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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP Deluxe Edition reissue of Sirens of the Ditch by Jason Isbell. It’s pretty uncommon for me to wonder where I was when I review a reissue of an album which was originally released after 2002 (a.k.a. The year I joined the press). That is not to say there weren’t great albums that I didn’t get my hands my hands on to review them when they were new, it’s simply something...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Tasting The Sea LP by Vertacyn Arc Materializer. For some listeners, the nature of the Tasting The Sea LP will feel like a return to a different and remarkable time – in spite of the fact that it doesn’t much sound like anything that anyone has heard before. No, it’s the spirit of the record that feels familiar; from the moment a turntable’s stylus touches down on the A-side of the...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Spencer Sings The Hits LP by Jon Spencer. That the fidelity, equalization and overall sound found on a vinyl recording is unmatched by any other musical mediumto date is a claim which has been proven several times over in many place by a great many people (including by several in this column, several times over too), and one of the great examples can be found on a vinyl copy of Spencer...

Jon Spencer Spencer Sings The Hits (In The Red Records) In Jon Spencer’s debut solo album, Spencer Sings The Hits, fans will find a genuine and true revelation about both the singer and his music. Here, they’ll finally get a sense of what portion of the music to which he has contributed over the years (with the Blues Explosion, Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash, Spencer Dickinson and so on) is actually his; it will suddenly become easy to see...

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 the Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime LP by Family Of The Year. It’s funny how, as similar to one another as every Family Of The Year has been to date, Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime feels like a significant departure and/or move forward for the band. That Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime is the group’s first album for Reprise after enjoying a celebrated 2LP+1EP stretch at Nettwerk is irrelevant – Family Of The Year has...

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 2LP reissue of He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. It’s funny but, looking back at it now, it’s unbelievable how quickly everything came together for DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Before April 1987, no one (well, no one outside of Philadelphia) had any idea who the duo was but, suddenly, Rock The House dropped, as did the smash single “Girls Ain’t...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Endless LP by The Struggle. At this point in music history, surf rock’s impact on punk has really been downplayed with more attention put toward the more obvious, poppy turns that the music has taken – especially of late. That’s the first thing The Struggle fixes on their new album, Endless; from front to back, The Struggle mixes melodic hardcore similar to that of the Dropkick Murphys’ earliest recordings with the...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Black Friday-released Run, Stop & Drop (The Needle) EP by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It’s not common for a jazz album which was made in a recording studio to really reach out and grab a listener’s attention. Let’s be honest here; jazz was originally music which was born onstage and developed there with the help of gifted players who spent hours crafting it, grooming it, refining it and making it...