I Just Started Hating Some People Today - Beck ft. Jack White

Beck and Jack White made a thing! It's called I Just Started Hating Some People Today! Let's listen!

The opening of the song (by which I mean the main bit of the song, by which I mean the… y'know… song bit of the song)  is jingle jangle alt country made for serious alt head nodding where you look up for a moment as you break into an irony free grin at the cheerfully demented lyrics before noticing no one else is smiling so you close your eyes and smile on the inside as you punch everyone's face like Beck because fuck those guys.

I don't think I can put it much better than that. It's got woozy druggy bass, it's got crunchy crashy drums by White, and it's damn funny. It has a pair of false endings: one fifteen seconds of hardcore, the other quasi P-Funk. 

Maybe (stay with me here)- maybe the song is a metaphor for angry sex in it's construction. It's pretty awesome at the start (because sex right?), even though you're pissed off the whole time. Then for a brief moment the anger overwhelms you in blinding climactic fury. But then you've orgasmed and shit... why were you mad again?

Thank you Beck and White for making the country ode to distracted hate sex. There's your cover quote. Where's my money?

Big River - The Secret Sisters ft. Jack White

The Secret Sisters are about to slug Johnny Cash in the mouth while blowing kisses.

Real life sisters Laura and Lydia Rogers cut this cover of Cash's Big River at Jack White's Third Man Studios, with White pulling double duty as producer and guitarist. 

The track is absolutely torrential. You can feel a dam slowly cracking with each whack of a snare before the water roars forth in the form of dueling guitar solos that gently give way to the Rogers winking harmonies.

Your left with the distinct impression the Sisters would love you up before drowning you deep down on the banks below. And you'll love every minute of it.

Grinnin' in Your Face - Son House

Jack White turned 36 yesterday, and in honor of the occasion we are looking at his favorite song of all time: Grinnin' In Your Face by Son House.

It was this song that sent Jack White down the road of music. It's easy to see how the stripped back nature of the piece has influenced White's own musical experimentation with The White Stripes, especially their hard followed rule of only three instruments per song .

Son House was a Delta blues singer active from the early 1920's to his death in 1988. He trained to be a Baptist preacher till his late teens before being seduced by the blues and killing a man during one of his own performances (allegedly in self defense). He used his religious background by incorporating elements of gospel within the style and framework of the Delta blues.

House had a heavily percussive style of playing and singing, happily accompanying himself on heavily strummed dobro slide guitar or simply clapping along in rhythm. It's the latter style that Grinning in Your Face employs. Raw and electrifying, over eighty years down the line Son House still has the ability to claw his way into your mind with the sheer power of hand claps and his own voice.

Crazy Hazy Kisses - Flat Duo Jets

So before we do anything watch this and of course, make it loud:

Hooooooooly shit, right? That little slice of blues doesn't just rattle your ribcage, it stomps on your bones till there's nothing left but dust, and then sets the remains on fire just to make sure.

The two dark haired banshees in that video are Dexter Romweber (guitar and vocals) and Chris 'Crow' Smith (drums), better known as Flat Duo Jets. The blues duo, sadly long since disbanded, rocked the doors off of their hometown of Carrboro, North Carolina and the rest of the States through most of the 80s into the late 90s before going their separate ways.

In what should be counted as a crime against humanity, Crazy Hazy Kisses never appeared on any of the Flat Duo Jets records, it's sole appearance being in obscure music documentary Athens, G.A. (and later in Davis Guggenheim's It Might Get Loud). But what an appearance it is.

Dexter Romweber attacks his weathered Dan Electro with the fury of a hurricane; primal screams tearing out of him with such spine chilling power you can feel flecks of lung and bone battering your ear drums. Crow's drums, woefully under-mixed in that bootleg clip, still pack a wallop of boiling rills, rolls and spills. It's the kind of number that makes you want to dance, fuck and kill; preferably all at once.

Getting ahold of the track can be a bit tricky, but a bit of You Tube audio grabbing wizardry will get this gem into your hot little hands.

However you can. Get it. Now. And if anyone ever tells you that 50s style rock has no balls, play them this track, so it can kick them squarely in their own.