lyrics second this emotion, with slacker anthems dedicated to overgrown kids and starry-eyed daydreamers. Pac Div seems to have done away with both clouds and silver linings, opting instead for endless blue skies. Be sure to check them out the next time you find yourself in a California state of mind.

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MP3: 'Grown Kids Syndrome'

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MP3: 'Wake Up'

By: Editor

07-10-2008

hip-hop, indie, Los Angeles

We Are Wolves

I don’t know if it’s the proliferation of cheap recording technology or the fact that Guitar Center is always having crazy, once-in-a-lifetime blow out sales, but for some reason everybody and their mother thinks they should be in a band these days. This is all well and good when the wanna-be Coldplays and the would-be Limp Bizkits keep their ill-fated dreams locked up in a practice studio somewhere. That way the public’s ears are safe and none of us ever have to be subjected to their self delusion and extra shitty music.

The thing is, most of these bands insist on playing live. (The rest of them send me CDs). By way of either luck or tenacity they end up opening for bands that are much better than them. Allow me to address these cut rate opening bands for a moment: Do not do this. I understand you have dreams of rock stardom, but it is simply not in the cards for you. When your lame-ass, no talent band gets up on stage and sucks at full volume, it only makes you look bad. And it makes the band you’re opening for look that much better.

Case in point: I went to see We Are Wolves last night at Cafe Du Nord. There were two opening bands. One of them dressed like a group of drug-addled Burning Man cast-offs and played psychedelic electro dance rock. They were ok. At the very least they got the early crowd dancing and they seemed to be either really enjoying themselves or really high on peyote.

It was the band that came on next that was the problem. They were god awful. The drummer was off time, the guitar player just made noise, and the singer couldn’t sing – although from the look on his face you would have thought he was a finalist on American Idol. By the time they lurched into their second song the whole audience had escaped to the bar in the front room, leaving behind three people near the stage that were clearly relatives.

Why keep playing at that point? If you can’t even make music mediocre enough for people to ignore, if your music literally repels them, why not just give up? Do you think a surgeon would keep cutting people open if everyone he touched died on the operating table? Do you think a race car driver would keep getting behind the wheel if his cars blew up as soon as he crossed the starting line? No, they would not. So why do you insist on playing music when it is so clearly not meant to be?

Really the only acceptable answer is this: The incredibly terrible band whose name I didn’t even bother to look up was there just to make We Are Wolves sound awesome by contrast. If that’s the case, then congratulations on a job well done. When WAW hit the stage and began cranking out their trademark brand of electro-punk, it was like drinking a cool milkshake after 45 minutes of hot shit sandwiches. The crowd came streaming back into the room, twice as large as it was before. Everybody danced and drank. WAW didn’t waste any time with mumbled banter in between songs. They just turned their amps up and rocked like it was meant to be.

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MP3: 'Fight And Kiss'

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MP3: 'Coconut 155'

By: Editor

02-10-2008

dance punk, electro rock, indie, Montreal

Hi-Fidel

Here are some interesting facts:
• A cockroach can live off of the nutrients in the glue on a postage stamp for a month.
• A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found on the surface of the sun.
• It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times.
• Repeating children’s nursery rhymes has been sighted as the cure for at least one case of “spasmodic dysphonia.”

It is this last fact that is the subject of today’s charmingly obtuse blog post. In Shakespearean times, the ability to speak in verse was an indication of nobility and mental acuity. In a time when a clever turn of phrase was a way of showing off one’s education and social standing, it’s no wonder that a playwright like Shakespeare was so popular. His words are still quoted today when somebody needs a poetic rejoinder or a stylish flourish to end their term paper (“All that glitters is not gold,” etc.).

Speaking in rhyme also helps children learn reading, writing, and language skills. According to one education specialist, “Early rhymes and songs help children see that language has patterns. Even very young children can identify words with similar endings. As you read or speak rhymes to them they soon begin to anticipate these rhyming words. They also begin to recognize the beat or the rhythm of the poem or song, which is useful in developing musicality.”

So it’s interesting then that the main forum for rhymes these days is hip-hop. This is a genre that was never supposed to be more than a passing fad. Even today it is still scorned by many for its lack of musicality and relevance. Yet you have to wonder, how would a rapper have been received back in the day of The Bard? Can you imagine a top MC stepping through a time machine and onto the stage at The Globe and just ripping it up with a 10 minute freestyle? The crowd would be all like, “Oh Snap! Me thinks he doth come correct!”

I know that all the rules of time travel say that you’re not supposed to mess with anything, lest you affect the outcome of history (see: Martin Lawrence in Black Knight). Still, it would be fun to go back in time and add all kinds of academic authority to rap music. Imagine introducing King James to the RZA! You would probably read about Bobby Digital in your 8th grade history book! Can you picture the teacher saying, “Ok class, today we’ll be listening to the classic rap compostion entitled The Trew Law of Free Monarchies?” That alone would make junior high twice as awesome.

Of course, the argument has been made that a time machine will never be invented, because if it were that would mean that the future in which the machine is invented already exists. And it stands to reason that if a time machine already does exist then somebody would have already used it to go back into the past – which is actually today – so we would have known about it.

Just in case that turns out not to be true or in case there is some law of metaphysics that makes it possible, I’m going to start preparing my list of MCs to be sent back to the royal court. At the top of that list will be LA-via-Chi Town rapper Hi-Fidel. Riding the line between Mos Def and Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Hi-Fidel spits the proverbial fire. Not only that, but he does it with intelligence and swagger, which is a must in today’s hip-hop game. (I don’t know what the standards would be for the 1600s.) Long time partner in crime DJ Crucial provides the beats, giving them enough thump to reach the people in the cheap seats.

