It’s been a busy week for me, so today I leave you with this gem from the recently reformed Bunnygrunt, the band with the cutest name ever. It’s from a tribute album to C86 pop band the June Brides, a short-lived but much-loved British act playing for a couple of years in the 80s. Both Bunnygrunt and the June Brides were arguably examples of cool bands that died before their time (Bunnygrunt kinda dissolved around the turn of the millennium), though I guess Bunnygrunt never got namechecked by Morrissey as his favourite group. Luckily, after almost a decade off, the band came back in 2005 with a new album, Karen Hater’s Club—a bit more garage, a bit less cute—so now they’ll get a second go at being Moz’s BFF.

Don’t worry Bunnygrunt, I’ll still love you even if Morrissey won’t.

Everyone loves free stuff, so you’ll probably like this: Deerhoof have put up a bunch of odds and ends up on their website, including this lovely cover of “The Perfect Me,” the leadoff track off the band’s 2007 album Friend Opportunity. Considering that So Cow is one person (or is it two?) from Dublin (or is it Korea?), it’s amazing the band was able to capture the rollicking mile-a-minute energy of the song so perfectly.

Okay, so who exactly is So Cow and what do they do when not busy covering Deerhoof songs? Their website is incredibly unclear on this point. There’s a picture that shows two people in the band, but every other note refers to one guy. Their MySpace says they’re from Korea/Ireland, and the band’s last album has a whole bunch of Korea references on it (in addition to being recorded there). Slowly a picture forms: this is some guy who went to Korea to teach English or something, made some shiny bedroom pop albums, then returned to Ireland to continue his reign of terror.

And just what is the nature of this reign of terror? Surprisingly, it doesn’t sound very much like this cover of “The Perfect Me”—a quick browse of the MySpace gives you a band that sounds like an evolution of the quirky indie pop bands of the late 90s. Anyone who knows me knows this kind of thing is right up my alley. If it’s up your alley too, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m Siding With My Captors is apparently coming out in November.

I’ve only heard one “real” Enon album, 2002’s High Society. Unfortunately, this means my Enon theory may be horribly flawed from the word Go!; knowing little about Hocus Pocus except what I’ve read from reviews, it’s entirely possible the most recent Enon album debunks the whole basis of this post. But as I’m not a music journalist and have no need for things like “fact-checking” and “accuracy,” I’ll press on nonetheless.

If there’s a fatal flaw to High Society, it’s that the album is so resolutely split between two different approaches. The Enon I first heard and liked was the Enon of “Knock That Door” and “Disposable Parts”—in other words, the groovetastic electronic pop anchored by the vocals of former Blonde Redhead-er Toko Yasuda. But upon first listen to the entirety of High Society a second Enon surfaced alongside the first: the more-straightforward indie rock stylings of founder John Schmersal. And though tracks like “Old Dominion” aren’t exactly bad, they do seem entirely removed from the plastic fantastic world of the other Enon. Only near the end of the album do the streams cross, and even then the melding is incomplete: “Natural Disasters” has Yasuda throwing in some background vocals, but the track as a whole still sounds more like Schmersal’s half of the album. “Carbonation” and “Salty” throw in more electronics and more Yasuda before Schmersal returns to anchor the final two tracks. All in all, there’s a tantalizing glimpse of what would happen once the relatively new Yasuda was able to collaborate more fully with the rest of Enon.

Reviews suggest Hocus Pocus didn’t do much to bridge the chasm, but since I’ve only heard selected tracks from it and b-sides comp Lost Marbles and Exploded Evidence, I couldn’t tell you from personal experience. What I can tell you is the first track from the upcoming Grass Geysers… Carbon Clouds represents the next leap forward in uniting Enon’s split personalities. Though “Mirror On You” is less than two minutes long, there’s lots of fuzz-bass hip-shaking and handclap beat-making to go around. And unlike Yasuda’s background contributions on High Society, her vocals are essential here—a chorus of reverbed Yasudas is not to be trifled with.

Here’s a sweet little slice of Montreal band Land of Talk’s live show, from their SXSW performance earlier this year. It’s not often that I remember enough of a band’s new songs that I’ll notice it when it shows up on record or another show, but “Young Bridge” is an exception. It’s easy to forget with the band’s slow-burn profile that Applause Cheer Boo Hiss has been out for well over a year now, and that “new” songs like this are actually pretty old for the band, though they haven’t had a chance to commit them to record yet.

Word has it that Elizabeth Powell and her cohorts, including a new drummer, are set to return to the studio to re-record the new album, much of which had already been laid down with the last drummer (who left because of the wear and tear from the constant touring). In the meantime, the UK will see an expanded version of Applause Cheer Boo Hiss with new tracks that may or may not be available via the intertubes.

(P.S. Sorry for not uploading the right file when the post went live! It’s there now.

My first concert experience was Radiohead at Maple Leaf Gardens during the OK Computer tour, but I tend not to tell people about that show unless we’re doing a contest to see who’s got the most embarrassing first-show experience. Mine isn’t so bad, it was just dull—the newspapers the next day talked about Thom Yorke’s “rock-star antics,” which amounted to him slapping away a mic when he forgot the opening lines to a song. I thought, “if this is the best rock-star antic he can come up with, I’ll just stay home, thanks.” There were a couple of shows after that but I when I think of my first true concert experience, I think of the first show I went to see by myself: Sleater-Kinney, the White Stripes and C.O.C.O. at the Opera House in late 2000. At the time I thought it was really cool because I got to meet Corin Tucker (and promptly turned into a sputtering mess of a person); nowadays it’s fun to tell people that you saw Jack and Meg doing their own merch and not dressed up in outlandish stage costumes.

Time has treated each band quite differently. Sleater-Kinney’s out for the count, probably for good, after wrapping up a storied career with a decent but last-ditch left turn in The Woods. The White Stripes released White Blood Cells shortly after that show and rocketed to fantastic heights afterwards. And what of that last band, the oddly named C.O.C.O.? The bass/drums duo shared a common geographical and cultural ancestry with Sleater-Kinney, but not the same career trajectory. Instead of their star rising, C.O.C.O.’s profile remained stubbornly static—Olivia Ness and Chris Sutton released two albums and then kinda disappeared back into the Olympia scene that created them. Their relatively low profile seems partially by design; neither Ness nor Sutton seemed to be interested in much more than getting whatever crowd was in front of them to shake their hips to their lo-fi bass grooves.

Five years after their last album, The C.O.C.O. Sound, the duo have resurfaced with a new album, Play Drums + Bass. If you’ve heard a C.O.C.O. track before, don’t expect much in the way of deviations—half a decade doesn’t bring any major changes to the basic stripped-down soul/groove formula, though it sounds like Ness has an even better snarl than when she started singing. And if you’ve never heard a C.O.C.O. track before, “You Think But You Don’t Know” is a pretty good place to start.