Clean Up on Aisle Tuesday: Jenny Lewis' cloud is lined with bullshit

Jenny Lewis once again topped the charts of StereoGum's Gummy awards in the Indie Rock Crushes category and I am right behind her on the "talentless hack" chart.

Zooey Deschanel took number one, thank you Satan, she actually has a beautiful voice and is legitimately hot. I'll be a little too honest right now, the first time I heard She & Him's "You Really Got a Hold on Me" nearly made my eyes sprinkle and it has definitely found its way onto my romantic weekend playlist, so Deschanel is totes deserving of numero uno in my mind.


However, Lewis kept second this year and I am FURIOUS. To add insult to injury, I was already mad that Captain Ginger Wonkeye (Thom Yorke), the guy that looks like he is 12 from that boat shoe band (Vampire Weekend), Skeletor from Deerhunter (Bradford Cox) and Ryan Adams and his heroin problem beat out Spencer Krug on the dude's list so a big thanks to the parade of idiot voters for rubbing some Rilo Kiley salt (the ouchiest kind) in that wound.

I am going to face some serious social backlash for talking shit on Jenny Lewis, but I don't care because you can't pull the child actor wool over my eyes. Why am I so FURIOUS? There is nothing especially unique about Lewis' music or voice that warrants any sort of list-topping fuckery. She has that spun-sugar default indie-rock girl mewl and lyrics that don't really speak to me other than on how to end up fucking a guy you've been trying to not fuck:

"I keep on talkin' trash but I never say anything
And the talkin' leads to touchin'
and the touchin' leads to sex
and then there is no mystery left."

To me, being an Indie Rock Hottie means having a relatively impressive body of work AS WELL as having a relatively impressive body. At the end of the day, Lewis is generic, bland and overrated.

This song (Silver Lining) comes on the XM at work and Jenni thought it was Jewel until I set the record straight. The video for this song features Lewis and her poor piano posture (bend your fingers, not your wrists, helloooooo. Have fun getting carpal tunnel!):

Last year's list featured ASCAP Vanguard Award winner Natasha Khan (Bat For Lashes):


who is a total fucking badass (bitch she play autoharp like us) and is much more deserving of a spot on the list, but also featured Joanna Newsom:


who can take her Christian Louboutins and hippie bullshit and kiss my black ass. You win some, you lose some. This shit is either way rigged, or people are just incomprehensibly fucking stupid. I mean, come on, Sigur Ros got 8th in Best Live Act, which tells me the Stereogum voting crowd is into mediocrity and napping. Moral of the story is, watch your votes because you might piss me off.

Still a hair away from corybantic about us not even getting an honorable mention for best music blog,

'stina.

Clean Up on Aidle Tuesday: Amanda Palmer and her Nazi puppets

Yeah, it's Thursday, I'm aware. I've been Bukowski-ing pretty hard as of late, sans the writing. So basically what I'm getting at is I've been drunk for easily two weeks straight if not more.

I was having a hard time thinking about what I hate this week (completely out of character, I know) but Jezebel did it for me. Unfortunately, Roadrunner Records fucked up really hard and it unfortunately reminded me of how much I don't like Amanda Palmer/The Dresden Dolls. Palmer made a video for a song off her solo album called "Leeds United:"



And what did Roadrunner do? They told her to cut a few shots from the video 'cause you could see her stomach and shit. Well you know what Roadrunner? Tell Slipknot to go on a diet too. Or at least tell them to stop sucking so much ass.

As much as that's a bummer, I still don't like Amanda Palmer.

1.) I don't care for her lyrics :

"you can tell
from the glass on the floor
and the strings that're breaking
and i keep on breaking more
and it looks like i am shaking
but it's just the temperature
and then again
if it were any colder i could disengage
if i were any older i could act my age
but i don't think that you'd believe me
it's
not
the
way
i'm
meant
to
be
it's just the way the operation made me"

2.) I don't care for the weird gothy carnie schtick:



3.) Her eyebrows freak me out:


I have a lot of friends that really love the Dresden Dolls and I just don't get it. Her voice is sounding more and more gravely as of late, kind of like she's been sucking a sandpapered dick for the last couple of years, and the "angry girl with a piano" thing is getting really old. Especially because Palmer blogged about being embarrassed to admit to liking Tori Amos, the original weird angry girl with a piano. Get with the program, dude.



