Building character

Image: Leah Hayes

Sorry We Took All Your Money - Scary Mansion

Best song title of the (9 days old) new year! Leah Hayes (see art above) dresses gothic sentiments in a new-wave dance beat and squeezes a novel into a two-syllable word. When she says sorry, she's really saying yeah, I screwed you over, took you to the cleaners and razed your house, because you deserved it! Still, now that nightmares stalk my sleep, I guess it wouldn't hurt to apologize and maybe boost my karma. Ok, that's not why. The truth is, I sort of miss you (even lying here next to my kind new husband). You and your bastard ways and your cold, cold hands.

From Every Joke Is Half the Truth (Jan. 22 release). Myspace

The Wizard of Os - Professor Pez

Professor Pez's welterweight pop is surprisingly content-heavy. But maybe I'm surprised only because I'm American and, therefore, accustomed to musicians delivering highly politicized songs like they mean it, with shouts and grunts and growls, furious electric guitar solos and hard-strummed acoustics. Indie pop in this country is the domain of crushes and chaste kisses and the prosh kittehs and puppehs you find on Cute Overload, not, needless to say, irony-laced jabs at rapacious politicians who want to expand land development and privatize water. Not being Norwegian and unfamiliar with the town of Os, I'm sure I'm missing the insider references that enrich this soil. Still, I appreciate the band's pun (I almost always appreciate puns), its various metaphors and the prancing trumpet. And I'm always a sucker for bah bah bahs. If these guys were singing in Norwegian, I'd think it was a song about waddling baby ducks or something.

From Hordaland. Myspace

Around:
A fascinating photo mystery and fun comment speculation at A Dress a Day.

Fair warning:
Posting will probably be lighter than usual for the next month or so. Things to take care of that I've put off long enough.