She’s A Frozen Fire

Buffalo Daughter “Elephante Marinos” – The new Buffalo Daughter album finds the band trying on a number of grooves, from art-disco and hippie funk to stoned shoegazing and Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque bass slapping, but nothing suits them quite as well as this keyboard-centric neon-lit strut. As the singers discuss some super hot “beauty queen,” the music seems to either react or pretend not to react to this woman (represented in the arrangement as the drum beat) as she nonchalantly walks down a city street. Guitars wink, a high pitched tone whistles, an overheated keyboard does its best to look away, and the girl even stops traffic on the instrumental break. (Click here to buy it from Amazon Japan.)

Shapes and Sizes “Weekends At A Time” – Generally, I do not pay close attention to lyrics the first few times that I hear a song, and so I often find myself in a position where my initial impression of a song’s lyrical content is revealed to be hilariously off the mark. Until I actually paid full attention to the words, I’d somehow gotten the idea that this song was about this woman imagining weekend vacations as a sort of heroic expedition, and trying to convince her companion that going hiking in the mountains, exploring quaint towns, or renting out a beach house is some kind of noble calling. But no, that’s not it at all, and now my apparent desire for an art rock version of the New York Times travel section is revealed to you all. (Click here for Asthmatic Kitty’s official Shapes and Sizes page.)