Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Sprung

Jon Theiss


Just as Spring brings new life into this world,
This spring brings new  writers to the EDAS team.
Please welcome our newest contributor, Jon Theiss.





Today marks the first day of spring, and it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood (at least here in New York), so here’s one of my favorite anthems that celebrates, among other things, ungluing your face from the Internet. (The irony that I’m writing this ON THE INTERNET isn't lost on me, promise.)

This ditty showcases one of Stephanie Nilles’s biggest strengths (that she can count among the many)—the slap-and-tickle “Fuck You” anthem—crystallized here in the sweet-as-candy but deceptively fanged first-track, “Fuck Off Grizzly Bear,” from the album by the same name.

Nilles, the just-over-five-foot New-Orleans-via-Kent, Ohio jazz/blues player, has a voice—literally and figuratively—that’s far beyond her years. Everybody loves a slow-burn vocal, sure, but it’s the spoonful-of-sugar-helps-the-arsenic-go-down attitude that is the cornerstone of Nilles's craft that keeps my pants tight.

“Myspace is a place where disaffected folks go to make themselves seem happy/ and Facebook is just the gateway drug to stalking/ Twitter is a port through which the self-absorbed to make bullshit references to pop culture/ The news is not the news, it’s food for the vultures.”

As a former news writer, Twitterati-obsessed Instagram-heavy Pinterester, I’m completely on board, as masochistic as that sounds. What can I say? I like a lady that can put me in my place.

So, today, this first day of Spring, “If you’re feeling like a useless piece of shit, chances are, your instincts are right/ So employ the restrictions forced upon you as a kid—unplug it and go outside.”

Check out Nilles if you like smart, well-written pop/jazz. Or maybe it's jazz/pop. Whatever, as Stephanie says, Go Outside!

Stephanie Nilles - Fuck Off Grizzly Bear