Breaking Artist: Art Brut Storm Back With Their Second Disc

WHO: Exuberant English quartet with a lean, crude riff-rock sound and a brilliantly funny frontman, Eddie Argos, who specializes in childlike, half-spoken vocals about erectile dysfunction and other romantic misadventures. After declining to attend university -- he deliberately flunked his admissions exams, choosing to write his essay about the A-Team Argos formed Art Brut in 2002. After an endearingly funny 2005 debut and a series of killer live gigs on both sides of the Atlantic, Art Brut amped up their sound for their great new album, It's a Bit Complicated.

HEAR IT NOW: Complicated gets huge mileage out of a simple sound: Exuberant, garage-y banging overlayed with half-spoken jokes and narratives, with Argos picking through the ashtray of his brain and offering himself as the punchline -- as on "Jealous Guy," where he tries to "accidentally" wake his sleeping girl to get laid. Check out that unique sound on Art Brut's MySpace page.

WATCH IT: Dig the video for Complicated's banging new single, "Direct Hit."

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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