A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the vinyl reissue of Wonderful by Circle Jerks. Easily the most underrated hardcore band since the genre’s inception in the early Eighties has been the Circle Jerks. The reason that claim is so easy to make is that, pound-for-pound and album-for-album, they broke a surprising amount of ground that a lot of bands would tread upon (and make a lot more money from) later. When the band first appeared with Group Sex...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Slackers’ 12″ UV digitally printed vinyl single. Ignoring the, “Gee whiz!” quality of The Slackers’ new single as well as the talking point of, “Well, this is a new way of combining digital and analogue formats into one release,” (rather than being pressed, this release is UV digitally printed vinyl) it needs to be pointed...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP Deluxe Edition reissue of Sirens of the Ditch by Jason Isbell. It’s pretty uncommon for me to wonder where I was when I review a reissue of an album which was originally released after 2002 (a.k.a. The year I joined the press). That is not to say there weren’t great albums that I didn’t get my hands my hands on to review them when they were new, it’s simply something...
Beastie BoysPaul’s Boutiquephoto: turntablelab.com I don’t know if the Beastie Boys get too much credit or not enough. One thing’s for sure, they’re not spoken about too much among the current mainstream rapper greats. Of course, that’s kind of a misnomer: mainstream rap isn’t really great. And as a Beastie Boys fan, that suits me just fine. Sophomore albums really define a band, don’t they? That first album can make as big an impact as you want, but if you’re...
WHO: Personality Cult WHAT: New Arrows WHY: New Arrows is nothing new but it’s got that sound that I happen to absolutely love. It’s raw, fast, poppy, and full of guitars. I’m not quite sure how Personality Cult mastermind Ben Carr did it, but he figured out a way to distill a buzzpop album down to the essentials. Of course, a good way to do that is to let the Marked Men influence you a bit. You don’t have to...