Actually, deep down, I knew it was going to be a good album. I was “list sweeping,” though, as I term it, and yes, Snoop Dogg’s simplistic, pompous and lazy part in “Spirit of Cyrus” disqualified it from my year-end festivities. I mean, you have to be able to put the record on and recognize […]
Moments ago, I checked back in on Rough Trade, the primary and high-powered online vendor for vinyl records of note in the world today. And I made a somewhat shocking discovery: records cost markedly more than they did four years ago. The difference is, on average, about nine dollars per record, pitting the current average […]
A good way to tell if a radio rock song is of debased, empty artistic inspiration, sometimes, is an examination of the lyrics with specific attention to a contingent quest for a really regular sort of victory or superiority. I mean, as in the case of Buckcherry’s “Crazy Bit**”; do we really need a song […]
There’s a strange, almost mystical siren crooning to me from the PA speakers. She’s repeating, among other things, the mantra of “We’re running up that road / We’re running up that hill”. In her voice is an incredible sense of purpose, as if her operation is the result of a distinct, definite existential vision, one […]
It’s Tuesday morning at quarter to seven and I’m traveling south on SR 19 from Elkhart, Indiana to Napanee. The landscape is dominated by cornfields lit dimly by ashen skies. And I don’t even have the music on: innately, the title track from Phish’s 1996 “poppy” album Billy Breathes seeps into my head, like vapor, […]
Pete? What up, it’s Mike. I’m calling about DMX. No, I didn’t see him in the post office. It might have been Chad Ochocinco. Man, you’re not gonna believe this: they’re calling him a homo. Give these millennials a smart phone and they’re instant celebrities, instant stand-up comedians, apparently. And the dude talks about “bars” […]
I think it’s safe to say that pop music this decade is dominated by women, with very few notable exceptions, like Barns Courtney’s “Glitter & Gold”; perhaps. Then, if we were to steer the ship in the direction of how exactly the form’s evolution manifests itself, my opinion would be that, more and more, we’re […]
I’m sitting in my apartment, staring at a picture of Frank Zappa sitting in a wheelchair. The picture must be from 1971 or 1972, close after the accident at the Rainbow Theater in London, when a fan, 24-year-old Trevor Charles Howell (pronounced “howl”), was stricken with jealousy and ran up to the stage, then pushing […]
I don’t think I’ve ever said this about any other album: Modest Mouse’s new effort An Eraser and a Maze just SOUNDS like music made in the free streaming age. It’s like the incentive is totally gone. They sound like a bunch of high school seniors who have already gotten into Washington State and are […]