OSEESIntercepted Message 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/Oh Sees/OSEES 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 of this wonderful...

Happy Thanksgiving! We were still so naïve in 2002. The Hives had released their second album Veni Vidi Vicious, and it was getting some mainstream attention. Not sure why. Maybe it was riding the coattails of that garage sound a la the Strokes/White Stripes/Yeah Yeah Yeahs that was all the rage at the time. As documented in Lizzy Goodman’s excellent book Meet me in the Bathroom, and the less excellent documentary movie that followed it a decade later, there was...

WHO: Screaming Females WHAT: Desire Pathway WHY: There aren’t any lifers out there doing it better than the Screamales. Their latest album took some growing on me, but the tried-and-true formula of juicy riffs and scorching solos eventually won. I think it might be a hot take to say that the vocals have been the weakest link in Screaming Females songs, but here the vocals are finally elevating and complimenting the songs. It’s a testament to what this band can...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Heavy Machinery EP by SLIP-ons. There aren’t many ways for a band to write songs which sound unmistakably similar to the work of another group without sounding derivative. The only way that it’s possible to walk such a narrow and treacherous line is to be completely ignorant of it; the band in question just has to bull their way in and boldly be themselves – and any similarity that the group...

I first saw Chelsea O’Donnell perform as Stress Dolls at the Bug Jar in Rochester, NY in April of 2019. That night, she performed solo; a woman alone on stage with an electric guitar. One song, “Noise,” particularly caught my attention – it started mellow but built to her screaming, “sometimes I just want to make noise!” How could I not love that? I started following her on Bandcamp and quickly found much more to love, especially her harder rocking...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Interference Patterns LP by Guest Directors. While the idea of well-known musicians reappearing in new bands with some new musical ideas isn’t particularly new at this point (OFF! revived Keith Morris’ stake in hardcore, Kathleen Hanna’s comeback with The Julie Ruin has been spectacular and Paul Leary’s appearance with The Melvins was excellent – even if it was frustratingly short-lived), Guest Directors have taken that idea in some unexpected directions on...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Plays Music For Airports LP by Psychic Temple. Whatever you think you should expect from the Plays Music For Airports LP – Psychic Temple’s third album, chronologically – you’re going to discover that you’re wrong. First, the recently released vinyl record is a limited-press reissue; Plays Music For Airports originally came out on Joyful Noise Recordings in 2016 between Psychic Temple II in 2013 and Psychic Temple III which was originally...

WHO: Sleaford Mods WHAT: UK GRIM WHY: Look, that CREEM profile on them this year made them look like real wankers, but I’m trying to find a reason to hate UK GRIM and I can’t do it. Maybe they’re faking it all for a big payout or maybe CREEM blew their coverage, but UK GRIM is still in a class of its own, with politically and socially charged lyrics, with topics focused on elevating the working class and bringing the...

The Case of Leon Trotsky: Report of Hearings on the Charges Made against Him in the Moscow Trialsby Leon Trotsky I knew I was a fan of the life of Leon Trotsky but reading The Case of Leon Trotsky really made me realize that I might just be a Trotsky-head (no pun intended). There, I wanted to see how many times I could fit Trotsky in a single sentence. Way back in the 1930s, it wasn’t as clear to everyone...

National Lampoon’s Vacation Hey, there’s a lesson I want to teach you. Get close. You’re listening? Always save your Word documents. Yes, because we’re always depending on our computers to autosave them, or we don’t think they’ll automatically reboot and lose your file, or you’re convinced there’s a way of recovering your files, or you yourself accidentally rebooted your computer forgetting you had an unsaved file. Why did you do that? Because clicking “save as” is SUCH a PAIN...