When we last heard Long Beach’s Paperplanes on 2006’s self-released Volcanoes, they had just taken their first baby steps into the alt-country wilderness, adding elegiac strains of steel guitar to their jittery, Velvets-infused sound. With Rhinestone...
So this would be the first installment of Random Shit. I have another column that mainly focuses on sites that offer a grip of complimentary mp3s, mostly from intelligent labels that understand that offering free music will lead to more money because they have a better...
The title says it all, but for y'all who clicked without reading… Barsuk Records is pleased to announce that we will be releasing the Steve Fisk / Benjamin Gibbard original film score to the motion picture Kurt Cobain About A Son digitally on February 19th...
Cynicism aside, this bit of news is quite exciting. This Mardi Gras (February 5th), OK Go is releasing You’re Not Alone, a five-song digital EP featuring New Orleans brass band Bonerama. All proceeds from this project, available exclusively at iTunes, will...
For a musician as notoriously reclusive as Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett, the idea of a collection of outtakes and discarded ideas is an incredibly salacious one. Eels records have always been disarmingly candid to begin with so presumably anything the singer...
Distinguished. That is the best word to describe the band and the audience that showed up Tuesday night in San Francisco's classiest venue. Well…aged, mature, ripened, not too old to rock and roll, young at heart, and lovers of some of the best rock and roll...
L.A.’s Low End Theory weekly event at The Airliner definitely tips a hat towards the avant garde receptivity of 1920s Surrealism. Low End is notorious for being a musical experimenter’s Mecca. Rock, hip-hop and electronic groups merge in a whirling dervish...
I remember a friend playing De-Loused in the Comatorium on his car stereo, wowing at Bixler-Zavala’s high-in-the-sky vocal range. I didn’t take the notion all too seriously because this friend was more into the B-52s and show tunes. The Mars Volta fled into...
Listening to any Eels record feels like going for a cup of coffee with the friend you’ve got that always makes you laugh because they’re remarkably bitter and cynical. While they have the ability to make light about those things when they’re in your...
As far as I'm concerned, San Francisco Bay Area thrash legends Testament should have been included in "Thrash Metal Big Four" of Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. Testament's legacy (no pun intended) is undeniable, and they have influenced a...