A present life worth accounting for makes living in the past a mistake. Entertaining as it can be, I often cringe when a night out is taken up more with conversation about humorous glories-gone-by than any attempt to create some new ones. Apparently, Steve Albini agrees with me until it hurts. Deep into Shellac’s second of two nights at the Bell House in Gowanus, Albini – the guitar wrangler and more acerbic of the band’s two pitchmen – had reached...

After five years and two albums spent trying to streamline its cinematic sound into a form that both audiences and the band itself were comfortable with (the results were entertaining, but very, very mixed), Ohbijou's sound and style have seemed to fall into grace all at once and perfectly on their third LP, Metal Meets. This time, singer Casey Mecija's fluttering, trembling soprano meets the tastefully adorned string section string section which has always been Ohbijou's secret weapon and the...

Awrightcha mooks,So here we go, everybody's back an' we're movin' now. I guess fi' dollar Billy hadda good time gettin' hitched, but I almos' didn' make it back – las' time I got a SWAG Report done, I was onna move cuz, I did somethin' dumb an' almos' got caught fer it. No worries now though, ain't nobody catches Don Loder unaware, an' now I'm back ta spreein' as usual. So dis week, in celebration o' not gettin' caught, I...

A Band Of Bees – "I Really Need Love"https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG77A_Band_Of_Bees-I_Really_Need_Love.mp3 A Band Of Bees – "Winter Rose"https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG77A_Band_Of_Bees-Winter_Rose.mp3 And So I Watch From Afar – "Beautiful Universe Master Champion"https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG77And_So_I_Watch_From_Afar-BEAUTIFUL_UNIVERSE_MASTER_CHAMPION.mp3 And So I Watch From Afar –...

Over the last couple of decades (pretty much since LPs began to lose ground in popularity to cassettes, and then even more so when CDs came along), the process of a band creating an involving “experience” for listeners to enjoy has really fallen from favor. Where once tremendous care and thought were put into album artwork (like the stuff that Storm Thorgerson did for Pink Floyd) and lithographs of lyric sheets, now the act of assembling an album seems terribly...

Over the years, plenty of bands have indulged in mind-expanding substances and their music has duly reflected it with vibes of “methodical otherness” radiating from the results (see Butthole Surfers, 13 th Floor Elevators, Pink Floyd and even Queens Of The Stone Age to name a few) which implies that some pharmaceutical weirdness is going on. Such workings have become commonplace in rock at this point, but Captain Nowhere's music is something else again. On Party Time Inc., the band...

In the way of a brief notice:After taking a three-week break (the longest in some of the Ground Control staff's respective careers) for Editor-In-Chief Bill Adams' honeymoon, Ground Control is now once again firing on all cylinders. During the break, Bill drove, ate plenty of bad and greasy food, associated with alligators, Disney characters and Paula Deen. Thanks to the Ground Control writers for keeping the pilot light on in his absence. It was fun, but now we're getting back...

Playing in a big town with some indie credibility is a blessing because people will actually pack a club on a Sunday at 10:00 p.m. to see your gig. It was Yuck’s first headlining show in Toronto and although there was an obvious appreciation for them (why else would people have paid to watch?) the crowd was dull and motionless. Yuck joked that they were in Montreal the previous night but that Toronto was a better crowd. If that was...

Uh oh, are bassists in trouble? The White Stripes, No Age and even Yeah Yeah Yeahs didn’t use one and those are considerably some of the most innovative bands of this generation. It's obvious the bass has been gradually phased out of indie rock songwriting and it seems some new bands want to prove the extent of their ferociousness by ditching it completely to find out where the fire burns the hottest. Such is the state of Japandroids and their...