My apologies (yet again) for slacking on this week's shows. I wasn't home much over the weekend...

Larimer Lounge Tuesday: If you miss the Deadly Syndrome show you will have to hear about it from your friends for the rest of your life. Better go.
Great new band with a stellar new album, The Ortolan.
Not too many critics have pondered the symbolism of the title.
"For centuries, a rite of passage for French gourmets has been the eating of the Ortolan. These tiny birds—captured alive, force-fed then drowned in Armagnac, were roasted whole and eaten that way, bones and all, while the diner draped his head with a linen napkin to preserve the precious aromas and, some believe, to hide from God." (The Wine Spectator)
Grab an innocent songbird and chew it whole, bones and all. Kind of like a record review.
The Deadlyz whimsically rotate their MySpace category, from pop to punk to folk to regional Mexican/Western swing (ha!) etc. Life's perpetual comedy, black humor, and the obvious foolishness of sliding stuff into one-size-fits-all slots is what they're all about. Check out "Asian Game Show", shot at Camp Deadly, their house in Silver Lake, with a Cantonese speaking host. Label that! ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=aJjJNkLWDrM)
DeadlyWorld is full of revelation, insight, joy, fear, love, death, and chaos. Fate, including Hurricane Katrina, which blew singer/bassist Chris Richard from New Orleans to LA, brought them together, and each is contributing, writing from the heart. "True story," said Richard, "I’m in my house in New Orleans. And a hurricane comes by..."
It's been a rocket ride since The Deadly Syndrome played their first show in the summer of 2006, in the appropriately named Unknown Theater in Hollywood. France's top music magazine, Les Inrockuptibles, dubbed them one of their "Brightest Hopes For 2007." They appeared at Austin's fabled South By Southwest festival. They played live on the radio, were written up by the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly, and signed with globe-trotting DJ Steve Aoki's Dim Mak label. Filter magazine sponsored an August 30 TDS show at the Roxy, as part of their "Revenge of the Sunset Strip" concert series. ( http://blog.filter-mag.com/filter/2007/09/filter-tv-the-d.html)
Guitarist Will Etling grew up in Santa Ynez, California. Jesse Hoy, who plays drums, accordion and keys, hails from Templeton, Ca. Film majors Etling and Hoy met at the University of California at Santa Barbara, playing together in an annual Reel Loud show, where live musicians provide a soundtrack for student films. After graduation in 2004, Hoy snagged work at MTV, filming Cameron Diaz in Africa, and working post-production on Jackass II. Etling went to work on a master's degree in journalism at USC. They kept in touch. Meanwhile, Louisiana native Christopher "Crash" Richard, who elegantly handles vocals and bass guitar, landed work in LA as an executive assistant to Johnny Knoxville of "Jackass." Lacrosse star Mike Hughes, a New York City native who plays keys, drums and xylophone, was in Beverly Hills managing property owned by fellow Brown University alumnus Ben Goldhirsh, the founder of Reason Pictures and Good magazine.
Richard and Hughes were introduced to Hoy and Etling by friends, and The Deadly Syndrome began practicing. Goldhirsh generously offered his guest house as a place to hone their material, on a woodsy five acre parcel in a brush choked canyon. They were pleased when neighbors told them The Animals and Jimi Hendrix had practiced in that very spot. One day, they turned on the TV and were floored to see their canyon burning, but the Beverly Hills fire department quickly doused the flames (no, not with shaken bottles of Dom Perignon.) They all contributed songs and energy, got some gigs, and their work quickly struck a chord with the blogosphere.
"There is a Los Angeles band that has played less than 10 shows in its history. They are great. Already. They will be greater. Any pomp and circumstance or glowing recommendation for The Deadly Syndrome should not be dismissed with a scoff," wrote prescient Sean Moeller of Daytrotter.com, early on.
Radio Free Silver Lake announced, "After seeing The Deadly Syndrome play recently at Spaceland, it's pretty apparent to me why they're being considered one of the LA music scene's most promising new acts...Their set's full of energy, their music – which clocks in at a comfortable place somewhere between Wolf Parade and the Police, is catchy, infectious, and blows away their recorded demo work. They basically just destroy it live."
