Hey Trish and James,

It’s Bloggins. Many moons since we’ve heard from you all. I mean, it’s been a minute. I wondered what happened to you dudes. I mean, Broadcast drops this brilliant album, Tender Buttons, back in the fall of 2005. It made my solar plexus tingle. You all toured a bit on that jam hive. Good times. But then you guys, like, bounced. Just straight up peaced out. I feared you might’ve broken up. I went through five stages of acceptance.

But now you’re touring again – first time in ages. That’s great news. I guess I would’ve known about this sooner if I followed the Fun Fun Fest lineup, but unfortunately I didn’t/don’t give a shit about it. Perhaps I should be better about shit-giving. But anyway, you’ve roped in Deerhunter bro Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound. Excellent choice. Does this mean that a new album is to follow? I hope so. You guys need to show the indie rock retards how it’s done. I know that a new EP is getting ready to drop on Warp. And that Focus Group had something to do with it? Sweet cinnamon and biscuits! It’s like Christmas up in this bitch.

Anyway, enough gabbin’. I do see you’re playing a club called The Black Cat, too. That’s funny. A hardy lol was muttered from this side of the table, no doubt. Hope the tour goes well, and I’ll be seeing you guys in Columbus or Chicago. Haven’t decided which yet. Wish you had, like, just one open date on the east coast so I could help bring you all to Louisville, but somebody’s got some type-A-personality booking goin’ on. I ain’t mad at ya, though.

TTYL,
Kenny Bloggins

All dates below are with Atlas Sound and The Selmanaires. No word on the official release date or title of the new EP, but I think it might be called Witch Cults of the Radio Age. If you poke around their MySpaceTime, you’ll probably ascertain why I think that. Anyway… dates…

10/15 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
10/16 Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
10/17 Washington, DC @ Black Cat
10/18 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church Sanctuary
10/20 New York, NY @ (Le) Poisson Rouge
10/21 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg (CMJ)
10/22 Boston, MA @ The Paradise
10/23 Montreal, QC @ Le National
10/24 Toronto, ON @ Lees Palace
10/25 Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center
10/26 Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
10/27 Northfield, MN @ The Cave
10/30 Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
10/31 Seattle, WA @ Neumos
11/01 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
11/03 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
11/04 Los Angeles, CA @ The Troubadour
11/05 Phoenix, AZ @ Rhythm Room
11/07 Denton, TX @ Hailey’s
11/08 Austin, TX @ Fun Fun Fun Fest

MP3 :::
Broadcast – Black Cat
Broadcast – The World Backwards

Ahoy, the holiest of holies there – the Boss SP-303 sampler. So you kinda know what’s comin’…

There’s been a cheeky debate going on with the serious (I Guess I’m Floating) and not so serious (Hipster Runoff) blogs about what to call the burst of sample-based, lightly acid-tinged pop music that exploded with Panda Bear’s Person Pitch and continues with strong work from Lotus Plaza, City Center, et al. I like sampsycore. It’s sort of German in its mindset – make a new word out of three existing ones. So I’ll throw that in the ring. Chillbrocore is good too, though. Anyway, I’m glad Nathaniel at the aforementioned IGIF introduced me to psychedelic pop bro Happy Family, because his new Sound Farm EP helps keep the brain limber.

Happy Family exudes a thick, hazy, classic 4AD vibe by way of Cocteau Twins, with fuuuuunk. That is to say, Happy Family’s songwriting tendencies and general sonic timbre fall somewhere between dub and freak folk, which are two rather disperate genres. Hombre pulls it off well.  In addition, the one-man Baltimore-based project also concocts a well-balanced blend of shoegaze, kraut, and 8mm-washed swells of ambience.  I tend not to like music with heavy, pervasive beats, but Happy Family’s scratchy, syrupy rhythm section is decidedly distinct and unusual, is somewhat reminiscent of Koushik’s or Forest Swords’ fine astral trips. Recommended.

Happy Family is all up on MySpazz.

For fans of:  City Center, Cocteau Twins, Forest Swords, Koushik

MP3 :::
Happy Family – Mindless Pleasures

I was a little embarrassed to review this record a little late in the game (by music blog terms). Fred Thomas’ solo project City Center has been long-championed by music blogs I trust, such as Raven Sings the Blues and Forest Gospel. Shit, I even like his other band, the retro kitsch Saturday Looks Good to Me. So I have no excuse, other than being a mediocre blogger. My life is average.

