A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Night Guy at The Apocalypse, Profiles of a Rushing Midnight LP by Hamell On Trial. In the spirit of full disclosure, yes -I am a fan of Hamell On Trial. I was totally won over by Ed Hamell when the singer’s eighth album, Tough Love, came out in 2003 and have excitedly checked and weighed) in and given consistently positive coverage to each album that has come along since then. I...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Things Change LP by American Aquarium. Usually when I’m reviewing vinyl records, I try to present my thoughts in a linear manner – from front to back, A-side through B-. In my mind, it just makes sense; unlike on CDs (where it’s really easy to jump around from song to song as a listener likes), records play best song-by-song and bands usually go out of their way to take that into...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Karma For Cheap LP by Aaron Lee Tasjan. The single greatest problem from which Karma For Cheap (and it’s auteur, Aaron Lee Tasjan, by extension) suffers is that it’s just too polished and the the seams on it are too air-tight. For that reason, it’s difficult for listeners to not meet the music with more than a little bit of suspicion. This is precisely the same problem from which artists like...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Nude Party’s self-titled album. As one listens to The Nude Party’s self-titled album, it’s instantly easy to pick out some sounds and ideas which may have inspired the music, but not so easy to figure out how all the pieces might have aligned to produce this result. For example, the haunting keyboards which color the songs on The Nude Party sound as though they might have been inspired by Shadowy Men...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Arthur Buck’s self-titled debut album. Full honesty and disclosure: I’ve been a really big fan of R.E.M. for a really long time and approached Arthur Buck’s self-titled debut album with no small amount of trepidation. I didn’t want to risk sullying my memory of Peter Buck – but it turns out I needn’t have worried. In fact, by crossing Buck’s instantly recognizable guitar tone (which, let’s be honest, helped inspire almost an...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Flaming Lips’ Greatest Hits Volume 1 LP. As a general rule, I must confess that Best-Of compilations seldom thrill me. While the odd set does prove to be the rule’s exception (like Nirvana’s black album, the set that Morphine released several years ago, ChangesoneBowie, Hot Rocks and All For Nothing/Nothing For All turned out to all be great sets) and which does present the band in question at its best, most...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the This American Blues LP by Ford Madox Ford. Remember a couple of decades ago when, against some fairly long odds, The Blasters managed to cross-wire punk rock and Americana/roots music? The results were pretty cool – the group actually did manage to break onto the popular radar for a minute (with some help from Quentin Tarantino and the soundtrack from From Dusk Til Dawn), but basically remained pretty niche because punk...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Art Bergmann’s The Apostate LP. In Canada, there is simply no musician more criminally underrated and under-appreciated than Art Bergmann. Since first appearing on the Vancouver punk and indie rock scenes in the Eighties, Bergmann has regularly had to fight to get popular notice not because the guitarist needed time to mature artistically, but because he has always been in the wrong place at the wrong time; always on the cusp of...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Dirt LP by Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. In this age of post-modern songwriting and culturally blended musicianship, finding something which is truly striking and unique in its composition, performance and presentation is rare but, as Yamantaka // Sonic Titan proves on its third album Dirt, not impossible. This time out, the Canadian Noh-Wave behemoths offer offer listeners their first great breakthrough document of both sound and style; over the course of...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Give It Back” 7” single by Death. You’ve got to respect Death for the way the band has chosen to conduct itself, over the years. Really think about it, reader; this is a band who, since changing its name and turning to punk rock in 1976 , has only released six albums – most of which were released...