J-Rab and I have been meaning to take our grocery shopping experience to a whole other level by hitting up the Fruit and Veg City near Gardens.
We were in the market for some fresh, affordable produce because fruit and vegetables are an important ally in the fight against scurvy (we learned that the hard way).
So we set off on Saturday, already silently congratulating ourselves for being so progressive in our choice of fruit and vegetable vendor only to encounter a distinctly average shopping experience.
Walking in, one of the Fruit and Veg trolley jockeys drove a trolley square into my Achilles tendon, which is to be expected in a store that looks like someone with one eye laid it out.
We spent the next twenty minutes painstakingly navigating our way through cramped, badly laid out isles only to queue for a till that didn’t have a card facility, forcing me to stand at another isle to pay for my groceries.
In retrospect that’s probably the moment when an opportunistic fellow shopper / Fruit and Veg employee decided to make off with our tinned tomatoes which mysteriously disappeared between putting them in our basket and driving back home.
To add insult to injury the lettuce pillow cases, which any vegetarian will tell you are the cornerstone of healthy living, looked sad and soggy and the free range chicken legs we bought decided to expire spectacularly after we bought them, exactly one day before the sell by date.
To be honest, I felt more than a little relieved when we discovered that the rancid smell in the kitchen was the chicken and not the imaginary farts J-Rab kept accusing me of making.
AND (last one I promise) the loaf of rye bread we bought on Saturday had started growing mould by Monday, which is probably the worst day to have to deal with mouldy anything.
We were drawn to Fruit and Veg City by the promise of quality fruit and vegetables at bargain prices and were greeted instead with pretty much the same prices you pay anywhere and ropey food.
Sure, not ALL the food was ropey, you can lower your pitchforks. It was really just the salad we saw, the mouldy rye bread we bought and the chicken that turned on us faster than a rabid housepet. The fruit we bought was top-quality, but it’s not really that much cheaper than Pick ‘n Pay.
Did I just go on a bad day? Any of you guys shop there regularly? Should we bother going back?
God I hate bandwagons. Even the word is fucking stupid. What does it even mean? A wagon bands cruise around in? Since fucking when?! And who the fuck would want to jump on one of those?
Anyway. Regardless of what the origin of the term is, EVERYONE is talking about the Kony 2012 video so I figured I would too because site hits are like crack and daddy needs a fix.
The underlying message from the YouTube video about Kony is “make the evil fucker famous so that we can kill himâ€, but if you’re dumb enough to believe that’s the only thing motivating Invisible Children, then stop reading this now.
I’m not going to go into a detailed breakdown of the counter-Kony 2012 arguments doing the rounds on the interwebs at the moment because I know you guys are smart and either know this already or can look it up later, so here’s my take on it all:
Yes, Kony is a supremely evil person and deserves to die for what he’s done
Yes, it’s a good thing that now the world is aware of what happened (PAST tense) in Uganda and it’s a good thing that people are uniting across borders for a common cause
But the fact is, Kony hasn’t been active in Uganda since 2006 and he and his troops no longer occupy the country and are rumoured to have moved to the DRC
So why campaign to send more American troops into Uganda so long after Kony’s reign of merciless slaughter and brainwashing has ended?
Oil. Plain and simple. America needs an excuse to get troops in there so they can get their filthy mitts on Uganda’s oil supplies and what better smokescreen than Kony 2012? It’s the Facebook version of 9/11 all sugar-coated and easy to swallow
Also, only 32% of the profits from Invisible Children go to Uganda. The rest goes into funding more movies and paying everyone working for the organisation’s salaries
And let’s not forget the powerfully manipulative narrative that underpins the whole Kony 2012 video. Did he have to bring his kid into it? “When I grow up I wanna be like you dad!†Are you fucking serious?! Be wary of anyone who resorts to tactics like that to make you believe something, it is deeply manipulative
But don’t get me wrong, I think uniting people against a man like Kony is a noble cause which is why, in my own way, I’m going to help the cause by making Kony even famouser.
It’s been way too long since my last post but that’s because I’ve been in THAILAND, soaking up the sunshine, drinking ice-cold coconuts and playing “spot the ladyboy†on Bangla Road.
See, last year J-Rab and I won a travel voucher worth R20 000 from Nandos which we initially thought was just for Africa, but later found out was for anywhere in the world.
