A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime LP by Family Of The Year. It’s funny how, as similar to one another as every Family Of The Year has been to date, Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime feels like a significant departure and/or move forward for the band. That Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime is the group’s first album for Reprise after enjoying a celebrated 2LP+1EP stretch at Nettwerk is irrelevant – Family Of The Year has...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Deadpool 2 score picture-disc album by Tyler Bates. Before even considering the music pressed into the twelve-inch score released in support of Deadpool 2, one has to respect the flamboyant nature of this album. First, in a time period marked by the decline of interest in soundtrack and score album releases (due in no small part to the fact that the cherry picking nature of soundtracks mirrors the common operating procedure...
Oh Sees ORC (Castle Face) Show me someone who doesn’t appreciate Thee Oh Sees and I’ll show you a damned fool. Same with all the other name incarnations of the band: The Oh Sees, Oh Sees, and OCS. It’s almost like band head honcho John Dwyer doesn’t want his steps to be traced back. Or maybe he’s divvying up the band’s output under slightly different namesakes so that listeners can distinguish them. OCS definitely was a different approach to the...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the The Old New Me / Times Like This 2LP reissue by Slim Dunlap. Of course, after the collapse, crash and burn of The Replacements in 1991, it was almost instantly hoped that somebody in the band would begin producing more music but nobody looked at Slim Dunlap to be the first one out of the gate. Dunlap was, after all, the replacement guitarist in The Replacements – that was the joke...
M.F. DOOM Mm..Food (Vinyl Me Please edition) You have to respect DOOM, OK? You just have to. I only needed a few listens of his latest album Born Like This to realize the man was doing something different. Something interesting. Something worthwhile. Working my way through his catalog, I spent my sweet time with Mm..Food and I can honestly say it was time well spent. After having properly digested the album, you’ve got to give it to the man for...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Flaming Lips’ Greatest Hits Volume 1 LP. As a general rule, I must confess that Best-Of compilations seldom thrill me. While the odd set does prove to be the rule’s exception (like Nirvana’s black album, the set that Morphine released several years ago, ChangesoneBowie, Hot Rocks and All For Nothing/Nothing For All turned out to all be great sets) and which does present the band in question at its best, most...
The funny thing about punk and hardcore bands has always seemed to be that, no matter how caustic they may have sounded when listeners first began paying attention, the desire to get louder/harder/more aggressive as soon as MORE people begin listening to them is nearly immediate. A perfect example of this tradition can be found in the recorded output of Vancouver’s rising stars NEEDS; upon first appearing with their self-titled album in 2015, the band shattered expectations by delivering a...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Booze & Glory’s 12” die-cut “London Skinhead Crew” single. Rare is the single which features the better of two tracks on its B-side, but such is undeniably the case when it comes to Booze & Glory’s “London Skinhead Crew” 12” single. This time out, the London-based punk band unlaces its collective boots a bit and presents a reggae-infused impression of their excellent call-to-arms anthem, “London Skinhead Crew” before going ahead and presenting...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 12” picture-disc reissue of Old Firm Casuals’ self-titled debut EP. By the time Lars Frederiksen unveiled Old Firm Casuals in 2010, the singer/guitarist was already very well exposed in the punk rock community. He had already cut his teeth with U.K. Subs in 1991, gained pop (and pop-punk) stardom with Rancid beginning in 1993 and “gone solo” with The Bastards in addition to taking a seat in the producer’s chair at...
Thee Oh Sees An Odd Entrances There comes a point when we just have to draw a line in the sand and say, “This is too much!” I used to think John Dwyer’s Thee Oh Sees was such a prolific band that they’re not giving their audience enough time to properly digest their musical output. I have my favorites in the catalog, of course, like Floating Coffin and Castlemania, but that’s only because those were some of my first tastes...