A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Go Farther In Lightness 2LP by Gang Of Youths. For the nearly half-century since the genre’s inception now, one of the few steadfast foundations upon which punk rock has stood has been nihilism. Consistently, the spirit of punk has been one of “Fuck it all – strip the music down to the barest essentials and get emotionally dark and bleak – at least that way we’ll all beat the world at...
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker Boy, this is a tricky one. On the one hand, Steven Pinker is one of the most respected scientist and thinkers worldwide, and he’s responsible for some of the most enlightening books out there. On the other hand, he just might be out of his league with this one. Enlightenment Now should be commended for the scope of its subject: measuring trends of health, advancement, and human...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Vamos’ 1, 2, 3 LP. The problem with every great music revival is that, as energizing and exciting as it might be, there’s a certain safety and security in knowing that the ideas involved have worked before and can work again in a walk – if enough people believe in it. Such thought processes have worked well several times over in the last twenty-five years, and it would be easy to figure...
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 the Suffrage LP by Fucked and Bound. Full disclosure: on my first play through Suffrage, I accidentally had my turntable set to the incorrect speed. Because of that, my first judgement was that the band’s sound was thick, dark, sludgy and imposing – but it definitely piqued my interest and curiosity. I was fascinated by the hulking, demonic voice which dominated the song (“Similar to that of Roger Miret,” I thought) and...
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...
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (Folio Society edition) This book has been lingering in my mind for quite some time now, and I’ve been putting it off for as long as I can remember. Not helping are my friends who’ve tried reading the book, who tell me they had to put it down halfway because it was just too dense and not what they were looking for. But now, after finally reading...
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...
Justice League In many ways, the DC movies never stood a chance. I don’t know what started this ever-increasing snowball of hatred towards their movies: maybe it was a lack of faith in its leader Zack Snyder, maybe it’s just brand loyalty to Marvel, or maybe the DC movies just got off to a bad start. Whatever the case, the DC universe is the franchise people seem to love to hate. And this, quite honestly, is a...
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz I’ve been hesitant to jump on the bandwagon with books like Freakonomics, which claim to have an alternative take (read: the REAL take, maaaan) on how to interpret our lives. But, Everybody Lies just might have converted me. In this book, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (SSD, for short) uses something very simple, our Google searches, to explain human behavior. What we mostly learn,...