WONGIE INDIE SONG OF THE WEEK: palma violets - step up for the cool cats

palma violets - step up for the cool cats
though this band had serious buzz last year (nme named their song 'best of friends' (see below) #1 for 2012), it's this second single that definitely does it for me. catchy yet raw, there is something quite mature about their songwriting skills, heck it's got organs, a killer guitar hook and a guy that whispers 'catsssss' in the background, what more do you want?
palma violets - best of friends

WONGIE DISCOVERY: funeral party - finale / nyc moves to the sound of la

[named nme's #47 best new bands of 2010, there's nothing like a fun rowdy post punk trio based in la, with a whole lotta swagger in the process! then again, LA is full of actors and fakers, so this could be an intricate art project. ok, maybe not...]


funeral party - finale


funeral party - nyc moves to the sound of la
[blasphemous claim in the song title, but this ny-er will forgive these boys due to the awesome use of cowbells in the track!]

WONGIE DISCOVERY: chew lips - slick / seven / salt air

FROM RCRD LBL

“Our greatest goal”, Chew Lips’ frontwoman Tigs laughingly asserts, tongue half in cheek, “is to hear our music in the café on Eastenders”.

It is highly unusual to hear a tender young band from East London fantasise about the joys of hearing their music on Albert Square, but then again, there is nothing quite usual about Chew Lips. Not their way of making music, or their live shows, or indeed, their inception. After doing the Indie Band Shuffle, in the spring of this year vocalist Tigs and multi-instrumentalists James Watkins and Will Sanderson eventually decided to start making music together, with only one edict: not to sound like Just Another Guitar Band.

With only that in mind, the trio subsequently decamped to a friend’s studio to test the waters of the Chew Lips sound. “We had no idea what we wanted to sound like, only what we didn’t want to sound like”, James avers. “And I think, in some strange way, that helped us. We didn’t know what we were doing, so we just did everything”. The result was the organic and purely accidental evolution of their current, electronically enhanced sound. Experimenting and improvising, they wrote 10 songs right off the bat."

and what songs they are! check out their latest single 'slick' which is just brilliant!!

chew lips - slick
[if you like this song, the great folks of nme have made it their daily download]


chew lips - seven (live @ the lounge)


chew lips - salt air (levi's one to watch)

kate nash - mouthwash (video premiere)

kate nash - mouthwash [link 2]
[it's her 2nd release!!!! but on to some news. with the massive success of kate's single foundations (which i was clearly a big fan of), kate nash is now ready to bring her brand of anti-folk to the US. according to nme, geffen will release the foundations EP (via digital outlets) which will not only feature the song and video, but also b-sides 'caroline's a victim', 'habanera' and 'navy taxi'.

for those of you in the NYC area, kate will also be doing two showcases. so check the girl out at the following venues below.

September 24th Brooklyn, NY Luna
September 25th New York, NY Joe’s Pub

guess where you'll see me on the 24th?]

hype wongie: beth ditto naked on the cover of NME!

gossip - listen up (a touch of class remix)

you just know that the second this photo was taken, a definitive iconic moment in beth ditto's career was born. it's time for the US to re-embrace this diva!

here are some highlights of her conversation with the indie bible:

One of the things Beth Ditto does gives a f*ck about, is body image. So much so, that Beth recently refused for The Gossip to play instores at Topshop, citing her dissatisfaction that there isn’t a clothes range available in her size. She even went as far as to offer to design clothes for them. [wongie note: ironically, i saw this exact cover IN a topshop!]

She’s never claimed to promote her body size (“I’m just saying people should be empowered about who they are,” she tells us), yet it’s worth asking, does she feel a responsibility to pick a side in the size zero debate?

“Not at all,” says Beth, immediately. “Things are more complicated than that – there’s too many factors to pick a side. The older I get and the more models and designers I meet... sometimes models are naturally just thin. Like, that’s their size.”

When you talk about meeting models, do you mean Kate Moss?
“Kate is amazing,” purrs Beth. “I spent one night talking to her and she just said the most amazing things about bodies. At first I didn’t think I was going to like her, but she just turned up to one of our shows and said, ‘Do you know what I hate, Beth? When people tell my big girlfriends, ‘You have a beautiful face...’’ I mean, that’s a really radical concept.”


Do you not think Kate Moss actually has a responsibility to answer to the size debate, though?
“You can’t hate a person for dieting, and you can’t blame a person for feeling shit about themselves. You have to blame the machine that feeds it, the thing that makes people feel like that. There are lots of things that are part of that machine, and it’s too easy to lay the blame at the feet of women – men don’t know what it feels like to be a woman and be expected to look a particular way all the time. The Beckhams are part of the machine; Paris Hilton is part of the machine. There’s that thing Paris Hilton said about Lindsay Lohan – ‘You’re poor, ugly and fat’. It’s always women who are victims of that machine and the messages the machine gives out.”

“I have this thing where I don’t ever want to bad-mouth a woman. Except for Paris Hilton.” She laughs again. “Please tell me you saw that thing where she was crying in the newspapers, about her going to prison. It was so funny. I was laughing until I was crying.”

Tell me more about not wanting to bad-mouth women...
Beth speaks quietly again. “I pick and choose my battles. I think Condoleezza Rice is more of a goddamn shame than Kate Moss, and I think those are the things people should concentrate on. What I’m saying is that, if there’s anyone to blame for size zero, it’s not women. Blame the media. Blame gay men who work in the fashion industry who want these women as dolls.”

gosh darnit the girl is cool!

while we're on a gossip uk high, here is the infamous promo of the awesome E4 teen series skins that brought beth and co. to the british mainstream.

skins - uncut promo