I have been recently going gaga over my accidental indie band discovery--thanks to Kev Adamson, a fellow Textpatternist. (Listen up cyborgs of the web blogging community, Textpattern is way, way, waaaaaaaay superior to Wordpress. I just can't frickin get the point why 90% of the whole blogging universe are Wordpressers with all the depressingly hideous, not to mention archaic and blogcentric, platform when Textpattern is more versatile, dynamic, difficult to learn but simple to use. WP is more popular, but TXP is smart. It's like comparing a spoon to a swiss army knife. A sidenote, mind. (Or maybe WP platform interface's suited for teenagers while TXP's for, like, professional website developers like myself.XP) Wait, methinks I have already ranted about this issue a year back.o_0)--the band named after the burrowing herbivorous Australian marsupial, wombat.

Rating: 5/5

The Wombats

The Wombats is an indie British band that resonates The Beatles in upbeat, psychedelic poprock, modern fashion. The moment I heard this I was like, "Blah, just another ambitious band forcing themselves upstream the mainstream," then left their site open with the flash music playing just to kill the sickening silence in my apartment. Thirty minutes later I was subconsciously spellbound, bobbing my head sideways, fidgeting my legs, and drumming my hands with the beat for some bizarre reason (I shudder at the sound of "pop" and "rock", more so if you put them together--it's like Korn in the guise of S Club 7) as if all's just so happy and yiddy and bouncy and spontaneous and carefree and everything is just so colorful and bright. I felt like I was suspended in outer space, confined in a giant rainbow-surfaced bubble filled with multicolored toys and candies and whatnot. Inside there are vibrant colors and vibrant things and chest-bursting music with the awesome voice and kickass accent, then outside there's the black exponentially expansive vacuum of nothingness, silence, and err, dooooooooom and death and inertia.XP Then before I knew it I was hooked the same way I did to The Postal Service and Moonpools and Caterpillars as if there's this funky band of infectious worms playing The Beatles while boring into my ears until it reached my brain and stuck there forever. I am ADDICTED. Arrr.

Download the entire album here.

It's been years since I had laid my ears on a soundtrack worth lifting illegally from the sea of music pederasts in the internet. That is, since the OST of Cruel Intentions, Empire Records, and Ten Things I Hate About You, which were like three, four years ago.o_o Juno's soundtrack could be categorized under the rubric indie-folk-punk, the sort that Juno's character would listen to, thus lathering the movie thick paintstripes of what Juno is like. Kimya Dawson, a former Moldy Peaches member, contributes several songs, with two of my favs, "Tire Swing" and "Tree Hugger", the latter featuring Ansty Pants; both songs you can listen to wedged in between paragraphs below. There's also the indie stalwarts, Belle and Sebastian, along with The Velvet Underground, Mateo Messina, The Kinks, Sonic Youth, and Cat Power.

Kimya Dawson and Antsy Pants - Tree Hugger
The flower said, "I wish I was a tree,"
The tree said, "I wish I could be
A different kind of tree,"
The cat wished that it was a bee,
The turtle wished that it could fly
Really high into the sky,
Over rooftops and then dive
Deep into the sea.

The collection stirs an underground cult among teenagers and twenty-somethings like myself, the soundtrack multiplying exponentially in the hidden corners of cyberspace. Everywhere I go I see FREE JUNO SOUNDTRACK screaming at my face, blinking and jumping all over the screen. But before that, you have to click this penile enlargement link or image.XD

Belle and Sebastian - Piazza, New York Catcher
Elope with me Miss Private and we'll sail around the world
I will be your Ferdinand and you my wayward girl
How many nights of talking in hotel rooms can you take?
How many nights of limping round on pagan holidays?
Oh elope with me in private and we'll set something ablaze
A trail for the devil to erase

Light, genuine, simple. Ellen Page tells Pitchfork Media: "It has a hint of novelty, but it is full of so much heart and so much simplicity and it's so genuine. It's really unique and it's quirky and all of those things, but it has heart to balance that. And that's one of the reasons why I always loved their music. I loved how it was just bare-boned, and I feel like that is similar to Juno, the film in general and the character. She has a sarcastic wit that she hides behind, but she's also just an extremely genuine, honest, says-what-she-thinks human being, and I feel the film's like that as well. It has that tone."

Kimya Dawson - Tire Swing
I took the Polaroid down in my room
I'm pretty sure you have a new girlfriend
It's not as if I don't like you
It just makes me sad whenever I see it
'cause I like to be gone most of the time
And you like to be home most of the time
If I stay in one place I lose my mind
I'm a pretty impossible lady to be with

If you dig it, you can download it here.

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