On my never ending search for music to feed this monstrosity of a website, I do come up with some really random, tiny bands every now and then. (Keep in mind, my only gauge on popularity is the band’s number of listeners on last.fm.) The story behind today’s “discovery” is, like most of this project, relatively unexciting and hardly noteworthy. I’ve never let that stop me before, though.
Titus Andronicus’ The Union Forever came up on shuffle the other day, and while I had not forgotten just how much ass it kicks, that dose of pure musical adrenaline got me craving some similar, heavy stuff. I turned to none other than last.fm, and looked at Titus’ similar artists. At the top of the list resides a tiny band (with around 3,000 listeners — as a reference, Titus has about 160,000 listeners, and The Beatles have well over 2.5 million) called Spider Bags. A little digging revealed that members of Titus Andronicus are huge fans of this band. Titus has covered their songs, and the two have even played together. That’s good enough for me.
I didn’t get what I was expecting, though. While I do hear a few similarities between the two groups—both employ a standard rock setup, and the singers both have deep, drawling voices—the Bags’ Southern influence is too prominent to be ignored. Fortunately, I was thinking more along the lines of Wilco southern than say, Lynyrd Skynyrd southern.
It’s bands like this that make me hate phrases like “if they were good, they’d be popular.” Here we have an example of a band with a cool sound and obvious skill in their field, that just hasn’t hit it big yet. I hope their time is coming.
Swole Ear 
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