You should’ve known . . .

Two quick links to bands and albums that have been giving me a lot of pleasure over the past little while. The first is The Fabulous Ginn Sisters’ woozily brilliant You Can’t Take a Bad Girl Home, which I discovered via Flop-Eared Mule’s encyclopaedic best of 2010 list(s). I have to confess I don’t know a lot about the band itself, beyond the fact they’re actual sisters called Tiffani and Brit Ginn (rather than ironic rock ‘n’ roll siblings in the White Stripes mould) and proteges of Fred Eaglesmith, but the album’s pretty fantastic. In the word-salad vernacular of music journalism they’ve been variously described as “spooky garage-rock” and “Texas-toned Americana (country, voodoo blues, twangy waltzes and honky-tonk)” but if you ask me they sound like a 1950s girl band gone bad, with all the cracked sweetness and sultriness that implies. I’ve uploaded a couple of tracks from the album below, along with a live version of one more, but if you like them I recommend you track down the album in its entirety, because it’s pretty terrific

‘You Should’ve Known
‘Share Our Secrets‘

The other is the track I’ve been listening to all week, which is from Milwaukee outfit Sat. Nite Duets’ EP, One Nite Only. I think my friend Adam got it right when he said they were a band who managed to be both awesome and crap at the same time, because that lazy diffidence is definitely part of their charm, and is absolutely integral to the brilliant opening track, ‘All Nite Long’, which sounds like someone convinced Lou Reed to front for Pavement at a party in somebody’s back yard, and then that combination turned out as funny and as sexy and as basically awesome as it sounds. And the best thing is if you like ‘All Nite Long’ you can download the EP in its entirety for free from the band’s website (Thanks to Muzzle of Bees for the heads up).