Strong enough to move over and give me Myspace

Some great Myspace finds who are any or all of the following: (1) not Lily Allen (I still like her, but she's crossed over to Mislabeled Monday land. I wish her well there, I'm not bitter or anything...we've just grown apart lately. I mean, we've both changed, I guess, I just wish we could hang out and talk, you know?), (2) ex-models, (3) Radio Disney-bound cover fluff (not the good kind), or (4) FROM BOWIE, MARYLAND!



The Revelations

Less of a revelation (yeesh, sorry) after all the Pipettes hype, but a great little 60s girl group wannabe, not as good or as fun as their record collections (the Pipettes sound bored, which sort of works for them but not for me). The stuff from their Fierce Panda record ("You're the Loser") is closer to the hatbox'd girl group sound than what they're streaming from the Mercury album (due in September).



Brit and Alex

Thin, chirpy twin-pop that displays about half Brit and Alex's stated influences. Some bubblegummy hip-hop and dance-pop, a sub-par Michael Jackson attempt (not like they could hope to be on par or anything, and it's not terrible), shades of twinfessional in the intro to their only ballad, "If You Knew," which quickly turns into more of a (bubblegummy) R&B track. Overall they strike me as two Hilary Duffs sans robot precision. And the idea of that is awesome, but the music is kind of boring. Wow, wouldn't have guessed they were child performers-turned-models but I can kind of see it now.



Ruthe Charles

WOOOOOO BOWIE MARYLAND REPRESENT! Wow, teenpop masterminding was happening in my own backyard and I was too dumb to even notice! Ruthe recently changed her profile to read "Washington, D.C.," which is pretty much what I did when I got to college, too. But have some hometown pride! (Actually says she was born and raised in Croom, MD, no idea where that is.) The music is pretty good, kind of stuck in a netherrealm between c. 2003 power-teenpop and new wavier punk-pop.



Jena Kraus

I wrote "Joanna Newsom meets Marit Larsen" in my one note. Not sure what that would sound like (doesn't really describe it in retrospect), but I don't think I'd want to hear it. "Both Dads R Dead Dogs" is a great title, but my roommates are watching Freaks and Geeks w/ director's commentary right now so I can't turn the speakers up loud enough to hear it.

EDIT: Just listened to "Both Dads R Dead Dogs" about five times in a row (starting on six). From Koganspace1:

She puts on a little girl voice and then double-tracks herself as another little girl, the two girls shadowing each other, going from baby talk to sharp screams. Blazing fury made from scraps and castoffs, feedback and fuzz. Jena holds her dad responsible for the death of her first dog, her stepdad responsible for the death of her second. She promises vengeance - karmic vengeance, cosmic vengeance. A special message just for her stepdad: "When you reverse dog, what does it spell? She's gonna get you, you're gonna rot in hell."

Something else that's really interesting about this song is its structure. It starts as a disturbing lullaby to Jena Kraus' first second dog, Cocoa Bean. "I remember she used to smile as I rubbed her tummy/ ...She'll never be mean like him/ ...She'll hold my secrets/ She'll never tell." So the dead dog becomes a literal site of confession before the shouted chorus comes in, with no prior biographical context (to be explained in the next verse), "BOTH DADS ARE! DEAD DOGS!" Then there's some more straightforward linkage of the dads to the dogs, and then the quiet breakdown with the step-dad line -- which sounds even better than it reads because Jena has somehow made it funny. The situation is sick but so is her delivery; it's self-conscious without compromising the tragic undercurrent, about equally absurd and profound. Now I'm hung up trying to list everything that these dogs symbolize...her childhood, her trauma, both dads and their failures (as dads, as men), and the wrath of God, to name a few ("she's gonna get you"...I imagine her step-dad being attacked by Cerberus, two heads for each dog and the third for Jena with a twisted little smile on her face).



IQ Music

Gicelle! Mikayla! Nyla! and Sadiea! make IQ Music! Except, um, two streamed songs spell "you" as "U." (Maybe it stands for Irony Quotient?) There's also a cover of "Big Girls Don't Cry" that's waaaay worse than anything Girl Authority has ever done. But I think Girl Authority are inspired despite their occasional godawfulness, while IQ Music is just -- groooooan -- kind of dumb. OMG DISNEY AFFILIATED? NO WAY! But I'm glad that they led me to Lil' J Xavier, one of the few recent incubaTor artists whose Myspace page I can actually find. Hey IQ Girls, y'all seen any Lil' Josh prude-rap streaming anywhere?