Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Blanche Hudson Weekend on Odd Box Records


The Blanche Hudson Weekend is ex-members of the Manhattan Love Suicides who seem to love giant elaborate descriptive names for their music projects..this one is based on a character from Whatever happened to Baby Jane? Well, her jealous sister locked her in the mansion and fed her her pets and tortured her...so right away it's going to be ominous themes piled high with surface sweetness.
layers...real syrupy Take the first track 'Grip of Fear', it's something like the Softies or the Sundays with JAMC shoegaze...the breathy harmonies, slightly vulnerable, really indie melodic pop guitar but pulling out lines like 'I should stay indoors because the streets are mean' that keep it edgy. It's the sort of thing that half listening you stop in your tracks. It sounds like a lulabye, but you're not falling asleep. It's the knife in the water.
The tortured violin strings on the AA Side 'Only Snow' are their Velvets moment. Contrast the sweet with the painful.
I don't think The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have captured that 90's indie K record sound quite as closely as The Blanche Hudson Weekend, I think it was the promise of them trying that got everyone all excited. It's here in the treble heavy electrics that sound like they're peaking out, with the main focus always on the vocals from Caroline and Darren that are so ethereal it's not exactly even human. They are getting an alien sound from the simplest elements...vocals and electric, but what exact chain of reverb and chorus and delay is a mystery. It's not Vivian Girls...I'm not hearing the shangri-las as much of an influence as say Lush, or the wall-of-sound fuzzyness that goes as far as My Bloody Valentine towards the end of this track. A sincere homage to that 'alternative' era.
If I get any more nostalgic I'm going to actually watch Pump up the Volume again.

This one is going to be an import direct from Odd Box, can't seem to find this carried on this side of the Atlantic.

The Blanche Hudson Weekend is here. Featuring Caroline and Darren (ex-Manhattan Love Suicides) along with a bunch of other Weekenders , and bringing to you all kinds of noise , fuzz , melody , dissonance , rawness , killer tunes and buzzsaw pop. Take a bit of 1960s girl group sounds , mix with Girls In The Garage type ramshackle production , add some gun slugging guitars and sugar sweet vocals with a keen ear for a great hook , then lock the doors , bolt the windows , switch off the phone , kill the lights , turn up the volume to ear splitting levels and enjoy The Blanche Hudson Weekend. This is their 2nd single and it showcases a slightly less in your face side to their fuzzy dissonant sound.

Side A 01 Grip of Fear 02 Sharks
Side AA 03 Snow

2 comments:

  1. japanther8:24 PM

    LOL! I used to own the soundtrack to Pump Up The Volume! Can't remember what song/artist made me buy it from the used music store i worked at, but I never saw the movie... Nice esoteric reference. I see what you did there.

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  2. Never saw the movie? Well it would definitely be pointless now...trust me. I never heard the soundtrack though. The movie did get me into Leonard Cohen and buying 101 science experiment kits looking to build a radio transmitter.

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