City Center is a sample-based, blissed-out psychedelic entity – much like, well, Panda Bear and Lotus Plaza. While the aforementioned solo outings from Animal Collective and Deerhunter make sense in relation to those groups’ ethos of general weirdness, I didn’t expect this sort of album from the chief His Name is Alive/SLGTM songwriter. Maybe I should’ve, considering that Thomas’ other projects do dabble in lots of left of center sounds. Regardless, good surprises can be exciting. City Center is fantastic.

City Center was probably recorded underwater. I’m not sure how Thomas did this without shorting out his gear, but this record’s precise aquatic timbre and dark reverb could’ve only been achieve submerged, I believe. Czech opener “Killer Whale” with its intensely fluid exposition that would make Growing melt and drifting-at-sea folk acoustics and you’ll see what I mean. City Center begins a little slower and bland, but wait four songs in.

The record sprouts its wings with “Gladest,” which is everything correct about lush, soaring psychedelic pop. City Center keeps getting better from there with the three movement “Bleed Blood,” beginning as a heady electric folk magical mystery tour and ending in a wash of broadcast static and a penetrating sonic pastiche. “Summer School” brings in that breezy, lighthearted and fun in the sun psychedelia that High Places also masters and Animal Collective sometimes fails at (this is how “Brothersport” should’ve been done).

While Panda Bear and Atlas Sound and similar psychbros may have been on this tip previously and owned this sort of approach to sample-based music wholly, Fred Thomas’ surprising well-crafty entry to the field is anything but second-rate. City Center represents everything I like in modern music – melodic, vaguely accessible but sometimes challenging, and all kinds of trippy.

City Center is available now and you can grip it here.

For fans of:  High Places, Panda Bear, Lotus Plaza

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

MP3 :::
City Center – Summer School
City Center – Bleed Blood

Whoever said you can’t judge a book by its cover is an asshole. I was introduced to The Folklords‘ Release the Sunshine whilst poking around Ear X-Tacy over the weekend. Like magnetism, my eyes locked on this record that was on display in the psych/kraut/experimental section from rather far away. The kaleidoscopic band photo with a Polaroid-washed palette, Indian-inspired hippie chic wardrobes, and the album’s title imposed over a doily-like paisley sun in the upper right hand corner – oh hell yes, this record’s going to be very relevant to my interests. And they’re called the fuckin’ Folklords. You know this is shit’s gonna be rowdy. So I picked it up.

The record sounds exactly as the album art suggests – good vibin’, sunny, spellbinding, lazy and hazy psychedelic electric folk with serious zither and autoharp solos in tow. Originally released in 1968 on Canadian imprint Allied Records, little is known about this Toronto trio and their only album. Their obscurity says nothing about the quality of the music – only that the late ’60s were quite a competitive period for this type of sound. As the liner notes suggest (and I agree), the Folklords, strangely enough, sound closer to the Creation Records groups of the mid ’80s, the British bands emulating the timbre of flower power, than many of their contemporaries in 1968. This is especially pervasive on “Thank You For Your Kindness,” included below. You can extrapolate whatever you will from this sentiment.

Release the Sunshine isn’t anything you haven’t heard before, but it’s exciting nonetheless to find a pretty good document of Canada’s response to the west coast sound – one that was swept under the rug, no less. Fortunately, Lion Productions, who specialize in grabbing obscure psychedelia and craftily remastering their finds, recently released this gem, and its available here.

For fans of:  West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, The Left Banke, Margo Guryan

MP3 :::
The Folklords – Forty Seconds River
The Folklords – Thank You For Your Kindness

Christchurch, New Zealand native Annabel Alpers, known to you and I as Bachelorette, is a quiet, sultry force that you can’t even reckon with. Her debut for Drag City, and second proper album, has been described by a couple of writers as a sort of quirky “bedroom pop.” I wholeheartedly disagree. My Electric Family is expansive, radical, and ionospheric. Packed with reverb, sweeping moods, and surrealistic lyrical motifs, Bachelorette is way too large for any bedroom.

