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Blowing All the Gray Clouds Away with a Hair Dryer of Fun
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The Grates
Gravity Won't Get You High
Cherry Tree / Interscope
Some records are just perfect. Some records you put on and you get it immediately and it speaks to you and you love it and you wear it out and you listen to it in the shower and you listen to it when you drive and you listen to it when you're writing the review in the middle of the night for your blog.
Some cds you get and you cant believe it and you rip it into iTunes and you play it in your iPod and you take long walks just so you can listen and it makes your dirty East Hollywood neighborhood brighter and sparklier and you can swear that it gets warmer when ever you play it.
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But then you put it away for a while so you don't get sick of it, and when you listen again after a few weeks there are all your favorite songs again and you're amazed at how different they all are from each other, like a half dozen adorable puppies all from the same litter, similar but one cuter than the next.
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Her name is Patience. She's adorable. She wears dresses and sings about cute things but for some reason the music isn't so sticky sweet that it gets on your fingers. Maybe it's the dude guitar player and the pounding drummer. Maybe it's the times Patience says fucking and motherfucker and uh-uh.
Our girl jumps around, creates her own dances, spins, twirls, kicks, smiles, accents with her hands and makes you think she'd rather be nowhere else than dancing for you and singing her songs with her friends. Some motherfuckers were born to rule.
"Rock Boys" builds, "19 20 20" bops, and guess what "Howl" does?
If the Yeahs weren't so dark and NYCish, if Bjork wasn't so damn arty, if Iggy had freckles and was born in the sweetest little Australian village.
This is the music that every wannabe punk rock girl who realized she wasn't punk would love to write. This is the music that makes you hate Panic! for getting so much undue attention, this is the music they should play on KROQ and MTV because it's exactly what the high school kids should be forcefed because it's original and fun and creative and solid.
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This is the sound of one band loving.
Run, don't walk to get this cd. Fine, skip.
OK, trampoline there.
The Grates play tonight at Cinespace and tomorrow at Spaceland
Video after the jump...
The Grates
Silence is Golden
from "Gravity Won't Get You High"
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