A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the This Is How Democracy Dies LP by Brigata Vendetta. Okay, after the last few years of pundits both educated and ill-informed questioning the health and longevity of democracy and looking at the concept so closely the eye-strain could easily be attributable to a migraine, the idea of another punk band stepping forward to declare, “Us too!” is almost laughable enough to drive this critic into a stress-induced mental breakdown. Happily though,...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Vapids’ Revenge Therapy LP. Beyond a certain point, it’s understandable how fans of any given punk band lower their expectations of new albums, when they’re announced. Part of that might have to do with the age of the band playing a role; whether they admit it or not, fans of four-chord punk expect the bands making the music to be young and snotty. It could be argued that such is the...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Spencer Burton’s North Wind LP. Since going solo in 2010 with Grey Kingdom (his project following the first lapse in Attack In Black’s activity), there’s no question that Spencer Burton has successfully developed an excellent and unique authoritative voice both as a singer and songwriter – but the greatest surprises have come his turns toward folk and country music. While 2021’s fantastic Coyote album established a new peak in Burton’s development, North...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Crisis Actor LP by Billy Liar. It feels unlikely on the surface because, like Henry Ford, punks often want to proclaim that, “history is bunk” – but the fact is that some of the permutations of punk rock that have passed through the mainstream are possessed of an undeniably accessible quality. Even on first listen, sometimes there’s just something about the music which is capable of hooking listeners really really hard...

There are a number of poets who use humor in their work. Some, like Ogden Nash, strive for it. For others, it just seems to come naturally. Derrick Brown is a naturally funny poet. While many of his best known poems are quite tender, a Derrick Brown show is guaranteed to include more than a handful of laughs. So it is not completely surprising that he has shifted over to comedy, releasing his first comedy album, A Close Shave with...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Dwarves’ Concept Album LP. To say that The Dwarves have been around and weathered a lot of pop cultural storms is an understatement. Since forming in Chicago in the mid-Eighties, The Dwarves have reinvented the concept of the revolving door; they’ve gone through band members (dozens of them – but guitarist Pete “HeWhoCannotBeNamed” Vietnamecheque and singer Paul “Blag Dahlia” Cafaro are the group’s core members), record labels (at least five) and...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Tropical Breakdown LP by Pierre Omer’s Swing Revue. Ever since Swing Kids came out in 1993 featuring a cast of very talented dancers, hipsters have wanted to revive swing music and dancing and make it their own. The reasoning for that desire is really easy to understand; the music is wildly infectious even without the benefit of distortion pedals, and the gymnasts who dance to it in the movies make it...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the The Legend of Ice-T: Crime Stories 3LP set by Ice-T. It’s hard to know what to make of The Legend of Ice-T: Crime Stories exactly, in part because what the album wants to be isn’t particularly clear. A very solid argument could be made for the possibility that, in fact, this 3LP set is supposed to be the soundtrack to either a stage production or a film. From the moment it...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Volores’ Ages LP. It may come as a surprise, but there’s a reason that I elected to review Ace Of Wands’ newest LP and Ages by Volores back-to-back: the albums feel like the work of two bands who could easily share a stage or a tour together. Both bands’ sounds feature a bit of goth and alt-rock in their artistic/creative DNA but, where Ace Of Wands clearly features some classic rock in...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Ace Of Wands’ Desiring LP. It’s hard to articulate how cool this is and how much this statement means but, from moment one of listening to Ace Of Wands’ new album, there is a direct artistic and creative line which connects Ace Of Wands to Heart. Of course, making comparisons between other artists and the work of Ann and Nancy Wilson is easy enough to do on a completely superficial level, but...