Each of the 11 songs on My Electric Family can certainly be categorized, loosely speaking, as pop. But that, too, is not accurate. When I think of “pop,” as it were, I tend to recollect music that would be kosher to play around my folks – you know, The Shins and shit. There’s something viscerally strange about Bachelorette that I can’t quite pinpoint. Her sound is certainly in the vein of Broadcast, Pram, and Blonde Redhead – tightly constrcuted songs, hummable melodies, a vague retro-futuristic slant, and an undeniable allure. However, the soundscapes themselves – constructed mostly from acoustic guitar, warm analog synthesizers, polyphonic vocal effects, and a variety of playful samples and bountiful noise flourishes – are tacitly otherwordly and atomic. On her MySpace, Alpers writes “Bachelorette took too many mushrooms and fell in love with a computer.”  That’s as great of a description as any.

While the disco-friendly “Mindwarp” and “Her Rotating Head” are beginning to make their rounds around the Interwebs – and are the obvious single choices – My Electric Family’s more askew corners are what make Bachelorette fascinating. “The National Grid,” with an atmospheric stomp rhythm, repetitive vocal sample backdrop, and rising swells of static, reminds me of the exciting first measures of Panda Bear’s “Comfy in Nautica” with a drugged out Enya as the backing band.  The phantasmagorical “Instructions for Insomnia,” featuring swirling and soaring analog melodies and driving cowpunk rhythm, evokes a bizarre bucolic mileu, like driving your truck offroad on a Martian farm out of The Sirens of Titan. “Long Time Gone” is a crafty space pop gem somewhere between a major key Kid A and the communication signal at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Album closer “Little Bird Tell Lies” is a fun, frolicking, childlike psych ditty that, while sounds simple enough upon first listen, is built upon immesaurably thick layers of disparate sounds that mesh together in an astonishingly seamless manner. Don’t even think about listening to this album on shitty iPod earbuds.

Even when Bachelorette plays it straightforward, like the psych-twang electric folk found on “Where to Begin” or the piano waltz meets Raymond Scott’s space age bachelor pad jam of “Dream Sequence,” it feels just as exhilerating. Perhaps it’s Alpers voice – it’s distinct and gorgeous in the traditional sense, and yet holistically unlike anyone else (much like Broadcast’s Trish Keenan). Alpers never sings toward you – she seems to be singing behind you with a fortissimo whisper, in the corner of the room with her Doc Brown shades obscured by a wall of technology imported from an alternate future.

Without trying to hype this too much, My Electic Family is truly a hazy, dreamy, kaleidoscopic journey, packed with imaginitve strangeness and oddball beauty – a downright perfect record that serves as the surprise masterpiece of 2009.

Let me break it down like this. Bachelorette is my absolute favorite new artist. I have not been this excited about someone relatively new since my first exposure to Deerhunter through Cryptograms (no offense to anyone else I’ve covered). Here’s a screen cap of my Last.fm this week:

That’s what’s up.

Hope you don’t get sick of hearing about Bachelorette, because she’s getting a lot of coverage on this blog. Get used to it. Fuck the new Grizzly Bear album, My Electric Family is out now on Drag City. Picking this album up was the most important thing I did this week – I suggest you do that same.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

For fans of:  Broadcast, Tickley Feather, Electrelane, Pram

MP3 :::
Bachelorette – The National Grid
Bachelorette – Donkey

Especially in music, it seems there are a lot of names that most prominently exist as a footnote. I’m sure that’s a peculiar place to find oneself in. You see this often in the quite communal scenes of the late ’60s and early ’70s, the best example being the Beatles and how everyone associated with them gets the distinction of “sixth Beatle,” “seventh Beatle,” and so on. Marmalade is such a group. Most music dorks seem to immediately associate Marmalade as simply the group that did a decent cover of a Beatles song, and that Jimi Hendrix was really stoked on the group in 1967.

Hendrix was particularly impressed by “I See the Rain,” and for good reason – it’s a flawless psychedelic pop nugget. They had other great songs as well, but as the group progressed through the end of the decade and into the early ’70s, it was cleared that the group was abandoning its sensibilities (originally acting as the Scottish response to English beat groups like The Hollies), taking off in a very, very pop friendly direction. Not cool quirky pop like the Free Design, but like, sickly, lazy AOR boogie like Seals & Crofts and Bread. You can hear the degradation on the Very Best of… compilation, from beginning to end. Of course, it wasn’t just that Marmalade was altering their sound to glide with the times – they endured countless lineup changes, vividly recounted in this AMG article.