So we bought a 7 night stay at the Kata Palm Beach Resort in Phuket, jumped on a plane Monday a week ago and began what turned out to be the SICKEST holiday we’ve ever had.
Phuket is a jungle paradise. It’s surrounded by 32 islands and a turquoise ocean that is not only crystal clear but sits at a balmy 28 degrees, making it warm enough that you can float around for hours and cool enough that if you dive down deep you can escape the sweltering heat that blazes relentlessly, making everyone shiny with a permanent sheen of sweat.
From the minute we stepped out of the airport until the minute we boarded the plane to leave again, is was literally boiling hot. It rained once when we were driving back to the airport, otherwise everyday was an average of 32 degrees and so humid it felt like you were walking around in an oven.
It was glorious! You basically just move from one body of water to the next – ocean, hotel swimming pool, cold shower, ocean again – while your skin gets visibly browner with each day.
So yeah, it’s a jungle paradise, the weather is SICK, the beaches are stunning and it’s ridiculous how much there is to see and do. The only one slight drawback though is how many millions and millions of tourists and just people in general are packed onto Phuket.
Because of this, at any given time, the place is sheer chaos. Everything from the anarchic roads to the seemingly haphazard way the whole of Phuket is built exudes this vibe of infectious craziness and energy that sparks in the air and makes you feel ALIVE, BROTHER!
It’s madness. Just take a 20 minute stroll down a road in Kata and you’ll be offered 9 tuk-tuk rides, 12 Thai massages, 6 suits (so random), 7 banana pancakes and 4 coconuts.
You’ll see easily 100 scooters zipping along the roads and 200 sunburned tourists ambling aimlessly looking ugly and bored shitless (there are exceptions to every rule, but generally I hated the shit out of the other tourists. Overweight, old and bored-looking, I wanted to slap them upside the head and be like, “Smile you goddamn miserable pricks! You’re in paradise!â€).
I don’t really know where to start writing about our experience in Phuket, so I think I’ll just let the pictures do the talking instead.
Besides the 900+ pics we took, I also filmed about two hours of random, crazy shit that I’m hoping to cut up into a Tiger Life video (yeah, remember those?) which will give you guys a much better sense of what we got up to.
If you haven’t been to Thailand already, for God’s sake get your shit together and go there. Once your flights and accomodation are taken care of, it’s dirt cheap once you land there. Save up R5k and it will easily last you a week in Phuket.
Hope you enjoyed the pics. Now back to work ya lazy bum!
As amazingly entertaining, arbitrary and awesome as the internet is, there’s also a darker, far more sordid side to it.
Yes, you guessed it. I’m referring to the “cute factor†that turns distinctly average content into a powerful internet supervirus because we live in a sibling society where people dwell in the perpetual twilight of their childhood years, refusing point blank to grow the fuck up.
It’s Neverland, and it’s populated with sickeningly adorable characters that people LOVE simply because they evoke that “aaaawwwwww, cuuuuuuuuuttte†reaction that defies all rational logic.
Case in point – Sophia Grace Brownlee and her hilariously useless sidekick cousin.
For those of you who don’t know these two distinctly mediocre, irritating little girls, let me enlighten you.
It all began back in September last year when this video hit the internet. Brace yourselves, the content I’m about to show you WILL instantly trigger your gag reflex.
Yeah. Pour yourself a whisky now, because it only gets worse.
So mom films her kid and goofy sidekick singing a distinctly average version of an irritating pop song which, let’s be honest, isn’t the first time in history that’s ever been done.
The difference is that is years past, recordings like that would be relegated to the VHS drawer under the TV and not surface again until the “performer’s†21st birthday where she would die of embarrassment the second the play button was pressed.
Instead, this video exploded in such a huge way on the internet that it has had no less than 31 MILLION views to date!
So great. Well done to everyone involved. Excellent work guys. Let’s just get on with our lives shall we?
No. We shall not. Enter Ellen Degenerate who, credit where it’s due, is one smart lesbian. She latches onto these talentless little chavs like a goddamn barnacle and exactly one month after the video appears on YouTube, this happens:
People lose their minds. They think these two girls are the most adorable, cheeky, loveable, talented, and all round SUPERCUTEST things they have ever seen and Ellen’s eyes turn into gigantic green dollar signs as a world of possibilities opens up to her.
