Really good bands that are under the radar

I was thinking about this while listening to Fear Factory the other night.
I think hard rock/metal bands tend to land here quite often. Stone Sour, Killswitch Engage, etc.

 

Tarbox Ramblers.
Are The Decembrists still below the radar?

 

Waco Brothers
Romantica

 

This, of course, depends on what "under the radar" truly constitutes ...

 

My car can do one of those impressions at night. ;D

 

Peter, Bjorn and John

Jens Lekman

The Jam (1970-80s band, never hit it big in US)

 

The Atomic Bitchwax.

http://www.theatomicbitchwax.com/The%20Atomic%20Bitchwax%20-%20If%20I%20had%20a%20gun.mp3

 

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

 

I thought these were alternate names for the Seven Dwarfs.

 

Banana Fish Zero:

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSlZlKxZA

 

My favorite band is the Pernice Brothers, who seem to be pretty far under the radar, given that I saw them last year in the former living room of a former house that is now a concert venue. For my money Joe Pernice is the best songwriter working today and it's not particularly close.

The CD I've been listening to over and over lately is by The Big Lie. They remind me a lot of Jellyfish, with bits of Squeeze, Queen and the Marvelous 3 thrown in. It's a really tremendous CD. The band calls itself (and the album) The Big Lie because the band doesn't really exist -- it's a group of acquaintances who haven't even played together. A couple of them put together demo tracks, then they shipped a hard drive around the the different "band members" in different states, who would record their parts and ship it on to someone else. The result was a band that sounds it's been playing together for years. They had no intention of ever trying to release it commercially until a DJ friend got a hold of it and convinced them they should try it. It's on iTunes and eMusic and I highly recommend it.

Some others:

The Silver Seas (formerly the Bees, but there was another Bees) are a really great band from Nashville. Their second album, "High Society," was just released under the new band name. Kind of a laid back, slightly coffee house-ish sound. Check out their myspace page for song clips.

Voxtrot is a really good band that sounds like Britpop but is actually from Austin, Texas (though I believe their singer is originally from Scotland). Their album is good, but the series of EPs that came before it are fantastic.

The weirdest thing I've been listening to lately is "Dandelion Gum" by a band called Black Moth Super Rainbow. They're sort of a weird-ass psychedelic electronica... umm.. well, imagine if Kraftwerk took a truckload of peyote. The album is a concept album about witches that live in the woods and make candy. I really like it, but then I can only listen to about 3 or 4 songs at a time.

Also, check out The Bellrays. They're the answer to the musical question, what if Aretha Franklin were the singer for a rock band? Also, and they're not that far under the radar these days, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are a really great old school soul band.

And those two lead me to a tangent; I've grown rather tired of seeing people like Joss Stone and (especially) Amy Winehouse get so acclaimed and successful. Joss Stone is talented, yes, but here's the reason for her level of success: she's a hot blonde British teenager who sounds surprisingly like a black woman. And Amy Winehouse is a freaky skeletal junkie Ronnie-Spector-for-Halloween British white chick who sounds surprisingly like a black woman. Meanwhile, Sharon Jones is a black woman who is a hell of a lot better than either of them, her band happens to be the band that played on Winehouse's CD, and she has a fraction of the success. Similarly, Matisyahu sold a shitload of records because he's a lot better than you would expect an Orthodox Jewish reggae singer to be; the fact remains that he pretty fucking awful by any other standard.

Links:

http://www.pernicebrothers.com/av.php (Their album "Live A Little" is my favorite album of the last 5 or 10 years, and it's streaming on the page.)

http://www.myspace.com/thesilverseas

http://www.voxtrot.net/page1.htm

http://www.blackmothsuperrainbow.com/mpthree.htm

http://www.thebellrays.com/

http://www.myspace.com/sharonjonesandthedapkings

 

The kids who play in my neighbor's garage.

They're under the radar. Deservedly so.