The 3Ds -- Hipster Music

Fish Tales/Swarthy Songs for Swabs

You could hold my feet over a hot fire and shove bamboo under my fingernails, but IÁd still never be able to tell you what these guys are singing about. Maybe it's the incredibly bad recording quality or the thick New Zealand accents, but more than likely it's just the weirdness of the whole thing. This CD is actually a compilation of their first two EPs, so it's a bit of a schizophrenic affair--if the band itself wasn't kind of whacked to begin with. I've read comparisons to The Pixies, but that would only be if The Pixies suddenly became atonal and lost all sense of pop songwriting. The first EP, Fish Tales, is more noise buried under bad production than music, really. The second of the EPs, Swarthy Songs for Swabs, is definitely a more cohesive effort, with some attention paid to song structure and melody. This certainly hasn't been in heavy rotation since I bought it way back when.

Strange News from the Angels

Hey, look who came back with some actual songs in the queue! After practically disappearing just when they were building a little buzz, the 3Ds (or however it's supposed to be written) came back with this swansong album. Of course, I'm a guy who likes some melody in my music, so I like this album a whole lot more than their earlier work. Others will say that they drop everything that makes them them in order to make listenable music on this last album. Apparently making noise and singing poorly makes you unique, but writing some structure and tone into your music is an indie no-no. Well, fuck (un)convention. This may not be the end-all of indie albums, and it can sound somewhat genre-generic at times, but it is a perfectly listenable piece of work.