A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Sluff LP by Naked Giants. Upon first glance at Naked Giants’ New West Records debut album, Sluff, those who pick the record up might assume that they’re staring into a time warp; the awkward poses that the three-piece band’s members strike combined with their clothing and the garish color scheme as well as the decor in the image look like something which might have originated in the Eighties. Conversely, the melange...
Circle Jerks Wonderful I’m ready to make some enemies on this column and I think I can start a significant amount of shit by saying that the Circle Jerks were a better band than Black Flag. I’ve tried for years to find some sort of solidarity along these lines and have come up empty handed every time. It’s not that I don’t like Black Flag – I like them just fine – but there’s something about Circle Jerks...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Art Bergmann’s The Apostate LP. In Canada, there is simply no musician more criminally underrated and under-appreciated than Art Bergmann. Since first appearing on the Vancouver punk and indie rock scenes in the Eighties, Bergmann has regularly had to fight to get popular notice not because the guitarist needed time to mature artistically, but because he has always been in the wrong place at the wrong time; always on the cusp of...
10 Cloverfield Lane – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 2XLP By Bear McCreary I’d be lying if I said the lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead wasn’t reason I was initially interested in 10 Cloverfield Lane. Since breaking onto the scene with Deathproof and Scott Pilgrim, Winstead has developed an interesting career for herself as a “scream queen” of sorts. Whether this is on purpose or not, I wouldn’t know. But I didn’t quite believe that reputation until I saw 10 Cloverfield (Ln)....
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (Folio Society edition) This book has been lingering in my mind for quite some time now, and I’ve been putting it off for as long as I can remember. Not helping are my friends who’ve tried reading the book, who tell me they had to put it down halfway because it was just too dense and not what they were looking for. But now, after finally reading...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Dirt LP by Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. In this age of post-modern songwriting and culturally blended musicianship, finding something which is truly striking and unique in its composition, performance and presentation is rare but, as Yamantaka // Sonic Titan proves on its third album Dirt, not impossible. This time out, the Canadian Noh-Wave behemoths offer offer listeners their first great breakthrough document of both sound and style; over the course of...
Justice League In many ways, the DC movies never stood a chance. I don’t know what started this ever-increasing snowball of hatred towards their movies: maybe it was a lack of faith in its leader Zack Snyder, maybe it’s just brand loyalty to Marvel, or maybe the DC movies just got off to a bad start. Whatever the case, the DC universe is the franchise people seem to love to hate. And this, quite honestly, is a...
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz I’ve been hesitant to jump on the bandwagon with books like Freakonomics, which claim to have an alternative take (read: the REAL take, maaaan) on how to interpret our lives. But, Everybody Lies just might have converted me. In this book, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (SSD, for short) uses something very simple, our Google searches, to explain human behavior. What we mostly learn,...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Give It Back” 7” single by Death. You’ve got to respect Death for the way the band has chosen to conduct itself, over the years. Really think about it, reader; this is a band who, since changing its name and turning to punk rock in 1976 , has only released six albums – most of which were released...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Choke Cherry Tree LP by Ben Miller Band. The catch, when any band attempts to infuse a time-honored sound and style with new energy and fresh inspiration, is that they often lose sight of all the reasons why and how that form worked in the first place. While the heart and hopes might sound enough, the results often feel as though someone has tried to weld the fins from a ’57...