Thursday, September 13, 2007

Ted Leo's "Since You Been Gone/Maps"/Punk Goes Pop



I've been a fan of Ted Leo's since his days in the Notre Dame college band Chisel, thanks to my buddy Jim Doppke, a friend of Ted's and a Golden Domer himself. Ted Leo melds influences as varied as Fugazi, Irish music, The Clash, and Ska into a pure pop punk. His latest, which I'll write about soon, "Living with the Living," is all about war--and the war in Iraq in particular. But here, he takes two covers ("Since U Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson, and "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and marries them in falsetto. And, as a special addition, Ted Leo's brilliant exploration of food-obsessed behaviors (anorexia?), "Me and Mia."

No comments: