Oakland foursome the Splinters were #1 on KSPC for the second week in a row!

1.    The Splinters    Kick    Double Negative
2.    Grasscut    1 Inch/ 1/2 Mile    Ninjatune
3.    Candy Claws    Hidden Lands    twosyllable
4.    Vanish Valley    Vanish Valley    Hard Bark
5.    Frontier Ruckus    Deadmalls and Nightfalls    Ramseur
6.    Cotton Jones    Tall Hours in the Glowstream    Suicide Squeeze
7.    Wavves    King of the Beach    Fat Possum
8.    So Many Wizards    So Many Wizards EP    Self-released
9.    Halloween Swim Team    Antennaaa.i    How To Be a Microwave
10.    Ostrich Eyes    Ostrich Eyes EP    Self-released
11.    Various Artists    Palenque Palenque!     Soundway
12.    Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti    Before Today    4AD
13.    Jaill    That’s How We Burn    Subpop
14.    The Wild Reeds    The Wild Reeds    Self-released
15.    Moonhearts    Moonhearts    Tic Tac Totally
16.    And Vice Versa / Magical Mistakes    Going Nowhere    Something America
17.    Baths    Cerulean    Anticon
18.    Social Studies    Wind Up Wooden Heart    Antenna Farm
19.    Bare Wires    Seeking Love    Castle Face
20.    The Books    The Way Out    Temporary Residence Ltd
21.    Matthew Dear    Black City    Ghostly
22.    Karen Elson    The Ghost Who Walks    XL
23.    Various Artists    Cloud Cuckooland    Finders Keepers / B-Music
24.    Lower Dens    Twin Hand Movements    Gnomonsong
25.    Lille    Tall Shoulders    Whale Heart
26.    Fol Chen    Part 2: The New December    Asthmatic Kitty
27.    Summer Vacation    Angry at the World    Self-released
28.    Health    DISCO2    Lovepump United
29.    School of Seven Bells    Disconnect from Desire    Ghostly International / Vagrant
30.    Vehicle Blues    Vehicle Blues EP    Bridgetown

Pictured: Rachel D. (bottom left, center) gazing mistily at Cap’n Jazz frontman Tim Kinsella during their 7/23 reunion show at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C. (More photos at Brightest Young Things.) Today, she explains why you should definitely see them on 8/28 at the Echoplex.

July 23rd, 2010 - It is an unspeakably hot Friday night in D.C., probably one of the hottest nights on record. The air conditioner in the Black Cat is out of commission. The bands and the audience are pouring sweat all over one another and their instruments.

As soon as Cap’n Jazz strikes their first chord, we are plastered, literally plastered to the front of the stage, like stinky human papier mache.

The crowd – mostly kids who can’t much older now than the members of Cap’n Jazz were when they formed the band in ‘89 – instantly transform from stand-offish all-ages scenesters into some kind of delighted sea creature, tentacles waving, reaching out to gather the band into its many-limbed embrace. (I’m mixing my metaphors, but please, bear with me.)

The fluid (and, uh, squishy) press forward became kind of comfortable once you adjusted to the idea of being very, very friendly with your neighbors. To the girl to whom I, fearing for my safety, clung bodily for the duration of the night – I’m sorry, I never got your name, but I really do owe you dinner.

It is so unbelievable, unbearably hot. Eventually we stop noticing. We are bathed in a slick of pure adolescent sweat.

Tim holds up his water bottle. People cheer. Tim says, “I kinda feel like a jackass, you know, getting up in front of people and having them cheer for me. But cheering for water! That’s something else. That’s great. It’s like, ‘Yeah!! The source of life!!’” The source of life! Water was dispensed upon us. We are baptized in the streams of Ice Mountain.

Then there is laying on of hands. We touch Tim and he touches us back. While I don’t believe his feet ever actually left the stage, the sea of limbs was such that as he sang, he could periodically just kinda lean forward into the press and be supported and touched in many places.

The really beautiful moment was when – and I can’t explain how or why this happened, chalk it up to the spirit of rock’n’roll – Tim reached out and pressed his palm against my forehead, then gathered me into a sweaty one-armed hug and nuzzled my face. It felt like an exorcism. I was healed.

Later: a young man next to me says, grinning, “Dude, I’ve cried straight through the past five songs!” He was so sweaty, I don’t think anyone would have noticed.

By the end of the night, I was soaking in the sweat and tears of hundreds of young people. It was very human. I felt very alive.

The bottom line: That a group of grown men playing songs they wrote when they were 16, almost 20 years ago, can still incite a teen-age riot is nothing short of a miracle. See Cap’n Jazz at the Echoplex on August 28th. Get up front. And if you value your dignity, for god’s sake do not wear a white t-shirt.

-rachel d.

Baths is the moniker of outer-LA native Will Wiesenfeld. At all of 21 years, Wiesenfeld has made his name as a producer, musician and remix master on the LA scene. That may be over-stating it just a little bit, but what he’s doing is certainly impressive. Even more impressive is Cerulean, his first album under the name Baths out on Anticon Records now.

Cerulean is lush electro-pop, dense or floating in all the right places, sometimes all at once. It is wonderfully conceived and spans several genres and scenes, from the cosmic glitch-hop of Flying Lotus, to the ambient to the  straight-forward electronic pop of Passion Pit’s Chunk of Change. The record flows and is a joy to listen to from beginning to end. I feel like I’m writing his mid-semester high school report or grading a paper, but if Cerulean was a final essay, and I was Wiesenfeld’s teacher, it would be the one I’d keep to show new students how to do it right.