Increase your indie cred!

Several months back I was talking to this girl Marisa, a friend of my brother-in-law Matt's, and somehow it came up that she had been to New Zealand. I, being the spaz that I am, made several pronouncements about how jealous I was and probably also that I officially hated her (but in a good way). Then I'm sure I got around to the reason why I was so jealous and why I love New Zealand so much: the music, of course.

Forget about Lord of the Rings, who cares about the sailing, fuck the sheep (actually... nevermind) - all of my favorite things about that part of the world revolve around music. It all started with Neil Finn nearly 10 years ago and branched out from there. Hearing that I like NZ music, she told me that while she was there (over New Year's Eve several years back) she saw this band... and the band was fucking Fur Patrol.

Ok, remember earlier when I said went all spaz-tastic just because she'd been to New Zealand? Yeah, well, by this point I was jumping all over the room pulling on my hair. Not only did I not have to explain who Fur Patrol are, I didn't have explain how good they are either. She saw them live! I don't remember exactly how she came upon the show - she and a friend stumbled upon the show while, I don't know, I think maybe they were ditching some drunk friends or something. I didn't care as much about that part of the story.

And why am I telling you this? So that you too may know awesome-osity that is Fur Patrol. I'm really bad at describing music (and generally hate most music descriptions, in fact), so here's where you really have to trust me on this one. In a very general way, we're talking about a four-piece indie rock band with a girl singer. To me, they're all of the things that Garbage should have been but never quite lived up to. Here's the rather sadistic video for "Precious":

When you're ready, you can get their albums - Pet and Collider - from smokecds.com in New Zealand. (Shipping isn't bad at all, and with the US dollar stronger than the NZ dollar, it works well in your favor. Trust me, I've done this a lot.) In the meantime, enjoy some more of their videos on You Tube and have a go at their myspace page to listen to the new demos. I think they even have some of the tracks off Collider streaming on furpatrol.com.

Soon you'll want to go to New Zealand too.