Weird but Good

This is of a kind with my Pure Insanity post, but a notch down. There´s no menace of insanity here, just the goofy joy brought out by the deeply weird. 99 out of 100 experimental bands like these are just beyond crap, and indeed these bands themselves can suck ass at times, but the successes outweigh the failures, and the failures are at least daring. Both songs below are from CDs released last year, which is a great sign. It´s about time the stale-and-getting-staler musical scene of the past few years got a shake up. These bands may not be precursors to the sounds of the future, but at least they are reaching for something new. Deerhoof hail from San Francisco, have a Japanese woman, Satomi Matsuzaki, as a vocalist/bassist, and a drummer with a tiny, tiny kit that he bashes the living shit out of... plus, there are great guitar riffs. Offend Maggie is a very quirkly but extremely good record that has lodged deep, deep inside my brain and won´t let go. "Snoopy Waves" starts like a lost Television song before morphing into several other forms... what could you call this type of music? Dunno, but I´ll listen to a lot more of it. Snoopy Waves by Deerhoof, from Offend Maggie (Kill Rock Stars, 2008) Of Montreal´s been around since 1997, but I haven´t really checked them out until recently. The Skeletal Lamping album (their last album has to be considered for best album title ever-"Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?") could be the soundtrack to ADD... every song changes and reconfigures so many times that it´s more like a CD filled with a ton of mini-tunes. There´s wild experimentation at all times, built on a foundation of pop melodies, Ziggy Stardust echoes and Prince-style sex-sex-sex. Definitely not for everybody... I´m sure this must be banned in Wal-Mart and the Bible Belt. Oh, and they´re from Athens, Georgia, not Montreal. For Our Elegant Caste by Of Montreal, from Skeletal Lamping (Polyvinyl, 2008)