A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Tea Party Revenge Porn LP by Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. Ignoring the fact that Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine really missed the opportunity to address the activities of the Trump administration and of Republicans in general (seriously – there was no new music from the band between 2014 and 2020 – how the hell did that happen?), it’s impossible to ignore the value of...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Blood Lemon’s self-titled debut album. The beauty of great music – I mean truly great and timeless music – is that while listeners will feel as though they can easily pick out aspects of what they’re hearing and place it among other excellent or classic works, they’ll also breathlessly enthuse about how original that album is too. Listening to Blood Lemon’s self-titled debut album is just exactly like that; from note one,...
WHO: Liquid Death/Various Artists WHAT: Greatest Hates Vol. 2 WHY: A silly concept album that has no business being this good. Because casual searches online can’t seem to shed any light on whether there’s anything special about this product, I’m comfortable saying Liquid Death is just water. Canned water that looks punk rock. As Liquid Death’s website itself says, it’s completely unnecessary. And so, Twitter has a lot of opinions on why this a dumb product. That was expected. What...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the new craft pressing reissue of the Creatures For Awhile LP by Personality Crisis. Things like this get said a lot but, in this case, there is actually verifiable proof: while they were working, Winnipeg, Manitoba-based punk band Personality Crisis were in a league of their own. Granted, the band was not around for very long (Personality Crisis formed in 1979 and ran until 1984) and Creatures For Awhile was their only...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Pop Evil’s Versatile LP. Okay, this first observation of what Pop Evil is offering with their sixth album, Versatile, doesn’t actually have anything to do with the music pressed into the vinyl, but it would be easy to extrapolate an impression of the merits of this album, how it’s presented and the potential difference between “how it’s presented” and “what you get” from it. On the (surprisingly large) hype sticker which adorns...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Shirushi LP by Teke::Teke. Without question, Teke::Teke is a creature completely in its own quadrant of the pop diaspora. Does that mean that everything about their new album, Shirushi, stands completely separate from everything else in pop? Certainly not – there’s no question that it’s possible to pick out sounds and ideas which could be associated with film score composer Neal Hefti (who composed the iconic Batman theme in 1966) as...
It Never Ends: A Memoir with Nice Memories!by Tom Scharpling I don’t think I’ve ever waited so long in anticipation for a book. Being a Best Show listener for years now (which would still make me a junior, by most standards), I’ve been looking forward to this book since host Tom Scharpling first mentioned it in 2019. I can’t believe it’s been so long, but here it is, It Never Ends is among us. Listeners of the Best Show know...
WHO: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis WHAT: Carnage WHY: Nick Cave has the distinct pleasure of getting better with age. Immense tragedy is hit his life over the years and, though it all, the man (with the assistance of his collaborator Warren Ellis) has produced some of the most introspective, heartbreaking, and powerful music of his career. Their latest effort Carnage fits in perfectly with that trend. It’s haunting, profound, honest, and simmers to a boil. It’s a record that...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 4LP reissue of Since I Left You by The Avalanches. While I have serious reservations about a reissue which features enough remixes to occupy half of the medium into which the title is pressed (the 4LP reissue of Since I Left You presents the album pressed into two LPs, and features enough remixes to fill another two LPs), there is absolutely no way to deny the influence of The Avalanches’ first...
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 What can I possibly say about Star Trek that hasn’t been said already. If you don’t know what it is, get a clue and get on board. I was very late to the party but have gone very deep. Star Trek is a warm fuzzy place I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave. For a franchise that has done so much over so many years the idea of a Lower Decks show...