Of course, that rhyme is fine, but it would be hard not to leave you with a word from the Bard:

“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”

The Merchant of Venice (V, i, 83-85)

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MP3: 'Diamonds'

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MP3: 'Patty Farmington'

By: Editor

29-08-2008

Chicago, hip-hop, indie, LA

Black Spade

There was a point in the not-too-distant past when being a DJ required a certain rarefied skill set. It wasn’t something that just anybody could do. In the beginning, the amount of technique involved – not to mention the cost of a pair of 1200s – kept all but the most dedicated aspiring DJs away. Then techno came along and showed how easy beat matching could be, which got a lot of people thinking, “Hey, I could do that!” Still, you needed a pretty impressive record collection if you wanted to be anything other than a wedding DJ, and spending all your free time hunting down rare white labels wasn’t something that everybody had the time and inclination to do.

Yet, by the mid-90s, a lot more people were taking a run at it. Record labels realized what was going on and started re-issuing hard to find albums and singles on readily available 200 gram vinyl. Every club, bar, restaurant and shoe store got their own set of turntables. When the iPod epidemic broke out around the turn of the century, it appeared that we had finally reached the DJ singularity. These days, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a DJ – especially in New York or San Francisco.

The thing is, a lot of these so-called DJs suck. A lot of them rely on compilations of 80s novelty songs. Others are oblivious to the nightclub or dance floor full of people they’re supposed to be entertaining. This particular breed of bad DJ will play a Beatles slow jam right up against something from the new Lil’ Wayne album just to prove how eclectic they are. And god help you if you get stuck listening to some stoner/hippie/hesher DJ who is trying to blow your mind with epic rock jams from the late 60s. Your ears will be ringing from scratchy MC5 records all night long.

An exception to this rule, however, is hip hop DJs. I’m not talking about the DJs all up in da club, rocking the daytime playlist from Wild 94.9. I’m talking about the group of heads that work as a self-regulating body, making sure everybody in their group wears fresh kicks and plays only certifiable quality hip hop. Every time I get to thinking that nothing good is going on hip hop-wise, all I need to do is check out the dudes from Beat Sauce on KUSF or Fat Beats on EVR or anybody from the Urban Umpires crew. When I can’t find anything that rates a second listen, these guys will have dug up hours of hot new beats and rhymes. I’ll be standing next to the DJ booth with a pen and paper going, “Who’s this? What’s this one called? Where are these guys from?”

At least now I can return the favor. Attention all hip hop junkies: you need to get on Black Spade right now. Hailing from St. Louis, the producer/MC/clothing designer (?!) makes music that demonstrates a refined technique and listening habits that go well beyond the standard rap portfolio. Lyrically Black Spade is somewhere between Common and Pharoah Monch. Musically he’s all over the map. The beats hit hard, but they’re topped with little bits of sonic weirdness that make you stop and listen. You might not get it at first, but any DJ worth his salt will seek this out on his next trip to the record shop.

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MP3: 'The Half That's Never Been Told'

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MP3: 'Love's Right Here'

By: Editor

17-06-2008

hip-hop, indie, St. Louis

Public Record

One of the things that sucks about living in New York City is grocery shopping. Not only is it expensive, but chances are you don’t have a car, so whatever you can afford to buy has to be lugged in a cab, on the subway or up the street to your apartment. That right there is reason enough to get take-out every night of the week.

Another reason is that shopping for groceries is generally not fun in New York City. The aisles are too small, everybody is on a cell phone, absent-mindedly groping the produce, and the shopping music is loud and annoying. In some stores they just play commercials at rock concert volume, hoping to entice you to buy some processed food treat that you might otherwise have passed up.

The one exception to this rule is St. Mark’s Market in the East Village. That place embodies everything cool you’ve ever heard about New York. How is it cool, you ask? Let me count the ways. First, it’s open 24 hours. If you think that may seem like a given for any store in Manhattan, try going to the Met after 9pm. Second, even though it’s pretty small, you can get almost anything there. They have a fresh sushi bar, a sandwich counter, and all kinds of weird candy and drinks imported from Asia.

But the best thing about this market is the music. According to the guy at check-out, they all take turns bumping their iPods over the house system. On past visits I’ve heard everything from Talking Heads and Public Enemy to John Coltrane and Tuvan throat singers. It is bad ass. People actually take their headphones off when they come into the store and sometimes you’ll catch hot girls singing to themselves over in the canned goods aisle.

One of the things I like hearing best in the store is a long instrumental jam. I’ll walk in sometimes in the middle of the night during some epic Can track, and I’ll spend the next 15 minutes just looking at the labels of esoteric snack foods while I nod my head. Before I know it, I’m playing a drum solo on the cans of dried wasabi peas.

It is because of this that I’m giving St. Mark’s Market a shout out. I don’t know if anybody from the store ever checks out this site, but if they do, I’ve got a recommendation for them. Listen up employees: you should play some music from the Philadelphia band Public Record. They play a unique blend of music that, in their words, ranges “from early-disco to shoegaze; Afro-beat to Scottish Postcard pop; and northern soul to Factory Records funk.” Their compelling instrumental jams bounce from trance-like summertime rhythms to sweaty, third world funk with an easy grace.

It’s the perfect soundtrack for ordering a hot reuben or squeezing some melons with that girl you just met in aisle two.

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MP3: 'Mermaid's Purse'

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MP3: 'Comfortability'