Music Mondays - Aaron Scott of Attica! Attica!

I am addicted to this record. I cannot recall the last time I heard a new record that I listened to daily for weeks. I had basically forgotten that I used to do that all the time. This record's addictive quality is its simplicity. It seems an unflattering term, to call something "simple", but I mean it in the most complimentary of ways. There's a confidence that the Reveling has in these songs. You can tell because they are just plain great punk rock songs. A band that had less trust in the strength of its songs would nervously dip into the bag of superfluous drum fills and unnecessary guitar noodles to punch up the supposed weak spots. Sure, the Reveling plays a little more with the instrumentation than the Ramones did, but they do it just the right amount. I could keep going. Get this record already.

PS Any band that correctly employs the word "tantamount" gets an A+++++++ from me.

I saw this band for the first time last summer in the woods of northern California in front of a raging campfire with their silhouettes shrouded in a cloud of dirt that they (and we) were kicking up. It was like the most hedonistic elements of bluegrass and punk shoved together in a mess of big beards, dirty vests and shaggy hair. The whole affair was intensely maniacal and yet strikingly precise. How was it that they could so tightly race through their songs and nail four part harmonies while jumping all around? It all seemed evidence that this was, indeed, the devil's music. And it felt very, very good. You need to see this band live. Their record is great, but it's great in the way that you need a souvenir document of the live experience you just had. So go to a show, and buy the record there.

This band has already gotten some love in the Music Mondays "Get Stoked" department, but I wanted to double down on the endorsement in the event that you snoozed on this last time. Big Eyes' new album comes out August 16th, and it's going to be excellent. I've only seen them once, but their garagey mix of lo-fi old school punk and sweet guitar riffage totally sold me on this band. I expect great things. Hey, download the demo while you're at it.

This is an Argentine drum ensemble playing a show at a cultural center in Buenos Aires. Now, if you want to get negative about bad new agey drum circles in the park, I'll gladly join you. But I saw this group perform in this venue (a huge courtyard holding five hundred or more people) and it was completely awesome. The director guided the band through improvised songs using hand signals that I didn't recognize at all. Meanwhile, the attendees went absolutely ape-shit the whole night, dancing so enthusiastically that it was like that techno cave-dance from the second Matrix movie. This video barely communicates the energy that was present in that space. It also doesn't show the 75 or so drummers that later joined this group on the staircase for a cacophonous percussive blast that made it impossible not to dance.