LA Times columnist Kevin Bronson wrote, "Unbridled euphoria, and wry touches such as onstage cutouts of ghosts, helped the Deadly Syndrome go from zero to signed in a few short months. Well, that and explosive, unaffected songs right out of the Arcade Fire/Modest Mouse/Wolf Parade playbook...The party crowd the quartet has won over is liable to see another side of the Deadly Syndrome when its debut album, "The Ortolan," comes out on Dim Mak Records. It was recorded in a Laurel Canyon house with first-time producers Nico Aglietti and Aaron Older." (Older plays bass and sings for Sugarcult.)
Now it's here. And it is one sick, sweet ride. You can't listen to "This Old Home" without flashing on lonely, wrenching, root-ripping moves in life. "Eucalyptus," too. Is this a song about growing up and moving on? Or a California pioneer saga? I think it's a short history of the rape of the Owens Valley by the Los Angeles Metropolitan water company personally, but who knows. It's Chinatown, Jake. Forget about it. . Only one thing is certain: Every lyric is layered in metaphor, with double, triple, quadruple meanings.
"Emily Paints" leaves you smiling, dancing, or both. The lead solo is killer. "Your lips are close to mine--I'm leaving I'm leaving I'm leaving I'm." Talk about anti-heroes.
"Friends" rocks; "I Release You" is a heartbreaker. Enigma haunts "Creature Creature." "Your waving garments are a flag, dragging waves onto the shore…Are you too much trouble? Oh I think you are, the buried treasure the pirates never want to find..."
"Animals Wearing Clothes" is a good example of how an athletic poet can lob your heart into a wood chipper at 50 yards. "It's a drinking song," said Christopher Richard, on stage at El Cid.
"This was poorly planned, and executed twice as bad, and now we're swapping stories cross the table. Yeah it's rather sad, that mom would cry when dad got mad, and she locked herself in a burned out house while the wedding bells were ringing out... This was poorly wrote, it's a shipwreck, note for note; despite its many flaws, it has you smitten...You're blinded by a verse or two, convinced that they're all about you, but I'm drunk and I'm just sitting, swinging on your front porch singing: Keep it to yourself, make your life a living hell, die a little every day, most people die that way, and when it all went wrong, you became a ghost, it's not as hard as you'd suppose, for animals wearing clothes ."
And what happens when you become a ghost? It's a cheery proposition, actually:
" I hope I become a ghost, I hope I can see the end of time, I hope I become a ghost, and make sure the future turns out fine, I hope I become a ghost, Oh when the world is said and done, The stars will become so close, And there will be nowhere that I can't run..."
"Wolves in the Garden" showcases one of the most chilling, breathtaking lines of all time, set to a simple acoustic strum: "I know I could have saved us, but we'd have never known this day, If this is where we had to go, I guess I'm glad we went this way. All that's left to see is, what kind of flowers we'll become, I'm sure we'll be the kind that bring children out into the sun..."
"The Ship that Shot Itselef" is titled after a drawing Will Etling did in grade school of pirates whose cannonball returns to strike their ship. The title preserves the misspelling on the original art.
There's more, and remember to TURN IT UP LOUD. Try to get to a live show. As great as these songs are, they are unreal when the guys rock them up on stage. They rip your face off, in a nice way.

The art of brevity, lost.

whoa

Joe, your a poser of the worst kind. Did you have to advertise on the Denver Post's discussion board too? Anyone with a screen name of Deadly Fan and uses (ctrl + c) and (ctrl + v) as a means to litter the internet should get a life. This isn't to suggest that Deadly Syndrome might not be a good band (and I'm certainly not suggesting the other either). But if you want to promote a band go stand on the corner and give out free CD's.

Or, i'd suggest keeping it to a few lines and not an essay length mess of unreadable paste jobs. Just saying.

Show me someone who actually read that drivel and I'll show you someone with chronic eye strain.