With that said, however, the Marmalade, in their early years, was a painfully underrated psychedelic British pop outfit. They maintained two bass players (something I appreciate as a bass player myself) – one traditional four-string bass and a super low-end six-string, which concocted a subtly unusual sound amidst the flurry of major key melodies. “Man in a Shop” is the type of sweet, overpowering baroque pop song that warps your mind and makes you think you could land softly if you leaped off a building holding an umbrella. And with that said, below are two songs that, in my opinion, make Marmalade memorable. If only they followed this direction, lineup circumstances notwithstanding, Marmalade, in a personal and respectful hypothesis, would’ve had the rabid cult following that many of their late-’60s psych pop contemporaries enjoyed then, and today, rather than be relegated to the footnote realm.

MP3 :::
The Marmalade – I See the Rain
The Marmalade – Man in a Shop

I should be releasing my best of 2008 list next month at this time. As a preview, you can bet that San Francisco’s Sic Alps will be firmly planted in the northern latitudes of the list. This isn’t your father’s unwashable, filthy, no-fi psychedelic rock scuz – Sic Alps twist, creak, and thump, taking you on a cosmically damaged romp through west coast good vibes and future shock trepidation.

Why I didn’t czech out the group earlier is a mystery to me. Their debut Pleasures and Treasures was released on Animal Disguise, home to my good friends Warmer Milks. The latest, U.S. Ez, has a comfy place on the Siltbreeze roster with the likes of Charlambides, The Dead C, and hey look, U.S. Girls (see below). Sic Alps certainly drink from the same goblets as the highest in psych rock royalty, but they also bring the goods to back up their seat at the table.

I was casually listening to my iTunes on shuffle whilst engaging in some fast-track multitasking when “Clubbing For $$” came on and I thought “hmm, I don’t recognize this Alexander Skip Spence song.” Both Skip Spence and Alps vocalist Mike Donovan retain a subtle, gorgeous quality through raspy timbre and decimated, hissing melodies, suggesting that both gentlemen have seen the true face of God and didn’t like what they saw. “Gelly Roll Gum Drops” also provokes this same, insane electric folk feel, with a bit of 13th Floor Elevators style celestial boogie and some general Holy Modal Rounders headfuckery tossed in to give this exercise in tape reverb fortitude some serious lift.

I’m also reminded of my favorite work of Neil Michael Haggerty in U.S. Ez, so imagine my elation when I found out they play as his backup band every now and again. The blitzkrieg of fuzz on “Massive Place” might make Mudhoney feel retarded. But enough of comparisons. Comparisons are lame. I’m listening to this record right now as we speak, and all that needs to be said is that it’s so fucking good. I hope Sic Alps sell a billion records.

Get this album, or else the terrorists will win.

I finally got around to listening to Chicago’s U.S. Girls, and it’s everything I could’ve hoped for. “Buzz Chant,” which you can find on WFMU’s latest Free Music Archive compilation, is gentle enough to subdue and hypnotize, but menacing enough to make an excellent Halloween season soundtrack. Speaking of that FMU comp, I know they’ve been giving these things out for free around NYC – anyone care to send me one? Puh-leeeze?! Anyway, I can’t do much better describing U.S. Girls than Scott W’s description from Beware of Blog, so I’ll let him talk: “Packing nothing more than a reel-to-reel tape deck, a mic, and 2 stomp boxes, U.S. Girls delivered a maelstrom of classic pop filtered through something unknowable and kinda crazy, I don’t know what it is. I’ll indulge the facile “A meets B” thing by saying imagine Phil Spector covered by The Conet Project, or The Dave Clark 5 as done by a gang of angry ghosts. It’s strangely still pop music, stripped of all affect, leaving behind the pure emotion and meaning of songs like “Bits and Pieces” and The Kinks’ “Days”.”

Finally, this jam has been a favorite of mine for a while. It’s from Atlanta’s The N.E.C., which stands for something awesome but I’ll be damned if I can remember. I discovered the N.E.C. through my friends Tight Leather (lots of SHOUT OUTS on today’s entry, eh?), who often trade shows between Lexington and Atlanta. The N.E.C. is, simply put, a nasty and fun Nuggets meets Psychocandy psych pop howler. The band has a full length coming out early next year on Double Phantom that I’m bound to discuss often on this blog, so in the meantime, enjoy “Young Wax” and get stoked.

Everything rules.

MP3 :::
Sic Alps – Bathman
Sic Alps – Sing Song Waitress
Sic Alps – Clubbing For $$
Sic Alps – Gelly Roll Gum Drop
U.S. Girls – Buzz Chant (Live on WFMU)
U.S. Girls – Prove It All Night
The N.E.C. – Young Wax

I love the new self-titled album by Women. It’s currently available on the near flawless Jagjaguwar label, and since it’s based in Bloomington, serves as possibly the only really awesome thing about Indiana. As you can see, Women is (presumably) four dudes. Sausage fest!

