Spencer Burton Coyote (Still Records/Dine Alone) I confess that I was not paying complete attention to the music initially, the first time I threw Coyote on to review it. I figured it would be easy; I put it on and started washing dishes – but I didn’t actually get any dishes washed. In fact, before the second song on the album, “Memories We Won’t Soon Forget” had finished playing, I had stopped moving completely – even that early, all I...

Coming to America We’re kind of living in a special time where we get to witness Eddie Murphy’s comeback. I’m at that age where it’s hard for me to appreciate what a giant star he was in the 80s and 90s. His movies were simply huge, and it was almost as if he was the comedy version of Schwarzenegger’s action blockbusters. What I was unable to appreciate as a Gen X-er/Millenial is the subtlety and charm in Eddie Murphy’s...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Young & Dying in the Occident Supreme 12” EP by Mobley. Such events are undeniably rare in any language, but Mobley’s Young & Dying in the Occident Supreme is possessed of an imagination and design that is simply unheard of. The record goes out of its way to present listeners with a series of ideas which do not correlate; the A-side features six fantastic and undeniably unique pop songs while the...

METZAtlas Vending One of my first priorities when the quarantine is over will be to start going to shows again. Not sure how well it’s going to go with a newborn child (quarantine makes fools of us all), but the Metz have shot up the priority list as one of the must-see live acts ever since Atlas Vending came out. Why? Because it’s the best thing they’ve done yet. One of the reasons I wax philosophical about the Metz is...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into PWR/UP by AC/DC. For basically the last thirty-eight years, AC/DC has tried a few different things and taken a few different turns to try and grow up (or age up? Or act their age?) with limited success at most. Every time the band has tried to move forward from the callous one-liners and double entendres that first helped to make them famous (Flick Of The Switch was the first occasion), AC/DC has...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Jealous Butcher reissue of Infinite X’s’ self-titled album. After Longstocking met its end in 1997, singer/guitarist Tamala Poljak was clearly still riding some residual inspiration when they began assembling the music which would become Infinite X’s’ debut album. When the time finally came to start recording, the group of players assembled to comprise the band gave an ideal illustration of what it would sound like; Poljak’s pedigree was all about West...

Longstocking Singles & Demos 1994 – 1998 (Chainsaw/Jealous Butcher Records) After the release of Once Upon A Time Called Now, the lion’s share of Longstocking’s story had been told. The band had walked the trail in much the same way other groups had; they had released a couple of singles prior to their only full-length album, and the band broke up before the end of that same year. There just wasn’t a whole lot else in the band’s canon to...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Jealous Butcher reissue of the Once Upon a Time Called Now LP by Longstocking. Some events simply defy the laws of probability – and that Longstocking never got a fraction of the attention the band deserved is definitely one of them. Seriously – how did the band get overlooked as much as it did? They were in the right place (in Los Angeles) at the right time (from 1995 to 1997...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the limited edition “Gratuitous Red” pressing of the Born Stupid LP by Paul Leary. When vinyl records made their return as one of the foremost music media in or around 2014, a lot was discussed regarding the difference in the sound and fidelity of vinyl and pretty much everything else on the market, at the time. It was an exciting moment; vinyl sales went up 280 percent from what they’d been in...

Stalin: Passage to Revolutionby Ronald Grigor Suny How much has been written about Stalin since he came to power? The man’s history has been written, reanalyzed, and re-written over and over again so much that’s it’s hard to imagine anything new can be said about the guy. However, we always hear about how new documents are uncovered when the soviet archives were opened and the past decades, scholars have taken this opportunity to reevaluate the big figures in Soviet history....