One month after that performance on her show, she gets them all tarted up to the max and plants them squarely on the red carpet at the American Music Awards.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
So now not only do celebs have to put up with the paparazzi swarming them like locusts on the red carpet, but they also have two (let’s be honest, one) hysterical, screaming pink girls to deal with.
I love the cousin though. “We are so excited to be here, aren’t we Rosie?†“Whatever. I can’t believe you dragged me into this again…â€
And the thing is, unlike the other members of the press, you have to be nice to the cute little girls or you WILL be crucified on the spot and left desperately trying to douse the flames of your near-unsalvageable career.
Something else that’s interesting to note on that last clip is how exponentially precocious the little scamps are becoming – a sure sign that they are being spoilt ROTTEN which any child psychologist will tell you is a great way to raise kids.
But whatever right? Who cares? I saw those videos last year, shrugged it off as people being pathetic and had another whisky.
BUT, in a furious bout of trawling the interwebs yesterday what do I find? ANOTHER fucking video of these two on the red carpet of ANOTHER awards ceremony.
Only this time it’s the Grammys and as you can tell from both the girls and the celebs themselves, everyone’s starting to get a little tired of this sparkly pink dog and pony show.
I love the way all the celebs address Ellen in a thinly disguised “seriously, enough with this shit now†tone, priceless!
How did this ever get so big? What are the implications for our society that something like this is not only allowed, but encouraged to happen? Those kids will never be the same. How can anything they ever do ever live up to the experiences they’ve been spoiled with thus far?
I mean to be fair, they don’t know any better. They’re literally just being handed everything they want on a silver plate because God knows why, people love it.
As irritating as they are, I can’t help but feel sorry for them because this is child exploitation in it’s very worst form and call me old school, but I don’t think it should ever have been allowed to get this ridiculously overblown.
I know what you think when you think about Valentine’s Day, because I think the exact same thing: BLOWJOBS.
That’s right. BLOWIES. But do we ever get them? No we do not. And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why men HATE Valentine’s Day.
I use the Charlie Brown analogy. That poor, poor basterd.
Always running up to kick the football that Lucy, who is a manipulative little thing if I ever saw one, ALWAYS pulls away at the last second, making Charlie land square on his ass.
Likewise, you buy your lady some flowers, a box of chocolates, maybe a gay little soft toy. You take her out for dinner and wine at a restaurant that has prices so high your balls hurt just thinking about them and you show her a great time.
You take her back home to the rose petal trail leading to the bedroom, light a few candles and give her a loving backrub with Roman Chamomile oil with a little Kenny G playing softly in the background.
You are so ready at this stage to get the best blowie of YOUR LIFE that you can hardly contain your excitement as you strip down and assume the position, ready to have your member and your mind BLOWN TO KINGDOM COME only to find…
She’s fallen into a wine-Kenny-G-and-sensual-backrub-induced coma and you’re somersaulting through the air, about to land square on your ass.
Either that or she sidles up to you all seductively, and whispers something devious like, “Whaddya say we just skip to the good part?†and before you know it, SCHLOOMF! It’s all over.
Well, I’m here to tell you some good news brother!
Because 2012 is a leap year, it ain’t Valentine’s Day on the 14th of Feb, it’s MANENTINE’S DAY, which means all the blowies YOU CAN HANDLE!
That’s right ladies, this year it’s all about spoiling your MAN. This is what the good folks at Savanna explained to me on Monday when I found ANTON TAYLOR and a BELTER waiting for me at reception:
That’s not all though. They also dropped off a whole lot of SICK manly stuffs like TOILET GOLF:
GUN ALARM CLOCK:
And my personal favourite, MMA DVD:
Don’t lie. You want this stuff SO BADLY right?
It’s all good homes, go to Savanna’s FB page by clicking on these magical words and tell them what your ultimate MANentine’s date would involve and you could win a date worth R10 000.
And if she DOESN’T give you a blowie at the end of that, well, I have some bad news for you.
You are dating a nun.
Good luck out there – if anyone’s gonna win this competition, it’ll be one of you crazy basterds
Anyone who follows the music press and music blogs is probably sick to death of the three words “Lana Del Ray†at the moment and I have to apologise before I even start writing this for adding to the hype surrounding this “artistâ€.
But the thing is, at the moment Lana Del Ray is like that girl at high-school who magically got gorgeous overnight and in doing so, managed to get the entire school talking about her.
Murmurs about her started last year when her track “Video Games†hit the internet, but now that her debut album Born To Die has been released, those murmurs have evolved into people shouting indignantly from the rooftops that Lana Del Ray is full of shit.
