A deeper look at the grooved pressed into Round Eye’s debut LP While the debate over which recorded music format is superior (vinyl, CD and digital download, at least for right now, are the top contenders), no one who has heard it will argue against the fact that Round Eye’s debut album was designed specifically to be experienced on vinyl. The hints are actually on the CD too, if you notice; right before “Fear The Consequence†plays on the CD,...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the …And Out Come The Wolves (5 x 7” vinyl set) by Rancid. It sounds a little sensationalist to make this declaration but, of the albums which really sparked the punk revival of the 1990s (including – but certainly not limited to – Punk In Drublic by NOFX, Stranger Than Fiction by Bad Religion, Dookie by Green Day and Smash by the Offspring), it was Rancid who ran closest and truest to...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Dreams From The Factory Floor LP by Louise Distras. The problem with a lot of what is earnestly being marketed as punk rock in the twenty-first century is that much of it is fundamentally flawed: it’s made the way it is because that’s what’s expected.The expectation is that punk songs will come equipped with a confrontational attitude stacked on top of a progression of between three and five chords, and somewhere...
NEEDS s/t (File Under: Music) It’s funny how, while the sound of an album might not seem particularly interesting upon a listener’s first exposure to it, it’s possible for something to spontaneously change, shift the focus of the music ever-so-slightly and suddenly make it totally captivating.Such a thing happened for me the first time I heard NEEDS’ self-titled debut; when I put it on, I was less than thrilled to discover that almost none of the usual trappings which qualify...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day-issued Live At Grimey’s LP by Justin Townes Earle. For some reason, it always feels a little awkward to review the work of a second generation musician. Maybe it’s because the easiest comparison to make (be it positive or negative) is to the artist’s progenitor; like, how easy is it to look at Sean Lennon’s work and not see John Lennon or Yoko Ono in the periphery, and one...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Johnny Cash’s Record Store Day-issued Koncert V Prague LP. It’s incredible how great a difference ten years can make for a musician, but even more amazing is when it’s actually possible to hear that difference in their performance. In 1968, for example, Johnny Cash recorded his classic Live At Folsom Prison album; at the time, the singer was already developing a pretty serious drug problem (he’d become addicted to pills). It wasn’t...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Citizen Dick RSD-issued Touch Me I’m Dick 7” Freelance journalist and novelist Joshua Foer once opined that “Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. … If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound ro blend unmemorably into the next – and disappear.†It might seem unlikely, but Foer’s logic is also applicable to the music industry; to wit, I contend that it I spend...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Adam and the Ants’ contribution to Record Store Day this year, the “Kings of the Wild Frontier” b/w “Antmusic” reissued single. After the band’s debut album made a splach in 1979 , Adam and the Ants had their work cut out...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Cassandra Wilson/Billy Holiday’s Record Store Day-issued split single “You Go To My Head†b/w “The Mood That I’m In.†I love the concept of “versus†releases. You know the ones, reader: the releases which pit two artists against each other under fairly limited conditions – be it to reinterpret the opposing artist’s songbook, or simply to compete and see who can make a better, more lasting impression on listeners in a limited...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the The Eco-Terrorist In Me 7†released by Rise Against + Will Potter. At first, it might be easy for the format fetishist who is searching for the great “find†or “must-have†on Record Store Day to overlook Rise Against’s contribution to the festivities. On the surface, it doesn’t really stand out at all; the band put a song from the album that they released last year (The Black Market) up front...