Listen To Your Left Brain

From the broken pieces of Arab On Radar and Six Finger Satellite a band called The Chinese Stars was formed. Christened after the "Chinese Star Epidemic" of the early 80's which found legions of grade school kids across America armed with "shrunken" throwing stars, the band vowed to reinvent what they have already invented in their previous bands.

Desenganem-se os que após as referencias acima se puseram desde logo a pensar em mais uma variação noise-marado ou speed-desarticulado-avariado. Listen To Your Left Brain vive numa 5ª dimensão onde se vislumbra, desde laboratório com vista para bizarra pista de dança, cabeça em forma P.I.L., braços com tatuagens dos Clash e as mãos dos Les Savy Fav, um corpo em espasmos Gang of Four e pernas que se mexem a la Beastie Boys. Monstros à parte, a mim fazem-me vagamente lembrar os World Domination Enterprises; já era tempo de 2007 dar vida um objecto tão familiar/estranho e viciante como este. E sim, All the other references are none of your business. So punks, let’s dance!

To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge

My Teenage Stride - Ears Like Golden Bats
There are two ways to look at a band like My Teenage Stride. You could say they are guilty of robbing the sound of a bunch of genius bands they have no hope of ever topping, or you could say their sound is a successful synthesis of many strains of indie pop music of the last 20-plus years that ends up sounding unique and fresh. (A partial list of the bands and sounds includes Orange Juice, New Order, the Trash Can Sinatras, the Go-Betweens, the entire Sarah roster, C86, shoegaze, and the Postcard label.) On (...) Ears Like Golden Bats, the band falls somewhere in between. It's true that you can go through on a track-by-track basis and do some pretty serious trainspotting ("That Should Stand for Something" is late-period Jesus and Mary Chain, "Ears Like Golden Bats" is Josef K, "The Genie of New Jersey" is the Field Mice, to name a few spots), which can get distracting, to put it kindly. It's also true that the band has used their obvious influences well and come up with quite a few memorable songs like the propulsive "To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge," the hugely hooky "Reversal," and "We'll Meet at Emily's." In the end, strong songs like these, Jebadiah Smith's melancholy but not mopey voice, the raw and echoey production, and the band's unflagging energy amount to a free pass on the plagiarism charge this time out. – allmusic

Acrescentar a bold os Magnetic Fields e já agora os Smiths na lista de referências acima; voz a lembrar Douglas Pearce dos Death in June e a raw and echoey production de que se fala a remeter para os Shins. Vou sem hesitações pela hipotese 2; Repeat-all, diz o leitor de cd’s. That Should Stand For Something!