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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 20 Years. A Frantic Effort 3×10” set by DeeCRACKS. Since vinyl has retaken the amount of interest that it has among music fans, a fairly impressive amount of time and money has been spent repackaging and reissuing records to let interested parties re-examine a multitude of songbooks – but such endeavors have never really seemed to be in DeeCRACKS’ wheelhouse. On one hand, it could be contended that choosing to release...

The Melvins A Walk With Love & Death   What can be said about a band like the Melvins at this point? With a catalog that’s as strange as it is expansive, plunging into this band’s music can seem like a daunting task. But, the more you do, the more you come to appreciate the Melvins’ greatness. You either get it or you don’t. As Krist Novoselic himself said (I believe), they’re the only band of their era still out...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Life’s A Garden LP by Worthless. The beauty of psychedelic rock in its purest state is that the music is about art and expression first, and then everything else (be it community, statement-making, even simple performance presentation) comes second. That can mean a psychedelic rock album takes an unwieldy form (check out The Flaming Lips’ album Zaireeka – which requires that four CD players play a different disc simultaneously – for...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Fortieth Anniversary, Legacy Celebrates edition picture disc reissue of Boston’s debut album. How does one attempt to celebrate the release of an album like Boston? To date, the record has sold twenty-five million copies worldwide. The breakthrough single from the album, “More Than A Feeling,” has attained a status which makes it rank among some of the most instantly recognizable songs of all time; the average Joe on the street might...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the High Hopes LP by Like A Motorcycle. There are few scenes that appear in motion pictures which are more worrisome than those where light explodes on the screen and, after the camera’s focus adjusts, viewers realize they’re staring up from the floor of the trunk of a car. The reason that image is disarming is because the trunk is a small space – it is incredibly confined and exists as a...

Artist: Mike Doughty Album: Haughty Melodic (CD reissue) Label:ATO Records I must preface this review by saying that I have been a Mike Doughty fan for an incredibly long time. I first became a fan when I discovered Soul Coughing; at that time, I had grown tired of grunge’s (by then) floundering, poor self-image (the genre as a whole really had difficulty regaining its strength and composure after the death of Kurt Cobain) and was looking for something which was...

A critical evaluation of Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein. The closest I ever got to seeing Sleater-Kinney was seeing Wild Flag play. Standing on the balcony, waiting through the opener’s set, there was Carrie Brownstein standing on the sidelines of the stage watching the set as well. I wondered if we’d get to interact with her. “She’s a rock star,” my then-girlfriend reminded me. After the show, much to my surprise, a lot of people stayed...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Trying To Become A Millionaire reissue LP by California Playboys, released by Manufactured Recordings/Omnian I know I’ve said this before, but it’s a statement which requires regular reiteration: one of the best parts about records after they’re made and have come out is that they’re there – available to be found when potential listeners are ready to find them. It’s even easier now that the music industry is hurriedly reissuing so...

Artist: Greg Laswell Album: Everyone Thinks I Dodged A Bullet Label: Vanguard/Concord Both the joy and peril of music and attempting to explain how or why it’s good to someone else can often be found in the language employed to accomplish the act. It’s strange how it can work sometimes; like some words and combinations of them sound exciting but, when one really attempts to break it all down, it quickly becomes confusing. For example (and this word appears predominantly...