Miles Davis Champions Rare Miles from the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions Jazz is like art to me. I don’t understand it, I think it’s pretentious and I think it hasn’t been good for decades, but I know what I like when I experience it. What’s a person like me to do? It’s been more than a decade that I decided to give jazz a shot and I haven’t looked back since. I have my favorite artists, albums, and songs. I...
WHO: Death From Above 1979 WHAT: Is 4 Lovers WHY: DFA1979 is one of those bands that’s both hard to define and instantly familiar when you hear them: giving off an aggressive, threatening aura that’s also easy to dance to. It’s also just two Canadian dudes making all this noise. “Bursting onto the scene” in 2004 with their debut album, then taking a decade-long break, this band has stayed the course with each consecutive release, bringing juicy riffs and heavy...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Monsters LP by Tom Odell. When it comes to Tom Odell’s fourth album, Monsters, it’s very likely that listeners will find themselves wondering if context does indeed inform musical creation, to a degree. The reason for that is simple: as soon as a stylus sinks into the A-side of Monsters and “Numb” opens it, an image of Ed Kowalczyk (the once-and-again singer of York, PA’s Live – for the unfamiliar) in...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Culture Shock Treatment LP by Round Eye. It may have taken a while for the band to finally get all the paperwork signed and all of their distribution ducks in a row (technically, Culture Shock Treatment was completed in 2020 and Paper + Plastick Records released it digitally late last year – but then everything got problematic) but, happily, everything has come together and Round Eye’s fourth album has finally been...
The ClashIf Music Could Talk 2XLPRecord Store Day 2021 Exclusive Please don’t make me have to explain The Clash to you. You should know who The Clash is, and I couldn’t possibly do a better job than most other writers. What I will say is that The Clash’s catalog ought to be studied and if you get music, you should be able to appreciate it. Like the Beatles, it’s music you should be able to recall effortlessly from the catalog...
WHO: Scott Reynolds WHAT: Chihuahua in Buffalo WHY: In a perfect world, Scott Reynolds would be a rich man. His skill as a songwriting is unmatched. His career has led from ALL, to Goodbye Harry, Pavers, and now his solo venture. No one tells a self-contained story in one song better than Reynolds. His latest Chihuahua in Buffalo is a straight-up acoustic album of new songs and revisits of his older material. They’re about relationships, dating, struggle, and loss. It’s...
Star Trek: DiscoverySeason 3 Boy I sure do love Star Trek, but over the years it’s becoming evident that Star Trek doesn’t necessarily love me back. And I’m talking about Discovery here. It’s not that Discovery isn’t “real Star Trek,” it’s just that it hasn’t been able to find a model and stick to it. And I’m being very generous here. It’s like a relationship with an ex-girlfriend right now, where it started out looking great, but slowly I found...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into NEEDLES//PINS’ self-titled album. There is something particularly special about self-titled albums – the unspoken rule is that, when a band puts its name on an album like that, it is intended to exemplify just exactly who that group is at its core. A self-titled album is a statement of a band’s personality as well as a statement of intent; bands always stand behind their output – even if only for the moment...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Confines Of Life LP by Neighborhood Brats. I confess that I spent most of my first play through Confines Of Life, Neighborhood Brats’ third full-length album (and my first exposure to the band), just trying to figure out where to start with it. Somehow, it just wasn’t easy to effectively catch or contain the band; from note one of “Who Took The Rain” (which opens the album’s A-side), the band is...
Nobody Bob Odenkirk is known as a powerhouse of comedy. Over the past 3 decades he’s been in just about every comedy project worth watching. Few people get the craft quite like him. As someone who had been an underdog through most of his career, it’s been interesting watching him blow up as a serious actor after his role as Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad. Odenkirk is becoming quite the household name. But an action star? Are you serious?...