So much of the reception of music is tied up in physical location and mood. Listening to The Antlers for the first time was one of those moments in which all four elements converged into a perfect storm that allowed an album like Hospice to seep into my soul. I was driving to Salt Lake City from …
t’s true, before I met my fiance Neko Case seemed like the woman of my dreams. While all of my freshmen dorm mates put up the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit model I had a page I ripped out of The Big Takeoverwith Neko in a long black dress reclining wistfully on a couch with her long red hair draped over …
Listening to Jasper, TX for the first time was a singular experience I had at a record store. 3 years ago I was perusing a local record store and met an employee who had similar musical tastes. We started chatting about musicians we found fascinating and then he paused, looked around, and whispered in a …
About 10 people and I saw the Crystal Antlers play an amazing set last November at Kilby Court. While the set was amazing it was a pretty strange situation. Local tween pop band Kid Theodore for some reason was scheduled to play their album release show that night while opening for the Crystal Antlers. I …
CRYSTAL ANTLERS – TENTACLES (TOUCH AND GO, 2009) Read More »
The Blood Brothers, love them or hate them, were undeniably talented. When these unlikely torchbearers broke up the reverberation around the music community was felt deeply. Although 10 years deep, The Blood Brothers still felt like a band in their prime, Young Machetes was an exciting step with more focus on percussion with their trademark math time …
PAST LIVES – “STRANGE SYMMETRY” (SUICIDE SQUEEZE, 2009) Read More »
This album marks the first of what I like to call the Triple Convergence: three of my favorite bands from my formative years, Appleseed Cast, Thursday, ….And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, have all released new albums hailed as their “comeback” after two mediocre albums. Appleseed Cast have reached a mythical status in …
Emerging from L.A’s all ages circuit with much deserved critical praise, Abe Vigoda are poised to take over 2009; take that post-high school malaise! While barely in their twenties Abe Vigoda has toured with legendary noise makers XBXRX, No Age and most recently M.I.A beat maestro Diplo. Coming off 2008’s noise/caribbean/shoegaze/angular art pop punk masterpiece Skeleton that Vampire Weekend wished they …
t is difficult to write about an album that centers it’s creative focus on the act of creation. Ore describes describes this album as “my meditation on feminine sacred invention, on sun worship in the moments before earth disintegration, on the proud miracle of creation in a trash-proliferation era.” Figure out that means and you …
INCA ORE – “BIRTHDAY OF BLESS YOU” (NOT NOT FUN, 2009) Read More »
So, the official commodifaction of what used be known as Indie Rock happened right under my nose. As pop punk and mall-core bowed out of the pre pubescent arena, the jocks that wore Saves the Day T shirts and listened to Taking Back Sunday took off their sweatbands and donned expensive jeans and collared shirts. They got …
BIRD NAMES – “OPEN RELATIONSHIP” (UNSOUND, 2009) Read More »
To say that Odd Nosdam occupies a unique place within the anticon universe is a misnomer. Nosdam, the one time director of the anticon collective, is arguably THE anticon sound. From his first experiments into dense, droning soundscapes that owe as much to Terminator X as they do to My Bloody Valentine to his genre defying work with cLOUDEAD, Odd Nosdam has done more to craft the post-hip hop …