I gave her album a spin yesterday so I could hear for myself what the fuss was all about and I emerged from that experience simultaneously entranced and disappointed.
The tracks that made her famous (“Video Games†and “Blue Jeansâ€) appear on the album in all their languid glory, brimming over with promise, tension and that unmistakeable melancholy that so articulates the theme of the broken American Dream, which is at the heart of this album.
“Diet Mountain Dew†and “Radio†also stand out as noteworthy tracks – I mean how could you not admire an artist who rhymes the cringe-worthy line “Now my life is sweet like cinnamon†with the undeniably bitter, “Like a fucking dream I’m living in†as Del Ray does in “Radio�
I think what the furore about her all boils down to can be summed up on one simple statement: no one wants to believe she’s real.
Everything about her, from her looks to her style to her music, has been accused of being manufactured like she’s just another plastic robot being churned out of the Fame Factory with no real substance to her whatsoever.
And, sad to say, if you listen to the final few tracks on Born To Die (ie. tracks like “This Is What Makes Us Girls†and “Lolitaâ€), which sound like outtakes from a Britney Spears album, you’d agree in an instant that she’s a pop shop mannequin and nothing more.
But somehow that just doesn’t sit right with me. Call me naive, but I think there’s more to Miss Lizzie Grant (her real name) than the haters out there are willing to acknowledge or accept.
Sure, her Saturday Night Live performance was a little ropey, but in one of the most telling interviews I’ve read about her over the last few months, she replied to Rolling Stone’s comment to her that the backlash from the SNL performance was pretty harsh saying:
There’s backlash about everything I do. It’s nothing new. When I walk outside, people have something to say about it. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was absolutely excellent. People don’t have anything nice to say about this project. I’m sure that’s why you’re writing about it.
Suffice to say, I haven’t made up my mind about Lana Del Ray just yet. Her debut album, for all it’s intrigue, is admittedly a bit of an incoherent mess stylistically (she swings from Amy Winehouse to Mickey Mouse Club so effortlessly it’s scary), but if she’s still around, I think album no. 2 is going to melt faces.
In the meantime, don’t write her off completely. Give Born To Die a listen and, if nothing else, you’ll at least, you’ll at least be able to formulate your own opinion and wield it with authority the next time a hipster starts hating on Lana like he’s some nerd she refused to go to the prom with.
So I’m lurking on Twitter the other day, stinking the place up and making a nuisance of myself as usual and I come across this tweet from ol’ @RubyGold (who, on any given day, tweets about 1000 times at a useful:useless shit ratio of roughly 7:3) about an MI5 quiz.
I immediately dropped everything I was doing and hit the link he posted and from what I can tell, it’s legit; MI5 have actually designed an online quiz to test if you got the mad skillz to apply for a job there.
It doesn’t take too long to complete (15 minutes to be exact) but it’s pretty intense. I scored 5 out of a possible 8 points so they were totally fine with me applying for a job on the understanding that I speak to no one about this or a team will be dispatched with Parker-Hale M85 sniper rifles to-
Huh. Someone just smsed me to come to the window, BRB…
In the meantime, here’s the dealy-o about that quiz I mentioned with the link below:
Investigative Challenge:
We have developed a challenge to help you to assess your use of information and analytical skills. The Investigative Challenge has been designed to give you a greater understanding of whether you would enjoy and be well-suited to the MI5 Intelligence Officer role. Although this isn’t a required part of the recruitment process, we strongly encourage you to complete the task as it will help you to assess some of your skills in relation to the job.
The challenge should take you approximately 15 minutes to complete. You will be asked to view a number of written documents and answer some multiple choice questions relating to what you have read. The exercise is designed to broadly reflect some of the situations Intelligence Officers at MI5 are expected to deal with.
Before applying for the Intelligence Officer role, consider how easy or difficult you found completing the challenge. You will find details of the roles for which we are currently recruiting on our Current Jobs page.
It was only natural that after personal email accounts were invented, some genius would figure out a way to send an email, with the click of one button, to an address that goes to everyone in the office.
It’s a brilliant way to share innocuous jokes, engage in some inter-office banter or remind everyone that the office email address is NOT for sharing jokes or wasting everyone’s time with inter-office banter.
