Exactly half way through the album Yoni Wolf breaks the fourth wall and confidently sneers, “and I know saying all this in public should make me feel funny/but you gotta yell something out you’d never tell nobody”. It is hard to imagine mustering the apathy or the sincerity to say something like this after breathing …
IRAN – DISSOLVER Two things that everyone knows about Iran’s 2009 offering. 1) It sounds nothing like their lo-fi reverb drenched bedroom pop of years past. 2) Iran is the side project of Tv on the Radio’s Kyp Malone. These are two very important details that I did not know on the first spin. Without …
Finally, the Tome is bringing some noise. While the Tome output has mostly centered around some pretty quiet, pretty pretty bands and musicians, with Crawf’s last “Throne of Bone” post and the new High Castle EP, the Tome is about to be flooded with some long overdue ear canal destruction. Hailing from San Francisco, High …
I wonder if it’s THAT obvious already from my posts, but I’ll cut the crap and just be honest… I’m no metal-head. In truth, I’m probably the last guy who should be reviewing this CD. But hell (pun intended), I came across this disc when I stayed at Throne of Bone singer Mike Freiburger’s home, …
“Oulipo” is a term used to describe a collective of French authors, poets, artists, and mathematicians who use self-prescribed limitations to produce works of art within confining limitations. For example, authors will replace every noun in a piece with a noun seven entries later in a dictionary, or will write a story without using the …
I have no qualms about putting Menomena’s I am the Fun Blame Monster on my list for best records to come out in the 21st century. The contrast between experimentalism, tunesmanship, fun and moments of true emotional frailty and beauty are high marks that every young indie band should strive for. It was Brent Knopfs …
Fantastic musical ventures have formed out of two people in love. We have: John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, Bjork & Matthew Barney, Handsome Furs, Mates of State, etc… All of these aforementioned artists tend to be on the loud, messy side. Each collaboration being marked with the same roller coaster …
On a cold night circa 2007 I wandered into a coffee shop and encountered a young man in a confrontation with his guitar and his gentle, fragile voice. After cutting the show short and mumbling a heartfelt apology to the 10-15 of us there I walked back out into the biting cold and the name …
GRIZZLY PROSPECTOR – OLD MOUNTAIN RADIO (MAGIC GOAT, 2009) Read More »
shy away from the equation like this: x + x + x = band. But really I shy away from any math equation. Not my thing. I tend to view the for section or most RIYL not as signifiers of an obvious sound that is easily reduced to two or three artists in a similar …
What if we lived in a culture devoid of referentiality. What would our music sound like? What would we talk about? How could music critics survive? I did an interesting thing on my 1,000,000th listen of Dragonslayer, I made a quick and dirty list of musical touchstones and direct influences I could find in Mr. …
SUNSET RUBDOWN – DRAGONSLAYER (JAGJAGUWAR, 2009) Read More »