Dolby Disaster

I think it’s clear at this point that if mainstream rock music is to continue to evolve, at all, it will have to in some way prioritize an element of funk, as a sort of stylistic catalyst or anchor. This is just my measurement from imbibing artists like Hozier, which seem bent toward a white-boy … Read more“Working toward Placing Black Mountain’s ‘Druganaut’ within the Forum of Political Commentary in Music”

To this day, it’s astonishing to me how much meaning I’m meeting and greeting with this band, how much inspiration they seem to have procured, whether in the bar, or the back alley behind it, or wherever. I mean, they’re the very definition of controlled popular rock, like Semisonic on prozac, if that’s possible. “Everything … Read more“Dolby’s Rupees: Vertical Horizon – ‘You’re a God’”

Really, despite my maniacal tirades during the Vinyl Me, Please craze of colored records and hip-hop vinyl plugging [1], I’ve always loved vinyl. I have this memory of a religious experience in my life, for instance, which was hearing my mom’s Neil Young – Decade LP, and its closeur, “Long May You Run”; on wax. … Read more“If the Entire World Refuses to Acknowledge the Difference between Bluetooth and Analog Sound, Why Shouldn’t I?”

Dear Ryan: It is on this hopeless, cloudy day in Arizona that I choose to write to you, apropos of your three-out-of-10 rating redolent to our 2001 album, Bleed American.  You see, cloudy days aren’t supposed to happen in Arizona. We know how to deal with them for their non-frequency. I wrote a bunch of … Read more“A Homespun Letter from Jim Adkins to Ryan Schreiber”

I remember, vaguely, the surreal worlds, the constant bevy of funny characters and the refreshingly low-budget aesthetic, as if some sort of phenomenological process were taking place within comedy, within television and within my life. I remember Nancy Kerrigan getting attacked and everybody making fun of her, including, I think, a dude at the Academy … Read more“One for Rocko’s Modern Life.”