Thanks to all@xxx.xxx addresses at the various companies I’ve worked for, I’ve been sent countless emails about animals that need homes, been schooled time and time again about Jesus and been sent life-changing emails like this one.
This one’s called “Tips To Make Your Life Easier†and thanks to these tips, my life is now too awesome to handle.
Tip #1:
A tip for holiday packing. Store shoes inside shower caps to stop dirty soles rubbing on your clothes. And you can find them in just about every hotel!
Are you actually serious?! Best. Tip. Ever. Put your shoes in a shower cap and they somehow magically appear in “just about every hotelâ€!
The minute I read this I raced home and covered all my shoes in shower caps. I have yet to go to a hotel since doing this, but if the internet can be trusted, I’m pretty sure I’ll find all my shoes there.
Tip #2:
A muffin pan becomes a craft caddy. Magnets hold the plastic cups down to make them tip-resistant.
This is super-neat because up until now I’ve been using an old egg carton for my craft caddy and thus the cup size for my paintbrushes, scissors, crayons and fruit pastilles has been severely limited.
The only problem with this tip is that now that my baking tray is full of useful junk, it made tip #3 a little tricky…
Tip #3:
Turn your muffin pan upside down, bake cookie-dough over the top and voila – you have cookie bowls for fruit or ice-cream.
See, I tried this tip and while it did make some pretty amazing cookie bowls, all my craft utensils melted into this toxic, multi-coloured gloop on the bottom of my oven, producing a thick, black smoke that stained the roof of our flat so badly the landlord says he’s keeping our deposit.
Still, the cookie bowls were awesome. Even if they did taste a little of melted plastic and resulted in us having to be rushed to the emergency room.
Yum!
Tip #4:
Win friends at breakfast with this heart-shaped egg tutorial. Aww shucks!
For the longest time, I’d finish up a hearty breakfast feeling nourished physically, but completely empty and unfulfilled emotionally.
It was then that I realised it was because I wasn’t winning friends at breakfast!
With this handy tip, I win friends all the time now. Why, just the other day I was talking to one of the recent friends I’ve won, reminiscing about how we first met in a crowded restaurant and how, using nothing more than a rubber band I carry around with me everywhere I go, a chopstick and a rectangular piece of paper, I mangled 5 hard boiled eggs trying to make an egg / boat thing that I then cut in half to create egg hearts so I could win his friendship!
“Ha ha. Yeah…†he said, thinking back on that day, “I hate you.â€
Tip #5:
Bread tags make the perfect-sized cord labels.
Ever since I started using this tip, all that endless confusion about which cable belongs to my mouse and which one powers my laptop is finally over!
Now I come to work confident in the knowledge that no longer will I waste the first hour of my day trying to plug my mouse into the power cable hole and vice versa, hooray!
I hope you guys find these five tips as useful as I did and share them with friends and family to make their lives easier too.
Send this post on now to 5 people and an amazing thing will happen in your life!
Send it on to 10 and you will be magically granted the ability to fly and shoot lasers out of your eyes and send it to 20 or more and you will win so much money, you’ll be richer than God!
I tell ya, I’ve been putting this fucking post off for a good two weeks now while everyone else’s top 50, 20, 10 and 5 lists have been flooding the Twittersphere.
And no, it’s not because I wanted to suss their lists first to make sure mine’s not crap, it’s because there were so many great albums that landed this year I don’t know where the fuck to start.
In the end, I followed the tried and tested method of sorting my iTunes library by year and scrolling down whilst mentally jogging through all the albums I listened to this year, yielding the following scientifically accurate results…
NUMBER 10 – Deerhoof (Deerhoof Vs Evil)
What quickly becomes apparent when listening to Deerhoof’s 11th album is that for all its chaotic bursts of noise and bizarre musical twists and turns, this band has the kind of musical talent that borders on genius.
This album will confuse the shit out of you the first time you hear it. However, Japanese frontlady Satomi Matsuzaki’s bubblegum-pop perfect vocal delivery and guitarist John Dieterich’s ability to write effortlessly catchy guitar riffs will have you coming back for more.
If you like your music irreverent, unpredictable, catchy as hell and severely tripped out you won’t be able to put this album down. Here’s “Secret Mobilisation†to give you a taste:
NUMBER 9 – Foster The People (Torches)
Yes, yes, I know. How could anyone who considers himself a serious music critic endorse a band that produces such blatantly unapologetic indie pop?