See you on A&E's "Intervention" soon,

'stina

Clean Up on Aisle Tuesday: I want to choke Chris Carrabba and not in that kind of fun way

It's been really hard for me to think about what I hate enough to blog about this week because us ponies had such a good night, but don't start thinkin' I let you down.

We've both been having our respective issues, like Megan getting a boob job and me not having a day off for 12 days straight trying to hustle my way into a promotion like some sort of frazzled hungover face-painting superbot. The only thing that has kept me going is Megan telling me to ask myself what Dwight Schrute would do.





That should give you guys an idea of how my interview with the district manager went.

All this talk of being a straight Schruter really got me thinking, I should be more intense about my life. I already listen to the blackest of metals, the indiest of rocks and the dumbest of hyphy but what about all the little shit I look the other way about? Like this guy:


Ordinarily, I would say something snappy like "I would hatefuck that guy so hard he wouldn't even know the Slurricaine tore through that shit" and maybe make a joke about waiting until he passes out to steal his black AMEX and Audi keys but no longer, my friends!

I was seeing this dude for a while before he fucking freaked out because I tried to round first base after the fifth date and he once admitted he has a list of "freeway bands." Those being bands you only listen to on the freeway when you can be absolutely certain no one else can hear you. Who was the first on his freeway list? That guy up there, Chris Carraba, otherwise known as his pathetic musical monniker "Dashboard Confessional." Whats my problem with him? One reason: He's a total pussy. He's a pussy with a speech impediment. The shit this guy writes about is bad, the way he writes about it is worse. Even the crying in the newborn ward is more tolerable than this dude's whining about some girl he is netstalking boning down with another dude. For example:

As for now, I'm gonna hear the saddest songs
and sit alone and wonder how you're making out
but as for me I wish that I was anywhere
with anyone, making out



This guy is clearly a sensitive-ass genius. Maybe he's just a nice guy and like needs a hug or some shit but mostly I want to let him loose in the Pennsylvania woods and let a bear swat at his vocal cords.

Fact: He used to be the singer of a Christian band, Further Seems Forever.

Fact: I am Christian music's biggest enemy.

Fact: Carrabba was in New Fond Glory for five minutes while the original ham hands toured with Shai Hulud.

Fact: I saw Shai Hulud once. It's embarrassing that I saw a hardcore punk prog metal band named after the fucking sand worms in Dune, yeah, but I was very young and I've also talked about stomping around my house listening to old Saetia 7". I'm 10 kinds of fucked here.

In hate we trust,

'stina

Clean Up on Aisle Tuesday: Jason Mraz is a lifestyle I refuse to support

Megan and I have been talking about making another video soon, something about a slumber party and prescription painkillers. The soundtrack is going to be way better than that pussy Gayplosions in the Sky shit your guys' dreams are cut to. We're thinking a little Deep Sleepover (see what I did there? It's one of them double entenders!), a little Bat For Lashes and definitely a metric fuckton of GG Allin.

The reason I am talking about making the video instead of doing it is 1. I have a rager of a headache and have to wake up in the middle of the goddamn night tomorrow (6 a.m.) and 2. I am too pissed about Jason Mraz to do anything besides complain about him on the internet.

