A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Skin Suit LP by The Bobby Lees. It gets said a lot, but it’s only in the moment when one actually hears the right sound at the right moment that they realize just how powerful it can be. It’s only in the right moment, for example, that a sound can make a listener’s blood boil or their skin crawl – or it can light your brain on fire and completely pervert...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Head of the Household LP by Birthday Ass. I remember when I first started listening to indie rock, underground rock and other sorts of music which were a little left-of-center in nature, and it wasn’t always easy. In fact, it was often sort of a gamble; in the days before the internet, there were occasions when you didn’t know exactly what you were going to get, and you just sort of...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Pretty Garbage LP by Come Closer. While it’s very easy for me to get excited about a new punk band that I’ve never heard before (I’ve been listening to a lot of punk, for a for a lot of years), running across something which makes me excited because I can’t immediately qualify it is instantly attractive because it’s obviously operating within a paradigm I recognize, but there’s something about it that...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Hum LP by Alain Johannes. It’s about time guitarist, songwriter, producer and engineer Alain Johannes got around to releasing another solo album (his solo debut, Spark, came out in 2010 and his sophomore album, Fragments and Wholes vol 1 came out in 2014 – so he’s due). Johannes’ career in the music business actually began in 1984 (with What Is This, the band he started with former Red Hot Chili Peppers...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Working With God LP by The Melvins. It has long gone overlooked and under-reported (maybe because they’re from Washington State, maybe because they first gained popular notice with the waves of alt-rock and grunge bands of the Nineties – there’s any number of possible explanations), but the fact is that the members of The Melvins are actually pretty funny guys. Each of them has a really good sense of humor. Each...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Way Down in the Rust Bucket 4LP set by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. In the fifty-two years which have made up his career to date, Neil Young has been a lot of things – an activist, a fortune teller, an elder statesman, a folkie, a rock star, a filmmaker and other titles too – but he has never seemed to be lighthearted. The singer has been interested in making a...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 40th anniversary, 2LP reissue of Signing Off by UB40. Maybe it’s just an extension of the unapologetic non-conformist in me, but I have never been able to stop myself from being drawn into music which goes out of its way to challenge expectations and/or just endeavor to go against the grain, defiantly. I know that, at least occasionally, I turn an ear toward music which doesn’t make me feel comfortable, in...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Kings LP by Antagonizers Atl. While it is far from un-tread terrain, it’s impossible to not get excited by the promise contained in the grooves of Kings – Antagonizers’ sophomore full-length album. This time out, the band has allowed the gang chorus/gang vocal power in them to build and season for a while before unloading it in a set of ten slabs which ignore the now long-worn costume that punk rock...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Now Or Never 12” EP by The 45 Adapters. From note one of their new 12” EP Now Or Never, it’s patently self-evident that while the band took almost four years between the They Call It Justice 7” and this new, six-song EP, they must have been working – because they don’t sound quite like the same band. As soon as stylus settles into groove on the A-side and the title...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Young & Dying in the Occident Supreme 12” EP by Mobley. Such events are undeniably rare in any language, but Mobley’s Young & Dying in the Occident Supreme is possessed of an imagination and design that is simply unheard of. The record goes out of its way to present listeners with a series of ideas which do not correlate; the A-side features six fantastic and undeniably unique pop songs while the...