I’ll admit that Foster The People is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine, but y’know what?
Sometimes I just want to listen to catchy singalong tunes that don’t send me spiralling into a vortex of existential angst and introspection, is that a crime?!
Torches is packed full of great hooks, clap-your-hands-and-dance-around carefree summer melodies and chorouses that bounce inside your head for days.
Here’s the video for “Don’t Stop (Colour On The Walls)†– you HAVE to watch this, it’s brilliant!
NUMBER 8 – Cults
Continuing in the indie pop vein (don’t worry, this list grows some big hairy balls later) the Cults’ debut self-titled album also impressed.
This band borrows sounds from traditional 50s teen prom-pop, doo-wop and surf rock, laces them with a heavy dose of reverb and samples of cult leaders speaking to their followers and then wraps it all up in frontlady Madeline Follin’s high-pitched cantopop style vocals.
Which is a very convoluted way of saying this band writes simple melodies, sick hooks and killer songs that are seriously easy to get into and carry just enough weight to not be completely dismissed as indie pop fluff.
Here’s the video for “Abductedâ€, the opening track on Cults. Oddly enough, it also features a lot of driving. Starting to pick up a trend here…
NUMBER 7 – Taxi Violence (Long Way From Home)
The only SA band to make it on the Tiger’s list! Yeah, I need to sink my teeth into more local music…
Long Way From Home features re-written, acoustic versions of old favourites like “The Messâ€, “Devil ‘n Pistol†and “The Turn†which sound like they’ve been taken apart and completely rebuilt from scratch. And of course, Taxi Violence threw in one or two new tracks written specifically for the album.
It’s a refreshing change from your stereotypical acoustic album where most bands just swap electric guitars for acoustic ones and serve up warmed up leftovers thinly disguised as an album actually worth listening to.
Their acoustic rendition of “Heads and Tails†is particularly noteworthy, as is “Long Way From Home†with its upbeat, bluesy / rock flavour played with bright, jangling guitars and tambourines that reminded me of some of the earlier Supergrass albums.
To give you a taste of what I’m banging on about, here’s the SICK video they shot for “Heads Or Tailsâ€, which recently won the Best Video Award at the 2011 Wirral International Film Festival.
NUMBER 6 – Seasick Steve (You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks)
I met my buddy Seasick Steve when I was down in the dumps earlier this year and we became great buddies.
See, ol’ Seasick knows how bad things can get, before he made it he used to busk in the Paris Metro, only finding fame in his late fifties.
This guy is the real deal, from his frazzled grey soup-catcher to his beaten up John Deere cap and dungarees, he is everything that is badass about old-school blues.
He has a voice like an old grizzly bear and can change it up from the low, lonely, slit-your-wrists ballad I’m about to play you to foot-stompin, redneck country and western tracks that bring words like “yeee-haw!†and “hootenanny!†to mind.
I just think he’s fucking cool. I’ve got a soft spot for old veterans like my pal Seasick. He attributes his recent success to his cheap and weather-beaten guitar “The Trance Wonder†which he bought off a friend of his in Mississippi who later revealed to Seasick that it was haunted.
Check out this video of the ol’ grizzly bear playing “Burnin’ Up†at SXSW earlier this year and dig his outburst at 2:18. What a badass.
NUMBER 5 – Yuck
My favourite debut album of the year and irrefutable proof that, like a gigantic, spindly cockroach surviving a nuclear apocalypse, the 90s will never die.
This band packs all the distorted, wailing guitar fury of bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr and the playful, foot-tapping basslines of the Pixies topped off with a fuzzy vocal tone Pavement would be proud of.
But that’s not what made this album shine for me.
What made it shine lies in this band’s seemingly effortless ability to write melodies that soar with breath-taking dexterity above the tracks that make up this self-titled debut.
One part fuzzy, wah-pedal driven slacker indie rock and one part slow-burning, melody-driven alt rock worthy of old school Smashing Pumpkins / REM, Yuck carries a powerful emotional gravitas that blazes a trail through lesser bands’ attempts at redefining one of the defining decades in rock music history.
Simply put, this album is everything that was great about 90’s garage / grunge low-fi reimagined in the 21st century.
Here’s “Get Away†so you can hear for yourself what makes this band great:
NUMBER 4 – Arctic Monkeys (Suck It And See)
Arctic Monkeys made a name for themselves by perfecting the art of writing gigantic, energetic hooks and hammering them home effortlessly a talent that the band exploited extensively in their first two albums.
