What I Bought

Mike Watt, "Tuff Gnarl" (Download)

Yesterday I picked up a used CD copy of Mike Watt's first solo album, Ball-Hog or Tugboat? and it is awesome.

Normally I don't really get records with that "so and so and all their friends" concept -- they seem weird and name drop-y to me, but Drew and I were listening to this in the car last night and reading the liner notes each track seriously became an event. After each song ended, Drew was like, "Who's playing on the next one!?" and each line-up was better than the previous track's.

The standout songs for me were "Against the 70's" and "Tuff Gnarl" (which Drew and I both think sounds like a song that a sort of proto-Los Campesinos! would have recorded.) I especially like Carla Bozulich's (The Geraldine Fibbers) vocals on "Tuff Gnarl" -- plus it has Petra Haden on the violin and J. Mascis on drums! (The more Watt stuff I listen to the more frustrated I am for not going to see him the last time he was in town.)

Last week I also picked up the new Dum Dum Girls single which was, as expected, great. I'm really looking forward to seeing Girls and Dum Dum Girls in Oberlin this April. You can hear the new single on the