My New Favorite Record This Week

To be fair the title of this post should really say "My New Favorite Record This Week, Last Week, The Week Before, The Week Before That And Probably Next Week Too.". Githead are Colin Newman from Wire, Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner), Colin's wife Malka Spigel and drummer Max Franken, both formerly of Israeli new wave act Minimal Compact. Githead have been in existence since 2004. They have already released two EPs and one album, 2005's Profile. And I only just learned about them a month or two ago. Where the hell have I been? These guys are tremendous. I have been listening to Art Pop almost every day for a month now. Musically it really reminds me of Wire at their poppiest - both the early years and the late '80s stuff like Ideal Copy where things got a bit more electronic. Art Pop to me is a perfect blend of space-rock, art rock, punk, dub, new wave and electro-pop. It rocks hard in places, with Colin and Robin dueling it out on guitar. There are pop-tastic moments, some great melodies and some nice, spacy ambient songs with Malka's vocals. I think I actually prefer these songs to the recent Wire records, which have been less about intricate and edgy interplay and more about bludgeoning metal riffs. It is the perfect synthesis of the experimental and conventional into a memorable whole. This one will make my year end best of for sure. Here are a couple of tasty tracks that demonstrate both the rock-ist and the dance-y, spaced out sides of the band.

On Your Own
Rotterdam