Record Reviews: Chad VanGaalen, The Shaky Hands, Kimya Dawson

Continuing down the path of music review madness, here's two more Detour reviews: Chad VanGaalen and The Shaky Hands. The Chad VanGaalen post also features a bonus video for the song "Molten Light." The song alone was bone chilling and now with added visuals, look out Creeps-ville! Mr. VanGaalen himself did all the animation and, creepiness aside, it is really stunning. The Shaky Hands album is pretty good stuff, though I do not have any animated videos to add. Maybe somebody should get on that and make them a cool video. Maybe Chad VanGaalen should do it.

Also, today marks my debut as a writer for Tiny Mix Tapes! I'm a big fan of the site, so it's really fun for me to be writing stuff for them now. You can read my review of the new Kimya Dawson album Alphabutt there. Alphabutt is a children's record, and although I questioned whether I was really the right person to be reviewing anything children related, I think it turned out okay. :) For the record, I don't hate kids or anything like that, but I do typically hate when children sing. Organized kids singing - like choirs and slickly produced children's music - not the type of unencumbered singing kids do to amuse themselves, that I usually find amusing and occasionally adorable. I once listened to a little girl sitting behind me on a plane ride sing the most impassioned, epic song to herself about static electricity. The words were, "Static electricity, static electricity, STA-tic elec-TRICITY, STAAAA-tic EEEEE-lec-TRICITYYYYYYY..." After a few minutes I turned around to take a peek at her and the look of pure intensity on her face was awesome. It was the kind of look that rock stars make to show they "really mean it," whereas kids make that face because they really do. It was also then clear to me why her song had gone on so very long: her father was totally head back, mouth open, drooling, oblivious to the world, asleep. That was years ago, and yet the static electricity song still occasionally pops in my head. It's funny to think I may very well remember that moment long past the point where the girl herself does. Oh, our funny little world...