Vic Berger IVThe Cabinets & The Cupboards We’re very lucky here at Ground Control to actually get vinyl to review on our column. We’re sometimes doubly lucky, and caught completely unawares, when the label sending us the record we requested, adds on another record because they think we’d like it too. Maybe “shocked” is a better description than “caught unawares,” because vinyl is becoming more and more of a luxury to own, and it’s becoming harder and harder for labels...
Pearl JamAlive 12” (Record Store Day edition) Everything critical that can be said about Pearl Jam has already been said. What’s left now are just end stories and personal experiences. The validity of “grunge” as a music genre can be debated (and it should be since it’s complete limited to the bands that came out of a certain part of the earth in a certain point of the 90s), but what is a fact is that Pearl Jam was one...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Plizzken’s …And Their Paradise Is Full Of Snakes LP. The fact of the matter is that, in punk circles, no one wants to be a “middle of the road” kind of band. Why? Well, as Dwight Eisenhower once said, “The middle of the road is all the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters,” and it is in those gutters (or teetering on the brink of them) where...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Mastiff’s Leave Me The Ashes of the Earth LP. There has always been something which felt a little off about really aggressive metal (or Doom, or Sludge, or maybe Metalcore – pick your favorite undervalued sub-genre) – as greasy, heavy or dirty as it might get, there’s always an inherent clarity about the recordings. Even when the vocalist in a band like that is leaving his throat/larynx/esophagus on the recording studio floor,...
Cobra KaiOriginal Soundtrack 3XLPby Leo Birenberg & Zach Robinson Welcome to a very special edition of the Vinyl Vlog. Special for a few reasons. Not only are we featuring one of the coolest pieces of vinyl on the planet, but it also commemorates our reunion with Mondo Tees as a collaborator. Mondo is a company we’ve featured on the site in a variety of ways. We’ve featured their clothes (some of the finest prints around), their vinyl (hint hint), and...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Young Shakespeare LP by Neil Young. One of the more interesting things that has happened since the CoVid pandemic basically put the entire North American live music schedule up on blocks for a while has been the outflow of live releases which have appeared – a cultural moment at which Neil Young has been the centre. Releases like Way Down In The Rust Bucket, Return To Greendale and Tuscaloosa have afforded...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Exit Wounds LP by The Wallflowers. Who wouldn’t love to be Jakob Dylan? Since first appearing with The Wallflowers in 1992, Dylan has kept a “when I feel like it” mentality about his schedule of new releases (seven albums in twenty years – with nearly decade-long breaks along the way – is the definition of “when I feel like it”) and gotten away with it because he happens to be a...
Liquid DeathGreatest Hates Vol. 2 Where to even begin with an album like this? How do you even explain it? And why is it even on the Vinyl Vlog? Sometimes, life truly throws you a curve ball, and it’s best if you just embrace it. If you do that with Greatest Hates Vol. 2, chances are you’ll think someone up above or down below is smiling on you. The concept of this album needs to be explained to understand just...
Miles Davis Champions Rare Miles from the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions Jazz is like art to me. I don’t understand it, I think it’s pretentious and I think it hasn’t been good for decades, but I know what I like when I experience it. What’s a person like me to do? It’s been more than a decade that I decided to give jazz a shot and I haven’t looked back since. I have my favorite artists, albums, and songs. I...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Monsters LP by Tom Odell. When it comes to Tom Odell’s fourth album, Monsters, it’s very likely that listeners will find themselves wondering if context does indeed inform musical creation, to a degree. The reason for that is simple: as soon as a stylus sinks into the A-side of Monsters and “Numb” opens it, an image of Ed Kowalczyk (the once-and-again singer of York, PA’s Live – for the unfamiliar) in...