This is one of those periods. Have a nice weekend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1z8Q17AZco
Great rock & roll has the mindless immortality of a teenager getting drunk for the first time. It’s going to live forever and conquer everything it sees. Master Volume has the braindead confidence of a truly great rock record. Its... Continue Reading →
Let us be done with reverb as the primary artistic driver of modern alternative rock. To be fair, The Lamb reveals itself to be a hooky, well-written alt-rock album of modest aims and restricted dynamism – closer to Colleen Green... Continue Reading →
I do not have the lexicon to understand JOBS’ Log On For The Free Chance To Log On For Free on anything more than its surface. The band describes itself as “music made by students,” and boy is it. A... Continue Reading →
What you take from Dose Your Dreams will depend heavily on how you feel about prog-punk as an enterprise. The real thrill here – beyond the usual center-of-gut howling and sunrise guitar solos – is hearing the band explore the... Continue Reading →
Many big-ticket post-Trump rock records leave me cold. LP5000 soars. The difference is perception. The post-hardcore champions channel anthems for the new working class. Backs broken not by factories but by computer chairs. Loneliness driven not by love but a... Continue Reading →
Luca Brasi 3 is an exercise in moderation. In a time when over-indexing on being sad is a reasonable career decision (see Vert, Lil Uzi or Tentacion, XXX), Gates’ options to spend his time goon-rapping over post-trap horrorcore beats with... Continue Reading →
Best to listen to this song while reading. Alternatively, this is my submission for a "We Didn't Start the Fire" update. News articles about movie trailers "The Internet Reacts to X" as content Bad-faith behavior isolationism in the pursuit of... Continue Reading →
There is a thing that Nicky Minaj will do on her albums. That thing is this: Somewhere in the middle-back of the record, she'll stash a straightforward, minimal-rapping pop song as some kind of potential fourth-single offering to whatever bubblegum... Continue Reading →
Target has opened a new location in Philadelphia. I guess I should start here: As a person who used to work in the online news world, I understand what it feels like to stand over a bottomless pit and be... Continue Reading →
Paying attention to only the juicy, messy stuff is not so much being informed as it is following gossip. I am on record (as of right now, at least) believing that we have elected an incredibly stupid asshole to the... Continue Reading →
Ranked from least to most likely. 4) I, without knowing it, have been a member of the New York Mets for at least the past few months. 3) There was not enough chlorine in the public pool last Saturday. I’d like... Continue Reading →
Fage 5% with honey Fage 5% Noosa Siggi's Fage 2% Stonyfield Fage 0% Chobani Oikos Dannon Light & Fit Dannimals Any yogurt with candy in it Any yogurt based on a cereal Go-Gurt Congrats to Fage 5% with honey. All... Continue Reading →
Presented with minimal comment, more as a record and personal organizational project than anything else. 5) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 4) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 3) Borne by Jeff Vandermeer 2) The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder... Continue Reading →
Blogging is easy when you take creativity out of the mix. Click the links to get to a song. Playlists are the purview of the machines now. CULTURE ABUSE - BAY DREAM Weezer + Wavves - self-loathing - weed =... Continue Reading →
I think I've only really listened to rock albums this first three months of the year. Leaning into my dad-rock future, I guess. Slightly Overrated, Still Good Album: Superchunk's What a Time to be Alive On the one hand, What... Continue Reading →
Here's a perfect song. Happy weekend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roB4hRdLlas
When I was younger, I wanted poetry. It was not enough that the music I listened to delivered viscerally. I needed food for the soul! I needed wisdom, as plainspoken as it was forceful in its impact! I needed magic,... Continue Reading →
Jeff Rosenstock - Post All these post-Trump songs, How will they age? What becomes of them when we're healed? Lemuria - Recreational Hate Like everyone else: Lemuria hits thirty, leaves the past behind. awakebutstillinbed - what people call low self-esteem... Continue Reading →
I got a text from Joe last night reminded me that the Archers of Loaf released a live album semi-recently. That album, Curse of the Loaf, is an excellent listen. In keeping with the theme of "feeding this blog fumes by... Continue Reading →
! (1996) - Power without intention or understanding. Power for power's sake. The Dismemberment Plan is Terrified (1997) - Smart, cutting bitterness as a coping mechanism for heartbreak. Emergency & I (1999) - Being lonely, and seeing that loneliness reflected... Continue Reading →
Reactions to things I heard / saw / read recently. The Power by Naomi Alderman The central conceit of this Margret Atwood co-signed fiction: Women develop a power that allows them to manipulate electrical currents. It starts in teenagers but... Continue Reading →
If you have any context for Franz Ferdinand, it is probably as also-ran Strokes rockers. You probably see them as I once saw them, a branch of second-wave would-be rock saviors from the early aughts. It was not until I... Continue Reading →
Before he was canceled for the dual sins of producing a bad commercial and presiding over a medium-to-boring Super Bowl halftime performance, Justin Timberlake was the center puppet on the cover of No Strings Attached. He was the most obvious... Continue Reading →
In one of the many possible realities, there is a hall of records that keeps track of all the literary, narrative-driven music ever written and recorded. In that unlikely museum inhabiting that pocket universe, there is a plaque commemorating the... Continue Reading →
Something good from last decade, something good from this year. Old Hotness: "Lamb and the Lion" by the Mae Shi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zyb5YidtdM Years later, I still don't know for sure how much of the Mae Shi is worship music and how... Continue Reading →