I was introduced to Women (that sounds so odd) by a fellow Tiny Mix Tapes writer who proclaimed that Women is prefect for anyone who “gets their dick up to Animal Collective.” I was certainly intrigued after that statement, especially since he said the word “dick.” And while I would concur that the Calgary band sometimes evokes the more menacing material on Here Comes the Indian and Danse Manitee, Women are by no means a knock-off. Whereas Animal Collective has always exuded a playfulness and childlike veneer, here be dragons within Women. The crescendo of the excellently titled “Lawncare” wants to pillage your village and breed with your women (pun intended, motherfucker).

I would also be somewhat remiss to not recognize the pretty spot-on review courtesy of Jagjaguwar’s one sheet: “Sometimes light and spacious, at other times eerie and dense with an ominous weight, this self titled album touches upon Velvet Underground, Swell Maps or This Heat while not really having any obvious precursors – a lo-fi masterpiece cloaked in layers of vibrato and guitar wash.” That’s certainly true, as Women adopt the traditional instrumentation of gritty garage punk and stretch its potential across ’60s Nuggets-ready psychedelia, early ’80s no wave, and contemporary, slightly-askew pop peppered with noise flourishes. You also get a heavy-dose of the elusive hummable anthem with “Black Rice,” Fahey-esque guitar noodling on “Sag Harbor Blues,” and a nihilistic Madchester zeitgeist-meets Boredoms thirsty on bloodlust hodgepodge on “Shaking Hands.” The insanity and panning production on “January 8th” attacks your brain with holy water sprinklers. January 8th, as a fun fact, is David Bowie’s birthday. Women’s “January 8th” sounds nothing like David Bowie.

Despite the fact that I always applaud creativity, I do wish Women named themselves something… less awkward. For example, if I would to name drop Women in a conversation, it might go like this:

Dude A: “Yo Bloggins, I respect your opinion on music and culture so much cuz you’re the smartest bro I know, Quasibroto. So I just gotsta know what you’ve been jammin’ on lately. I’ve been feelin’ that new Hold Steady jam hive. Daaamn, makes me feel like gettin’ my drank on, lol. What chu been in to?”
Kenny: “Besides the new Lindsey Buckingham and my daily regiment of mid-’70s light rock and pop standards?”
Dude A: “Well, yeah.”
Kenny: “I’ve really been into women.”
Dude A: “… um, RIGHT ON, BROSEPH!”
Kenny: “omg, I know, right”

And then it’s mega weird for a while.

So if you enjoy these MP3s, maybe you should czech them out live this fall, or perhaps pick up the album. The whole thing’s good – strong like bear, mean like wolf.

MP3 :::
Women – Lawncare
Women – Black Rice
Women – January 8th
Women – Flashlights

Like drugs and lovers, ’60s psych pop groups were all about sharing songs. West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band delighted in celebrating the work of their peers with a variety of covers that appeared on Volume One. West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, the more tuneful and pop-oriented response to Andy Warhol’s and the VU’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, dabbled in many genres: lo-fi garage sounds, baroque pop compositions, rollicking vocal harmonies, sunshine psych pop, and general sonic fuckin’ around. Their original songs were catchy, trippy, and fun, but it was when West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band covered a similar band, often yielding something better than the original version, that the group showcased a more unique, remarkable representation of the free decade of love and sharing.

Unfortunately, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was short-lived, and the members went on to pursue some pretty uncool careers. I won’t name names, but one of ‘em joined Three Dog Night. Nice.

I have lots of fun comparing and contrasting covers with originals or other covers. Have fun with me, won’t you?

“She May Call You Up Tonight” was originally written by Michael Brown of The Left Banke. Though there’s not much of a discernible different, the polyphonic vocal harmony gives West Coast’s version a more expansive feel. Like with many covers of Bob Dylan songs, their version of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” is closer to the 13th Floor Elevators’ raspy ballad take on the song. West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band dusts the dirge off and gives it a new electric life.

Find West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s Volume One, from the reissue saviors themselves Sundazed, here and the 13th Floor Elevator’s Easter Everywhere here. The Left Banke’s There’s Gonna Be a Storm: Complete Recordings 1966-1969, which documents everything Michael Brown did with the Banke (and some things that he didn’t), is hard to find, but you can buy the album as an MP3 here.

