SXSW 2009 - Post Three: CHOO CHOO, TPOBPAH, Princeton, Golden Dogs, THEART, Von Bondies, Steps, Beat Poets

We continue to explore bands appearing next month at the SXSW Music Festival in the Capitol City. Previous SXSW posts for this and a couple of previous years can be found here. Clicking band names will take you to their SXSW page. Clicking song titles will play songs. We've got a little dog & butterfly thing going here. We'll let you decide which set is which.

CHOO CHOO - A Little Wiser Now mp3 - Yeh, I posted them a week ago, but they're going to be at freakin' SXSW, a mere 60 miles from where I sit!
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Come Saturday mp3
Princeton - The Waves mp3
The Golden Dogs – Lester mp3

THEART – NEWTOWN mp3
The Von Bondies - This Is Our Perfect Crime mp3
The Steps – Dagger mp3
The Beat Poets - Staring Stars Down mp3

STOKED & STEAMING with CHOO CHOO

I received a very nice email from Dan Choo wondering if he could send me a shipment of “Steam Powered Garage Pop!” When I realized Dan meant the debut album by the Bern band CHOO CHOO, I had to tell him that would not be necessary. You may well be asking yourself, “Why, pp, why??? Why did you have to tell Dan Choo that would not be necessary?” Well, I’ll tell ya: I told Dan that because I had already been to eMusic and bought eleven of the tracks on CHOO CHOO’s self-titled debut album. Eleven out of Eleven tracks. Every song. 100%. There wasn’t a song on the album I did not buy. Ponder that in your hearts.

I’m a singles guy. I mostly buy singles, songs that I very much like-to-love. One song at a time. I’m tired of shelling out $16.00 for an LP and liking only one or two songs on it. (I think that works out to either $16.00 or $8.00 per song, something like that.) So when I say I bought all eleven songs on CHOO CHOO’s debut, it means I very much liked-to-loved (mostly loved) every freaking song on the album. Maybe I’m belaboring this point an ooch, I don’t know. Now that I’ve gotten up a head of steam, I can’t seem/don’t want to slow it down. Wooo-woooooo. . . . Chugga chugga chugga. Etc. But perhaps you now see why I had to tell Dan Choo “no”? Merrily, with a twinkle in my heart and a song in my eye, I just said “NO” because with equal, nay, building merriment, I had already said, as I listened to each song, “Yes, yess, yesss, yesssss, oh God yessssssssssssss. . . ." Etc.*

And with equal merriment, I thank Dan Choo (guitar/vox) and his sister/brothers, Lili Choo (organ), Sam Choo (drums/vox), and Yan Choo (bass/vox), for their delicious, heady Steam Powered Garage Pop! and for letting me give you a couple of belts thereof.

CHOO CHOO - from CHOO CHOO

A Little Wiser Now mp3
Your Heart is Breaking Down mp3

MySpace
eMusic

iTunes

*I was recently rejected for the third time by The Hype Machine. I was told my blog isn’t welcome to the machine because it isn’t like other blogs where the bloggers write with passion about the music they love. So I’m working on that.