The last time the Eagles were in the Super Bowl, I was a freshman in college. I remember watching the game with my roommate James in our dorm room at La Salle. I lived on a college campus and was... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajjQ8qp3D0c For the last eight years, across three different companies, my job has been to sit in front of a computer and type things. Each year, this Parquet Courts song more accurately describes the experience of being Very Online. This... Continue Reading →
Salute to Jared. Find your own personal favorite moments. Highlights include: "Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Daryl Hannah, Annette Bening, Ethan Hawke, Steven Seagal, Tchéky Karyo, Brad Pitt, Alec Baldwin, Trevor Howard, and Anthony Hopkins all appeared in films opposite Bart." - The phrasing, "appeared in films opposite Bart," is... Continue Reading →
Something good from last decade, something good from this year. Old Hotness: "Old White Lincoln" by The Gaslight Anthem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_bQiIZXC9I I have a long, proud history of obsessing with bands only to completely abandon them a few years later. The... Continue Reading →
The place: The 60 bus, somewhere between Frankford Avenue and Broad Street, Philadelphia. The actors: A small child, estimated age between 7 and 11 A women, late 40s, estimated but not confirmed to be the child's mother Two other small... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/0SL4_DsUlH8 Spotify is a suspect music discovery service, but it did hip me to Life Without Buildings via one of the endless playlists it places in between me and my 10,000th playback of Baroness. Anyway "The Leanover" is the... Continue Reading →
A couple of things come to mind here. Picture a street. Picture parking on that street; Cars, all facing one direction, parked on both sides. A block-wide playground on one side, a bunch of row houses on the other. It... Continue Reading →
A few months back, I was taking the elevator from the first floor of my office building to the third floor, where my desk is. It was late in the afternoon and I do not remember what I was doing... Continue Reading →
On a whim, I checked out Dan Deacon's Twitter feed and saw that he was playing a show at - of all places - The Philadelphia Museum of Art on Friday, January 26. I immediately pinged my wife about going... Continue Reading →
When I use the bathroom at work, I involuntarily stick my hand in my pocket to get my phone. Being in front of urinal or sitting on the toilet is like Pavlov's dog's bell. Even if my experience isn't going... Continue Reading →
I caught a nasty bit of nostalgia today and created myself a very good Spotify playlist of every Hot Club de Paris song. I refuse to stop listening to it, so I cannot really rank the songs on Vampire Weekend's... Continue Reading →
The question, as I see it, is really "how long is one willing to draw out a transaction for minimal savings?" Setting matters. Getting coffee and breakfast from a Dunkin Donuts (or Dunkin Donuts-adjacent establishment) in the morning before work... Continue Reading →
Artist: Richie Nice Album: Almost Like the Movies Year: 2017 Bandcamp Writing a song like "Will You Be?," with its chorus of "will you be / will you be my girlfriend," is a tricky enough proposition that many would not... Continue Reading →
Artist: Slenko & McKeys Album: Atone Lower Year: 2017 Bandcamp Speaking for no man but myself, the thing that keeps me coming back to Godspeed! You Black Emperor records is the way that band channels the idea of being crushed... Continue Reading →
Artist: Castle Black Album: Trapped Under All You Know Year: 2017 Bandcamp Trapped Under All You Know's best track is "Blind Curtain," a four-and-a-half minute argument that Castle Black could be the dirtbag Sleater-Kinney that I didn't realize I've been... Continue Reading →
Artist: Overwinter Album: Condor Year: 2017 Bandcamp If there's an easy through-line to point to on Overwinter's Condor it's a preoccupation with trip-hop. Elements of the genre's hallmarks are scattered throughout the record's five songs. It's most obvious in queasy bump... Continue Reading →
Seems like a good time to update this list, apropos of nothing. Papa John's - As if garlic sauce and a jalapeno can mask the truth of this sponge-crust, chunky cheese, pond scum flatbread. Domino's - Being the go-to food... Continue Reading →
Artist: Kings of Freon Album: See, There's your Problem and Fridge Over Troubled Water Year: 2017 Bandcamp Bandcamp Even in the grand tradition of alternative rock smart-asses, Kings of Freon are a special, specific kind of goofy. Near as I... Continue Reading →
Artist: Kewku Collins Album: Grey Year: 2017 Soundcloud The obvious argument to make against Grey is that it can't overcome its influences. "Things I know" comes out the gate sounding like a discarded b-side from the second half of Yeezus.... Continue Reading →
My wife and I saw Blade Runner 2049 last Sunday. A brief review: Having never seen the first one (I know), I thought the sequel was great. This might be because I am too stupid to understand the larger questions... Continue Reading →
Anything "sexy" Any character from any fiction, comic book, cartoon or movie Ninja Nurse Doctor Ninja Angel Devil One of those inflatable deals where it looks like a person is riding a bull or driving a car or whatever (You... Continue Reading →
Artist: Kinda Alright Album: pretty sweet! Year: 2017 Bandcamp If you ever get the chance, you should pick up a copy of Cap'n Jazz's Analphabetapolothology re-release on vinyl. Besides being the urtext for an entire movement in modern alternative rock, the... Continue Reading →
Artist: Welter Album: Gold Year: 2017 Bandcamp Pop-punk is a solved formula. We've brushed its outer reaches, we've felt its boundaries. This isn't a problem; It's the logical conclusion of exploration. If anything, we should feel good about what we've... Continue Reading →
Artist: Bike Theifs Album: Lean Into It Year: 2017 Bandcamp Exploring the neurosis of economic privilege is something of a cottage industry in 2017, but, goddamn, no one does it quite like the Canadians. Lean Into It sounds like this... Continue Reading →
