DISCLAIMER: I am normally very strongly of the opinion that songs are not necessarily indicative of the songwriter’s mental state. Art can be art without being autobiographical. Nobody assumes that Mickey Rourke is actually a struggling wrestler, thus, nobody should assume that someone who writes a crushingly sad song is actually crushingly sad. “This life →
Okay. I’ll admit. I have a bit of a problem. It happens the same way every time. I read about an album I think I’ll dig. I buy it. Before I know it, I’m face down in a dusty record bin looking for an obscure, universally panned late-period Beach Boys record on CD. I tend →
You’ve been asked this question before: You’re going to be stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life. For whatever reason, you’re able to take three albums with you. Which do you choose? The scenario itself is obviously absurd. But answering this strange query is always enticing. It’s ever simply about just →
Way back in February (what is this, Ru?), I embarked on an idealistic journey in which I attempted to funnel the relationship between music production and consumption into a sense-making scheme in order to say something, though I wasn’t sure what, about its affect on our lives. I proceeded with a basic scientific method-styled creation →
“I usually just have an unamplified electric guitar handy and I write a lot of songs, or at least riffs on the guitar while watching bad movies and TV shows. For some reason, that’s just where the magic happens.” If you are in a two-piece band, particularly a two-piece band with the standard guitar/drums setup →
I don’t know if you’ve caught on to this by now, but gee-whiz I like video games. I will buy video games for systems I don’t even own because I like the cover art. I lose sleep wondering how great a new 7th Guest would be. Well, golly, I love everything about entertainment’s most time →
When the world sucks we’d like to go to music, even if we leave nothing behind in the process. Musi buy cheap kamagra uk c is a healer, a gate into feelings just out of reach. When Florida band Surfer Blood breached the scene, music fans were ensnared by their addictive indie surf and unique →
London’s A Horse and His Boy are a band that I first caught wind of while attending the CD release show of last month’s cover band, Krupke. They were the opening band on that bill and I managed to catch some of their set, though for reasons which require far more explanation than I am →
When the guitars first appear at the beginning of Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand, they sound like a collection of car engines struggling to get started. It’s an alarming sound, albeit a perversely inviting one. Bee Thousand was rec cialis for sale orded almost entirely on four-track tape recorders in garages in suburban Ohio. The →
A few months back I got together with the Wilderness of Manitoba to discuss life, the universe and everything surrounding the making of folk music relevant in the 21st century. Now, half a year later, they’ve made a killer record and are currently touring Canada with slated dates in both Europe and the United States. →
Songs of the insane. Suicide music. The sort of sounds that can only come from a person at their deepest darkest moments, where the mind becomes unhinged and the music speaks about more than they could ever intentionally write into it. Many artists are famous because of these kinds of conditions. Nirvana, for one, had →
I spoke to Krupke shortly before the very successful release party for their debut album, The Pony You Always Wanted Died Today earlier this month at the El Mocambo. It was a pelican of a time. There were no pelicans there. That I saw, anyway. The pelican: This band: Photo by Matthew Filipowich Krupke. Krupke →
Photos by Dave Hurlow This is what happens, almost every morning during this three and a half week period: I wake up and can’t even decide whether or not I fell asleep. It’s still dark out and I squirm out of my sleeping bag. It’s probably cold, I curse and hate myself a little bit. →
Those heads who hear jazz and other ‘experimental’ freeformed musicks as being a phenomenon centered in the city should quit gazing at their shoes and take a road trip 800-some-odd kilometers to the north of our alpha metropolis, for the finest free jazz available in Canada is taking place in a basement in a town →
The Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over tour is the epitome of the reunion gimmick – an overwrought spectacle of a wildly over-the-hill band content parodying themselves into pop culture oblivion. But we can’t really fault the Eagles, can we? By the end of the 1970s the Eagles were probably the biggest band in the universe. It’s →
When getting to know someone new I always try to get to know the why behind their personal tastes: music, film, literature, fashion, whatever. The reasons between our cultural and artistic preferences illustrate important parts of our identity construction. In short, they’re reeling in our years, ringing in our ears, whether we know it or →