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...
I am a huge fan of the local music scene. Not any particular local scene, but local scenes as a concept; the local scene that can be found in whichever city you call home, for example, reader. If you look, I guarantee you can find talented and interesting musicians all around you. I consistently discover great guitarists, vocalists, performers, all across the musical spectrum in Rochester, NY. As great a wealth of instrumental talent that I find in my local...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the All Killer No Filler (1977 – 2001) 2LP by The Senders. It’s funny how, as perfectly well-exposed as a scene and its associated lore might be, there are always bits which are obscured by shadows. In the New York punk scene of the 1970s, for example, everybody knows many of the stories and associated minutiae for The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie and many others – even The New York Dolls and...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into NastyFacts’ Limited Edition “Drive My Car” 12” single. As every punk knows, it’s not terribly uncommon for many bands of a certain vintage to have a pretty abbreviated catalogue of releases. The idea of “one and done” isn’t uncommon at all, really – but it’s still saying something when a band’s total output was limited to ONE SINGLE before they closed up shop. That’s not small, that’s infinitesimal – so of course...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Young Culture’s self-titled album. It might have just been a matter of taking a while to finally start missing it, or maybe I just needed enough time for the memory of the “Disney-fication” of the last wave of bands to fade, but listening to Young Culture’s self-titled album has caused me to remember that I really did like and had missed pop-punk. To reiterate, that’s pop-punk – not melodic hardcore (which I...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Stuyedeyed/Birds split 7” single, released on Greenway Records. It’s always kind of incredible how great a gamble a split 7” single release can be for the artists involved. Over the years, lots of bands have made great ones, yes, but there have been an equal or greater number of weak or soft efforts which feel lopsided because either one band or one song is far superior to the other. It’s a...