MP3 :::
West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band – She May Call You Up Tonight
The Left Banke – She May Call You Up Tonight
West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band – It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
13th Floor Elevators – Baby Blue

For example, did you know that there’s a popular theory circulating among the Intarwebz and evangelicals stating that Barack Obama could be the Antichrist? Not so much in a political sense (oh noes! socialized medicine!), but in a “Bible predicted this, ya’ll” sort of way. Pretty neato skeeto.

Obama’s popularity is beyond a fever pitch here in Chicago, so I don’t have much of a litmus test concerning his popularity nationwide. I mean, he’s a rockstar in Chicago. You can buy shirts at Urban Outfitters. My understanding, though, is that Barackorama is quite pervasive everywhere. It makes sense – this is a logical equal-and-opposite reaction to the fear-induced eight years of “what to do/not to do lest the terrorists win” sort of mindset.

According to a (I assume) fringe doctrine however, Obama’s national popularity, international adoration, and general charisma parallels interpretations of Revelation’s Antichrist. McC seems to already be on this tip. Jesus W. Christ.

First, let me say that I’m certainly voting for Obama, whether he’s the Antichrist or not (sorry mom). I’ve already demonstrated that I have an apocalyptic death wish, but that is neither here nor there. There’s a sweeping array of reasons as to why Barack has earned my vote, but I’d rather not make this a political entry, per se, since I alredy did that on niner eleven. Not only does Obama provide the answers for the issues most important to me – the environment and health care – as well as offer a political and social paradigm shift, but he also seems like he would groove to Microcastle. John McCain doesn’t. And if you can’t groove to Microcastle, I can’t groove with you. Plus, I really like him. Isn’t it time to have a likable, non-slimy POTUS?

Five minute Photoshooop!

I also have to say that, being a young and left-leaning moderate raised in the most racially integrated landscape yet, I would feel quite shitty about the first black president also being the Antichrist through simple happenstance. I mean, the apocalypse would harsh my mellow as well, but the former point is totally a bummer. That would really set back race relations for the remaining time on our planet, among other things.

Anyway, a “barack obama antichrist” search query yields approximately 384,000 results. A number of headlines and websites keep the Antichrist gears turning. Everything’s been cited – from his charisma and international sycophancy, to his connections with Islam (which amounts to, um, his name and a little circumstantial evidence), to his temple-like DNC podium, to various other 666-branding claims and general, insurmountable snake-handlin’ Protestant poppycock. Conservative Christian author Hal Lindsey wrote in WorldNetDaily, “Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him — a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib … The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance.” News Blaze compiles many coincidences between the conditions Revelation lays out for the Antichrist rollin’ through and the current worldwide climate. Zounds!

And then there’s the emails that may have made it to your inbox with a big ol’ nasty FWD in the subject:

According to the Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuassive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal…. the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destory everything. Is it OBAMA??

::: ::: :::

How long is the beast allowed to have authority in Revelations? Guess the Answer? Revelations Chapter 13 tells us it is 42 months, and you know what that is.

Almost a four-year term to a Presidency!

ZOMG!!1111!!! IS IT TEH OBAMAZ?!?!11one!?!!

Amazing.

Snopes has already debunked this. Ron Reagan and Bill Jeff Clinton received the same treatment as well, but without the help of the Intarwebz so their run for Antichrist was not as well documented.  Now… this whole recurring “X or Y is the Antichrist” theme seems to suggest that many of our politicians and lawmakers in the free world share qualities with the Antichrist, no matter how you slice it. How does that make you feel? Makes me feel crummy, personally. I have no deep analysis on this issue though, as I’m not a Bible scholar (I do have a poli sci minor though, but it doesn’t help). I just think the whole thing is fascinating.

Anyway, I thought I’d share this with you, dear reader, for somethin’ to chew on. Fringe Nostradamus-eque theories are always interesting to me, whether they’re lulz-worthy or not. If this theory is true, though, my girlfriend and I are gettin’ our asses to church and will start watchin’ The 700 Club instead of House.

But ya know, maybe I sorta want Obama to be the Antichrist. Considering the Rapture… the thought of having, at the very least, a couple of days without evangelical morons on the planet sounds really appealing to me. Plus, I’ve never looted before. I’d like to do that before I die.

MP3 :::
The United States of America – The American Metaphysical Circus
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness – We Choose Faces