Circle Jerks Wonderful I’m ready to make some enemies on this column and I think I can start a significant amount of shit by saying that the Circle Jerks were a better band than Black Flag. I’ve tried for years to find some sort of solidarity along these lines and have come up empty handed every time. It’s not that I don’t like Black Flag – I like them just fine – but there’s something about Circle Jerks...
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...
10 Cloverfield Lane – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 2XLP By Bear McCreary I’d be lying if I said the lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead wasn’t reason I was initially interested in 10 Cloverfield Lane. Since breaking onto the scene with Deathproof and Scott Pilgrim, Winstead has developed an interesting career for herself as a “scream queen” of sorts. Whether this is on purpose or not, I wouldn’t know. But I didn’t quite believe that reputation until I saw 10 Cloverfield (Ln)....
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 Choke Cherry Tree LP by Ben Miller Band. The catch, when any band attempts to infuse a time-honored sound and style with new energy and fresh inspiration, is that they often lose sight of all the reasons why and how that form worked in the first place. While the heart and hopes might sound enough, the results often feel as though someone has tried to weld the fins from a ’57...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Loner LP by Caroline Rose. I have to confess that, as soon as I began listening to Loner – the new full-length album by Caroline Rose – I realized that everything I thought I knew and expected from the singer was incorrect. My first contact with Rose was with the song “Yip Yip Yow” from an NPR live performance, and that was enough to get me looking around for other music...
The Melvins A Walk With Love & Death What can be said about a band like the Melvins at this point? With a catalog that’s as strange as it is expansive, plunging into this band’s music can seem like a daunting task. But, the more you do, the more you come to appreciate the Melvins’ greatness. You either get it or you don’t. As Krist Novoselic himself said (I believe), they’re the only band of their era still out...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Recreational Hate LP by Lemuria. The coolest thing about the moment after a new album gets released, people begin to find it and it proves to really connect with them in a popular way is that time seems to stop for a minute and everything the band did prior to the release of that album becomes a footnote. From the moment that record breaks the band into the popular consciousness, all...
Magnolia Motion Picture Soundtrack and Score Where does one even begin with a director like Paul Thomas Anderson? Where does one even begin with Magnolia? Yes, PTA has gotten the reputation of having his head up his ass. Does that have any merit? I don’t know. I do know that his movies are nothing if not thought-provoking, whether you love them or hate them. The man writes and directs his own projects and each of his movies are a unique...
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Murder of the Universe Photo: turntablelab.com I’m hard-pressed to find a band that’s been as prolific as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. It makes sense seeing as they run in the same crowds as Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall. What is this – a race against time? Jay Reatard once said that he considered his musical creativity to be limited to a specific period of time. As in, he would only...