review

Artist: Iggy Pop Album: Post Pop Depression Label: Rekords Rekords/Loma Vista/Universal I must confess that I could not bring myself to review Iggy Pop’s newest album immediately upon its release for personal reasons. Those reasons stemmed from David Bowie and my appreciation for both artists’ music; Bowie and Iggy have shared an unusual, symbiotic relationship for decades (at least, they have in my mind) and, at Bowie’s passing, I wasn’t sure first how Iggy would respond and, second, if I...

Artist: The Rubens Album: Hoops Label: Warner Brothers Do you know the reason why the catbird is able to immitate other bird and animal sounds, reader? It’s actually a defense mechanism: catbirds want to either blend in with their surroundings and not get noticed by potential predators, or imitate a sound which will scare potential predators away. The catbird’s abilities come to mind when one thinks about The Rubens too; on first listen, it’s easy for listeners to melt into...

Ollie Ottoman delves into the Backstage Passport 2 DVD by NOFX. I feel like I’m part of a dying generation who grew up on NOFX. Say what you choose about their music, but you cannot deny that their work ethic, approach to music and the impact they have had on punk rock has been a source of respect. That and they have made some killer records over the years. I became convinced when I put on Pump Up The Valuum...

A critical evaluation of The Best American Comics 2015 (Best American Comics) by Jonathan Lethem (Editor) and Bill Kartalopoulos (Editor). The Best American Comics series are simply imperative reading. Comics (note the editors don’t need to yank anyone’s chain like they do in the mainstream and substitute the words “graphic novel”) are undoubtedly a booming art form. More comics are being written, drawn and produced than ever, and lucky for us, Bill Kartalopoulos has the monumental task of finding the...

A critical evaluation of Human Society in Ethics and Politics by Bertrand Russell. Above all, one has always been able to count on Betrand Russell to speak his mind no matter what the consequences may be, historically. While he sometimes wrote on very specific topics like education or western philosophy, on other occasions he covered much broader subjects like in this book, Human Society in Ethics and Politics. I suppose this tendency to speak freely had gained him a reputation...

Artist: Ron Hawkins Album: Spit, Sputter and Sparkle Label: Pheromone After twenty years of trying pretty much any and every permutation of rock which struck his fancy following the first break-up of The Lowest Of The Low in 1994 (projects which followed included designer knock-off stuff with the Leisure Demons, coffeehouse acoustic songwriting elsewhere on his own, bar-rocking with The Rusty Nails and Do-Good Assassins and more), hearing that Ron Hawkins has spontaneously come into his own again and produced...

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...

A critical evaluation of Let’s Go To Hell: Scattered Memories of the Butthole Surfers by James Burns, published by Cheap Drugs. Whether it was because of the book’s great quality or simply because it was the first to address the merits of the bands which erupted out of the American underground music scene in the 1980s, Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life truly did set a standard that any other book which intended to cover any of the...

A critical evaluation of Big Hard Sex Criminals Volume 1 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. I don’t know whether Sex Criminals is an imaginative idea or a sign that we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Get this – the whole premise is that these two kids (and I say “kids” to be cute) find each other and discover that they can stop time somehow when they achieve orgasm. And what do they do with this power? They...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Hateful Eight official soundtrack LP by Ennio Morricone. We live in the good times, people – and by that I mean the times when we can get lush over-the-top vinyl pressings of some pretty peculiar stuff. A Quentin Tarantino soundtrack in no exception, especially because vinyl is the perfect format for a Tarantino movie. Instead of rehashing old tunes with new bands, Tarantino sticks to the original cuts, for that vintage...