Then came Humbug, one of the first albums I ever reviewed on this site and with it, a complete departure from the sound they had carved out for themselves in Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and Favourite Worst Nightmare.
They enlisted Josh Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age to produce Humbug and with his help their sound changed almost completely from infectious indie to dark, moody desert rock in a move that showed there was so much more to this band than any of us could have guessed.
Suck It And See continues in the desert rock vein this band carved out with Homme, but this time around, the band has moulded that sound instead of copy / pasted it and as a result, sound a lot more comfortable than they did on Humbug, as phenomenal as that album was.
Killer tracks like “All My Own Stunts†with its cowboy twang and insidious bassline and “Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chairâ€, the most powerful desert rock anthem on the album, are balanced out by the caustic wit and beautiful melodies of tracks like “Reckless Serenade†and ‘The Hellcat Spangled Shalalalaâ€.
It has a lot of meat to it, plenty to sink your teeth into and it gets better with every listen.
Here’s “Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chairâ€, one of the most tripped out videos I’ve seen this year.
NUMBER 3 – Foo Fighters (Wasting Light)
The album that’s been KILLING everyone’s top album lists this year finds a comfortable spot at number three on the Tiger’s list because Dave Grohl is a total fucking badass and Wasting Light has to be one of the best albums the Foos have put out since my personal favourite One By One.
This time around the band threw all the modern new-fandangled methods of recording out the window and went 100% old school.
The band literally set up a studio in Dave Grohl’s garage and did Wasting Light on brown analogue tape that they then cut together by hand using fucking razorblades for god’s sake!
The result is an album of raw, aggressive, skull-fuckingly powerful rock music that pulls no punches and takes no prisoners.
“Bridge Burning†will make you thrash around the room like an idiot savant who just hit a bong and downed a pint of rubbing alcohol, “Rope†has the catchiest, most badass Foos chorous riff since “Low†and “White Limo†is sheer, hedonistic rock music at it’s most awesome.
Just watch this fucking video. It stars Lemmy from Motörhead for god’s sake! How fucking badasss is that?!
NUMBER 2 – The Black Keys (El Camino)
Narrowly missing the top spot on this year’s list are the current reigning champions of the American 70’s blues / rock revivalist movement, The Black Keys with their 7th studio album El Camino.
Unlike it’s predecessor Brothers, El Camino moves at a blistering pace – no slow-burners on this foot-stompingly infectious, monster hook-laden album, no sir. This time around the Keys have dialled things up to a whole other level and the results are nothing short of sublime.
From the rusty guitar riffs and insanely catchy chorous of “Lonely Boy†to the righteous, sleazy grooves of “Sister†and the almost Zepplinesque prog rock ballad that is “Little Black Submarinesâ€, the Keys pull no punches in this noteworthy follow up to Brothers.
And don’t even get me started on “Gold On The Ceilingâ€, which emerges like a mutated Thin Lizzy track bursting at the seams with hand-clap percussion, skuzzy organs and a pre-chorous that sounds like it was written specifically for strip club scenes in Robert Rodriguez films.
So why not list this as my top album of 2011? As I stated in my original review, El Camino’s only downfall is the fat that, at 38 mins, it’s a little on the lean side in comparison to Brothers, which is basically the only thing I can fault on this album.
There just isn’t enough of it.
Still though, it’s a sick, sick, sick record – here’s “Lonely Boy†to prove that fact.
NUMBER 1 – The Kills (Blood Pressures)
Again, I refer to my original review of this, my favourite fucking album of 2011, because it perfectly captures what I think of this album:
When I stumbled on The Kills latest album Blood Pressures, I got one minute into the first track and started grinning from ear to ear.
Some of this had to do with the dark and dangerous sound of guitarist Jamie Hince’s Hofner played in all it’s bone-rattling glory. This man has perfected a grimey, thick-as-tar tone that had me hooked from the get go.
But what really mind-fucked me was how sinister and cool frontwoman Alison Mosshart’s vocals sounded – like butter wouldn’t melt on her tongue, like she was everything sexy and dangerous in this world, like she could kill you with a look or break you with a smile.
The Kills is her band, her little broody-beautiful world that she shares with guitarist Jamie Hince and there’s something about the fuzz and the mud and the malevolence and the majesty of it all that haunted me and continues to haunt me with every listen.
