‹ Heath Ledger Wins Golden Globe for The Dark Knight •
There’s something cool about a band that named themselves after one of the seminal books in evolutionary biology. You may expect such a band to be stuffy or aloof, and their songs difficult to connect to, or at the very least blatantly intellectual. Luckily that’s not the case with The Selfish Gene. This Madison, Wisconsin quartet manages to sneak heavy topics into their songs without weighing them down or making them stuffy. The end result is catchy pop/rock songs that manage to sneak in real thinking without you even realizing it. Kind of like a mom slipping carrots into her kids meatloaf, only musical.
For a band that’s been around since 1998 it’s surprisingly difficult to find information about them on the internet. Making the task even more difficult is the fact that I was able to find not one, but two other bands called The Selfish Gene. Oy. Here’s what I’ve been able to dig up. At least two of the band’s four members met while attending the University of Wisconsin. They like literature. And they’ve put out two albums: 2005′s Self-Defeating Human Beings and 2007′s The Grand Masquerade. It was one of the tracks from The Grand Masquerade that initially caught my attention.
“Autopilot”
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
“Autopilot” is a catchy, pulsating tune, and I figured any band that could come up with it would have a few more tricks up their sleeve. I was right.
“Fist Fed Up”
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
That’s a great title for a song. “Fist Fed Up”. I have no idea what it means, but it just sounds cool. The song itself is good too. But it had me at the title.
Videos
“Prince Anthony”
“Sun Song”, live
Links
Buy The Grand Masquerade
Official Site
MySpace
