Ready to Die

My friend Jason sent me some troubling news. It seems up-and-coming Montreal rock stars The Unicorns have broken up after recording one album. That's a real shame, because that one album, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone, is fucking brilliant. It's like this sing-songy, bizarre, humorous indie-pop confection about death and decay. And the songs have really neat keyboard lines and lyrics about Biggie Smalls and drifting out to sea.

And, yeah, they also had an EP, but that only had two new songs on it. And only one of them was any good.

I listened to little else during the third quarter of 2003, though, and saw two Unicorns shows during their trips to Los Angeles. I must say, neither of the shows was terribly impressive. The band basically came off as a bunch of snots who thought they were too cool to play in Los Angeles for Americans, and for some bizarre reason the venues were overloaded with frat boys, even though there was nary a Nickelback cover to be heard and the beer selection at the Echo always leaves me unsatisfied.

How are you going to break up after one album? At least McLusky had a couple of albums. Hell, even Axl Rose managed to keep his bandmates around for a bloated two-disc concept album before they ditched his ass. As much as I dig their music, these Unicorns guys are starting to seem like real jerks.