A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the So It Is LP by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. I must confess that, after having listened to music on a daily basis for three decades (first as a fan, then as a critic and a fan), I have grown cynical and hypercritical to jazz. The reason for that is pretty simple: I believe that jazz was once a cutting edge form which puahsed the possibilities of time, rhythm, meter, intonation,...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Blau Sang Vermell Cel LP by CRIM. The catch, when it comes to working within any pop music-based form (and, as inconvenient as it is to say, punk rock definitely falls into that category), is that language plays a key role in the music’s accessibility. Simply said, if a band’s not speaking the mother tongue of the country they’re playing to, they’ve already alienated a fairly an impressive portion of its...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Tackle Box LP by Hamell On Trial. It might sound a little ridiculous, but the truth is that some musicians need to have something which genuinely pisses them off – something they find truly abhorrent – before them in order to produce their best work. Take Ed Hamell, for example; Hamell has been a politically-minded songwriter since he first appeared in 1996 but his best music has always appeared when either...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. There’s no way to say for sure if the reason Tom Petty elected to launch his solo career with Full Moon Fever was because the singer felt like he had a surplus of songs that he didn’t want to bring to the Heartbreakers, or if he was just trying to make a point. If it was because he didn’t want to...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Family Hangover LP by Walrus. When one considers Walrus’ debut LP, Family Hangover, the first stumbling block which comes up is where the music came from. As one listens, it quickly becomes easy to pick out little bits of ideas which were obviously originally the work of artists who initially inspired the band and, because those stylistic breadcrumbs are so easy to spot, one will quickly begin to wonder just how...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the They Call It Justice 7” by The 45 Adapters. It might sound a little strange at first, but the 45 Adapters and their new 7”, “They Call It Justice,” are coming at the perfect moment in history for the band’s brand of Oi to really get over with audiences. Why? First, a pretty significant portion of the world’s population is good and pissed off with the political climate in the United...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP reissue of Dig Your Own Hole by The Chemical Brothers. …And then, with the release of Dig Your Own Hole, The Chemical Brothers became a pop culture phenomenon. Now, it could be contended that the arrival and immediate public embrace of Dig Your Own Hole was the result of several different factors intersecting (after grunge, Brit-Pop overtook both the charts and popular imagination thanks to bands including Blur, Oasis and...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the California Heart LP by Great Apes. It is often said that the mastering process required to present music on vinyl (instead of CD or mp3) is part of what really changes the overall experience of the format (above and beyond the obvious physical contact made between stylus and vinyl), but that still doesn’t exactly explain the difference a listener will discover between a digital copy of Great Apes’ newest album, California...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Rendered Obsolete LP by Kicker. Since punk rock got started and really began to develop some momentum many years ago, there has been no shortage of upstarts who have come along certain that those who came before them didn’t know jack and threw out the existing rule book which was governing the genre in order to start fresh. That fact may be inconvenient, but that doesn’t make it any less true;...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the vinyl reissue of Hater’s self-titled debut album. I must confess that I had never heard of Hater before Ben Shepherd put out In Deep Owl a couple of years ago. I was really, really taken with that album and had been thrilled at the prospect of taking an interview with him when the opportunity came up; in fact, I jumped at it. It was during that interview when I learned about...