I work with a girl that has some shitty Mraz-ak as a ringtone and it makes me want to slam my head in the freezer full of half-finished vanilla frappucinos (going to In-N-Out- for a vanilla shake makes too much fucking sense). I'll be honest, dude's got some pipes. Unfortunately for humanity, he hasn't quietly committed his life to professional musical theatre. He done committed himself to this:


I already didn't like the little mole man for threatening to hug one of my best friends in the entire world with his mind on the internet after a large-scale finance related scuffle but the Mraz is like Sublime: Not just terrible music. Jason Mraz's music embodies everything I hate about dudes in San Diego that aren't bros. It's the Seven jeans and flip flops in winter lifestyle. It's the dumb hat (includes newsboy caps and straw fedoras) in 5,000 degree weather lifestyle. It's the none of this makes any fucking sense yet you're telling me to "relax" and "go with the flow" lifestyle. It's the "if you tell me to just chill out and enjoy the jams one more time I will shove my foot so far up your ass you will shit in the shape of a size 8.5 platform Victorian oxford for a year" lifestyle.







Size 8.5 sounds a lot less intimidating than 10. Maybe I should have fudged my shoe size a little. Welp, that settles it. Off to stretch my feets.

In hate we trust,

'stina

Clean Up on Aisle Tuesday: Did you kiss my fucking broad, bro?

So I have been waiting years, basically, to get in a bar fight. It finally happened. It was more like a verbal altercation between two other people that I jumped into, so not so much a bar fight (I didn't throw a shoe) as a bar argument. Bargument.

To make a long story short, I told some dude to go fuck himself because he kept getting in my acquaintance's grill about him allegedly drunkenly kissing his "broad" before they were even together. Homeboy tells one of the three dudes I'm with to "tell that bitch to shut the fuck up." I don't stand to be sassed in any way and I for some unknown reason forget that most women are okay with being clubbed over the head and dragged back to the cave. Bitch, you don't ask me what I been doin' you wait for my request to sit down. While trying to macguyver a shank out of a bandana, a lip gloss tube, and a serrated hunting knife, I began wondering where he got his huge dick and manners from and it occurred to me he probs. learned it all from a Nickelback video.

This video here is for a song called "Figured You Out:"


The first time I heard that auditory gem was in a strip club in Vegas. That says a lot. Like daddy issues. Anyways, Nickelback is everything that is wrong with America. I know they're Canucks, but still. Nickelback makes me want to cut off my own legs and run a marathon, using my own severed legs as crutches.


These guys embody the lifted truck/tribal tattoo/too much bicep lifestyle. One of my major grievances besides the obvious onslaught of suck is the dude's voice. Chad Kroger sounds like his throat is lined with battery acid filled polyps that explode every time he groans brilliant lyrics such as:

I like your pants around your feet
I like the dirt that's on your knees
I like the way you still say please
While you're looking up at me
You're like my favorite damn disease

I love the places that we go
I love the people that you know
I love the way you can't say no
Too many long nights in a row
I love the powder on your nose

And now I know who you are
It wasn't that hard
Just to figure you out
Now I did
You wonder why
And now I know who you are
It wasn't that hard
Just to figure you out
Now I did
You wonder why

I like the freckles on your chest
I love the way you like me best
I like the way your not impressed
While you put me to the test
I love the white stains on your dress

I love the way you pass the check
I love the good times that you wreck
I love your lack of self-respect
While you're passed out on the deck
I love my hands around your neck

someone please fucking kill me,

'stina

Clean Up on Aisle Tuesday: The Ting Tings are fucking awful

Welcome to Clean Up on Aisle Tuesday, a new weekly feature in which we take turns dishing on songs we'd be okay going the rest of our lives without hearing.

For me, today, it's The Ting Tings.


My hate for this sorry excuse for a band is nearly unspeakable. I hate the annoying hipster yelling that has seemingly replaced real singing these days, I hate how terrible they are live because you can't trust a bleached out horseface to trigger MIDI loops properly and goddammit I hate how(instrumentally) catchy that one song is.

Shut Up and Let Me Go:




The only thing I am into is the video being shot through the H.O.V.A. sign but the vocals really seriously grind my gears. Stop announcing your lyrics and learn to sing, bitch. Or just shut your whore mouth and go back to your salon receptionist job. That goes for that slut in Crystal Castles that looks like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream too.

Don't let me catch you liking shit that sucks,

'stina