“You Don’t Own The Road†saunters like a drunk cowboy waving his six shooter with the safety off, “DNA†stalks purposefully through the woods at dusk, picking its way through an undergrowth of drumsticks clattering against drumsticks whilst wading through a quagmire of swampy basslines.
“Baby Says†has the melancholy of a Cowboy Junkies track, a lilting melody to keep you company in the hollow hours before sunrise, a song that echoes back to better times.
But “Future Starts Slow†is still my favourite. Stark, defiant, sexy, it has a drum track that plays like a striptease and one of the simplest, most powerful riffs I’ve heard in a good long while.
I got a dark streak a mile wide that this album really speaks to but that doesn’t mean you’ll love it anywhere near as much as I do.
If nothing else, it’s a great example of how simple, stylised riffs (played with truckloads of badass fuzzy effects) layered with amazingly complex drums and sultry, provocative vocals can seduce you to the point of infatuation.
If you want to know what the music playing in the jungles of my Tiger-mind sounds like, get your hands on this album and if you’re anything like me, pretty soon it’ll be playing through the jungles of your mind too.
Here’s “Satellite†to sink your fangs into.
That about wraps it up for my top 10 albums of 2011, a post that’s been THREE DAYS in the making, can you fucking believe it!?
So yeah, any comments would be appreciated – what albums rocked your guys’ world in 2011?
Once in a while a oke come along who is not just a normal oke, he’s not just another chop head who doesn’t unnerstand the meaning of getting MASSIVE, RIPPED and BUFF and banging hot BELTERS!
This oke, he can be called a LEGEND among men, he can be called the CHOSEN CHARNA. This oke can KILL you with a LOOK, OR he can safe lives by curing any disease – AIDS, TERBUCULOZES, PREGNANCY, ANYTHING – with a flippin’ high five.
This oke walks amongst us, KLAPPING IT, MOERING okes who are kak, BANGING hot BELTERS and being a LEGEND and his name… is ANTON TAYLOR.
The second I checked this oke I INSTANTLY kakked my pants he’s so flippin’ MASSIVE AND RIPPED. Do you think just any oke’s hair grows like that? Fuck boet, come off it man!
When ANTON TAYLOR was a laaitie ous must have put him in RADIOACTIVE waste and shit or sent him from ANOTHER PLANET or bitten him with A SPIDER or something, cause the BUFFNESS of this boychay is OFF THE CHAIN!
And you think it stops there? CHARNA, that’s only where it STARTS!
FLIPPIN’ WINGS BOET! THAT THE OU CAN ACTUALLY FLY WITH!
I know EXACTLY what you’re thinking and the answer is NO! It’s not flippin’ fair that ONE OKE can naturally grow lightning bolts that point at his cheloger and HAIR WINGS on his back that he can fly around with, but you know what?
Life’s not fair boet. All us ordinary charnas can do is KLAP IT every day and hope to one day be HALF as MASSIVE, RIPPED and BUFF as ANTON TAYLOR.
I never thought a oke could ever be more buff than PAUL MAIN MAN, but flip ANTON TAYLOR, you are on a DIFFERENT LEVEL from that other ou.
I did some googalising on the interwebs and find out the following stuff about ANTON TAYLOR:
The explosion in Hirosheema wasn’t actually a plutonic bomb, it was one of ANTON TAYLOR’S PROTEIN BAFFS
The TITANIC didn’t sink because it hit a iceberg, ANTON TAYLOR went back in time and punched a hole in it because it was KAK
ANTON TAYLOR’S chest hair is what gave God the idea of LIGHTNING
The twin towers weren’t hit by a plane, ANTON TAYLOR flew into both of them when he was distracted banging two blonde BELTERS at the same time IN THE AIR
If you look directly at ANTON TAYLOR’S handlebars for longer than 6 seconds you go blind
ANTON TAYLOR caused the earthquake that destroyed Japan. He chucked his weights on the ground after his 1 000 000 000 000th rep and the resulting tremor moved the TECHNOTRONIC PLATES!
God didn’t rest on the seventh day, he gave up because he realised EVERYTHING HE CREATED WAS KAK compared to ANTON TAYLOR
Keep KLAPPING IT ma boychay, you are an inspirhation to BUFF CHARNAS the world over!
J-Rab and I have been meaning to take our grocery shopping experience to a whole other level by hitting up the Fruit and Veg City near Gardens. 
