Albums like these are both exciting and scary to review at the same time. Exciting because I love Thelonious Monk. Seriously, I don’t know much (or anything really) about jazz, but I do know that nothing sticks to me quite like his music. It’s scary to...
Hallucinations Oliver Sacks The great thing about Oliver Sacks’ books is that one always comes away feeling enlightened after reading them. Hallucinations is no different. While Sacks is known mostly for his books covering a variety of neurological illnesses,...
What is Anarchism?: An Introduction 2nd Ed. by Donald Rooum, Andrej Gruba?i?, and Vernon Richards Lord knows we need more books dedicated to bringing Anarchist ideas to the masses, and one thing that’s appealing from Donald Rooum’s What is Anarchism is how...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the vinyl reissue of Naveed by Our Lad Peace. Now with the benefit of hindsight, it is genuinely incredible when one considers how many classic bands just seemed to materialize from nowhere on the streets of Toronto in the...
Bracket Hold Your Applause It’s a wonderful world we live in where Bracket is still fighting the good fight and putting out records even though the songs they bring to the world are heavy in content. Seriously, Bracket songs can get rocking and sad as hell at the...
How to Write About Music: Excerpts from the 33 1/3 Series, Magazines, Books and Blogs with Advice from Industry-leading Writers by Marc Woodworth (Editor), Ally Jane Grossan (Editor) Now let me stop you before you way anything. I know what you’re thinking: a music...
Cowboy Bebop The Complete Series Welcome to our series of anime shows which we will be covering for the next few weeks. Whatever your opinion of the genre, the fact remains that anime (or Japanimation in general) is a fantastic medium for storytelling. In many ways...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the California Heart LP by Great Apes. It is often said that the mastering process required to present music on vinyl (instead of CD or mp3) is part of what really changes the overall experience of the format (above and beyond...
RASL by Jeff Smith Jeff Smith has made a permanent fan out of me against all odds. I’ve only read his book Bone, but what an epic tale that was. And Bone is far from being a perfect story, but that’s just the kind of impact the book can have on people. Smith...
Originally appeared April 2015 I’m sitting on a couch backstage at the Brighton Music Hall in Boston on a rainy spring day with Jon Spencer next to me while he looks at my record collection. They happen to be Blues Explosion records and now that I’ve finished...