]]> http://elasticizedwaistbands.com/?feed=rss2&p=608 0 http://elasticizedwaistbands.com/?p=594 http://elasticizedwaistbands.com/?p=594#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 20:34:10 +0000 admin http://elasticizedwaistbands.com/?p=594 New Age Dad is a band. Arcade Fire is a band.

New Age Dad is a band of tired dads, spastic toddlers, needy babies, black dogs, and sometimes moms. Arcade Fire is a band of young, zealous Canadians. The members of New Age Dad are hobbyists and have made no money with their music. Arcade Fire are professional musicians who are likely quite comfortable with the fame and fortune their music has attracted.

New Age Dad wrote a song called “Rococo.” Arcade Fire wrote a song called “Rococo.”

New Age Dad’s “Rococo” was cobbled together using salvaged scraps from tumultuous recording sessions that maneuvered around naps and feeding schedules, and was released in March of this year. Arcade Fire released their “Rococo” on the album Suburbs just this week.

New Age Dad’s “Rococo” has not been fondled by the press corp. Arcade Fire’s “Rococo” has been called a funeral dirge that, “moans alongside swirling delirious violins that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Disney cartoon,” and a “wake up call to the Obama generation.” Both songs feature a similar mantra,

Arcade Fire: “They’re saying rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo”

New Age Dad: “Rococo, rococo/never seemed like luck to me”

New Age Dad took the title “Rococo” from a review of an Ingmar Bergman movie in an old issue of the New Yorker. Ostensibly, Arcade Fire heard the word being used incorrectly by the “modern kids, downtown.”

New Age Dad’s “Rococo” is about the great nothing. Arcade Fire’s “Rococo” lampoons scene-obsessed youth; an offshoot of their clichéd theme of suburban dystopia. New Age Dad’s cliché—that of the artistic, involved dad—hangs over its entire catalog like a ragged veneer. New Age Dad lyrics are cobbled from old books of personal poetry using the cut-up method. Arcade Fire lyrics are forcibly poignant.

As a live act, Arcade Fire effuses sharpness and grandeur, but individual songs come across like a series of clammy, one-sided orgasms. New Age Dad has only played one song live, and no one was watching.

Arcade Fire has top-notch equipment and they know how to use it. New Age Dad records to GarageBand and sometimes sings out of tune. Arcade Fire boils hundreds of digital tracks down to vinyl and then rerecords to digital. New Age Dad is still figuring out what compression does.

If Arcade Fire called Pitchfork every day to discuss the weather, they would run it as news. If New Age Dad called it quits tomorrow, the world would be none the wiser.

Arcade Fire demands to be taken seriously. New Age Dad does not, but we do demand to be taken.

Rococo by user7348638

Notice how we repeat the mantra “Rococo” with the authority it demands. All we’re getting here is Puppy Caught In The Rain.

Rococo [2:54]PLAY

Anyway, we’ll wait until Suburbs comes out to get all the way to the bottom of this.

Seems obscure Canadian rock band Arcade Fire has borrowed inspiration straight from the source. A Pitchfork post revealing the track listing from the upcoming album Suburbs shows that song four is called “Rococo.”

We’re flattered and all, but a phone call would have been nice. Get the real deal below. (Let’s see if they can top “Stooped Razorback blue moon/ping ping.”)

STREAM:

Rococo [2:54]PLAY

VIDEO:

ZIP:

DOWNLOAD Rococo

Ernst Moro, an Austrian pediatrician, noticed something significant. Startled babies throw their arms out, as if bracing for a fall, and then fold them back into themselves. Then they cry. Startle, arms out, arms in, cry. The Moro reflex. If you are a newborn, you want this reflex as demonstration of your properly functioning central nervous system. Fear of falling is believed to be the one innate fear we possess as human animals. The rest we invent for ourselves.

Adults don’t Moro. Adults make babies, like Quinn Peacock, the sixth member of New Age Dad. Her sinuous fingers and toes suggest some wicked guitar flourishes in the days to come.

A while back, we tried opening the “Rococo” GarageBand file on a foreign Mac and the song came through with lips on it’s forehead and no legs. For super-fans only.

Rococo Unbound Remix [2:54]PLAY

Presenting “Rococo,” a song about nothing and everything, and the glitter-gold expanse in-between. (And how about that font?)

Rococo [2:54]PLAY

Ah, the marcato strumming, buoyant bass, crystalline harmonies and adorable count-in—this is NAD at its finest. The Brushian flourishes alone should give you a new reason to go outside and kiss the soil. Join us in a springy song of spring that will roost in your ears and ping ping.

DOWNLOAD Rococo

One of us (Josh) has been a contributing writer at Los Angeles-based, genre-bending juggernaut FLAUNT for a bunch of years and they were kind enough to run his article about our exploits in the pages of their new “abandonment” issue. There’s a sillouette of Tracy Morgan Byamba Ulambayar on the cover and enough racy fashion spreads inside that it’ll be a decade before we can let the kids leaf through it.

We are pumped to be a part of another great edition of the magazine.

The fifth member of New Age Dad arrived last week weighing 6lbs, 11oz. His name is Arius Booker. Arius means “immortal lion eagle” in Greek, so his influence might lead the band down a Norse metal pathway.

Speaking of, we are working on new music, it’s just taking forever to get things done these days.

Presenting “Little Man,” our first new piece of music in the digital single format.

Walk with us on this one, for it’s a soaring cradle-to-grave journey. The same journey we all make—little men, little women and Louisa May Alcott alike. “Little Man” is Eastern and mantra-like, in the vein of such NAD classics as “Cement Creek” and “Lullaby 14.” It could easily be the soundtrack to an early morning meditation, though we like it for exercising dogs.

Little Man [4:15]PLAY

Listen as a hoarfrost web of ukulele, xylophone, infant yelping and castanet collects lush, dewy layers of orchestral strings, toddler roars, faux-creepy-Swedish vocals, restless dogs, barroom piano, operatic belches and brass, becoming something all at once eternal and absolute. [Feel free to ctrl+x, Pitchfork.]

DOWNLOAD Little Man