••• Apes & Androids @ Music Hall of Williamsburg, Jan. 30 •••

Dear PBR-chuggin', Future Date Rapists of Amerika: Happy Superbowl weekend!

While yer wipin' the orange dust from Cheetos fingers and relishing cutesy har-har sargasms from the latest Madison Avenue turdballs, I'll be recovering from my night out with Apes & Androids.

Conga-yacht rockers Vampire Weekend look like a malignant mole on Dom DeLuise's poop chute next to A&A's unironic Jermaine-worthy falsettos, fuzzed-out synth brews and Korean drum circles.

Their self-released debut album Blood Moon is a Ziggy Stardust post-modern clusterfuck.

mp3: APES & ANDROIDS CREEPY GIRLS [buy here]

from rcrdlbl.com:
“Creepy Girls” is more or less a break up song written a long time ago. We'd been performing it for a while and waiting for the right time to put it on tape. When it came time to record, the whole thing was done in two days. That's not usually how we work, but this time it just all came out on first takes and everyone recording just kept nodding and saying, ‘Yes yes!’ It was pretty awesome.

••• Ninjasonik @ Vanishing Point Studio, Jan. 29 •••

One gets the impression that crunktastic Medina trio Ninjasonik drowns in a Challis of hedonism. From the scrunched tiggle bitties on their Tight Pants EP to their predatory megablasts of homophobia, these nigs don't mess around.

But here's the thing: Ninjasonik is the first post-racial punk hip-hop hybrid. (That is, if you don't count the ball-less Warped Tour nerblets Gym Class Heroes.)

They crib equally from referencing points as varied as Beastie Boys, Dead Kennedys and Aphex Twin. A hyphy brew, no doubt.

¡NinjaSonik on MySpace!

Ninjasonik spits dubs at the Showpaper benefit on Jan. 29.

••• Franz Nicolay @ Vanishing Point Studio, Jan. 21 •••

Old news: mustachioed Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay's solo debut The Major General still delves into the Brooklyn band's hyper literate nuts-and-bolts rock, but his new songs are a smidge dirgeful than anything in The Hold Steady canon.

Opening track "Jeff Penalty" begins with spidery guitar riffs that gradually morph into an all-too-familiar stamping ground: surging, handclap-heavy alehouse anthems. The burning question: can Nicolay out-Finn Craig Finn?

The debate rages on:

mp3: FRANZ NICOLAY INFERNO VS. THE END OF THE EVENING [buy here]

(Are You) Happy Now?

The Manhattan Project is about as lifeless as a cracked out McDonalds pleeb and about as humorously vapid as a Night Court marathon.

What's been chafing my gonads lately? Well for starters, I don't have enough fiber in my diet. Ever since I dewedged myself from president-elect Barack Obama's asshole, I've been born anew with strains of libertarian socialism and Christian anarchism dancing 'round my head.

Last week, I scrounged around in the 86th Street Dunkin' Donuts garbage bin for the love of Freeganism—on CNN, nonetheless—and soothed my nerves with the discordant anarcho-punk of Reagan Youth.

The reason Reagan Youth donkeypunches Sid Vicious' hairless chodes? No. 1: Lead singer Dave Rubinstein (born 1964, died July 3, 1993) be all up in the Religious Right's biznass, tramping around with the subtlety of an opium-snorting pacaderm in Waterford's. (cough: See "Jesus Was a Communist" below.)

No. 2: Reagan Youth is chillaxin' with this anti-racist, womyn-lovin' ideology. (A rarity in the hyper-masculinzed circle jerk circles of punk rawk.)

And finally, their music is the perfect soundtrack to the Reagan-era: full of snotty sneers, brash guitar stabs and What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis? insolence.

The re-formed Reagan Youth plays ABC No Rio this Friday on the Lower East Side.

REAGAN YOUTH JESUS WAS A PACIFIST [buy here]