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(02/05/15 7:16am)
For almost two decades, six-piece indie-pop outfit Belle and Sebastian have been making some serious waves in the music world with their unique fusion of light-hearted pop melodies and melancholy indie-rock. What astonishes me is that it took until 2014 for those waves to reach me. While I have yet to properly dive into the band’s catalog, boasting a total of nine studio albums, something about their odd style of indie-pop sprinkled with grungy poetic sadness had me hooked. After it was revealed to me that I’d be seeing them at Bonnaroo this summer, I was excited to see what the Glasgow natives had in store as they released their newest full-length album Girls In Peacetime Want to Dance, a release that was met with more hype than anything else in their discography.
(12/08/14 6:26am)
Best of Music
(12/08/14 5:51am)
CHERUB
(12/08/14 5:00am)
“I was just asked if I had a set list and … obviously not.” Alejandro Rose-Garcia told a sold-out High Noon Saloon crowd Friday night. Commonly known by his stage name Shakey Graves, the Austin, Texas, native made a stop through Madison, Wisconsin, on his And the War Came tour following the release of his latest album by the same name.
(12/04/14 5:00am)
“A Los Campesinos! Christmas,” released Dec. 8, is the perfect holiday EP for people who are tired of old, recycled Christmas carols. The six-track compilation contains only one cover—“Lonely This Christmas,” from Mud—and five original songs that bring a new take on the long-established Christmas album.
(11/17/14 5:09am)
Okay so straight up, the thing I want to talk about is the Mini Indie Film Festival which is happening this weekend, because golly gee is it cool. While I am super biased given that I helped put it together, I also think that the idea of a completely free, student organized and run independent film festival is incredibly cool. So take it as you will. Anyway, here’s the lineup.
(11/14/14 3:31am)
Just a little over nine months ago, AJ Davila of Puerto Rican garage rock band Davila 666 released his first solo piece, Terror/Amor, via Nacional Records. Davila has released his sophomore album Beibi alongside a new Davila 666 album, on top of touring the U.S. with both projects. For Beibi, Davila moved over to Burger Records, a DIY-based independent label that promotes its music organically through vinyl, cassettes and insane tour caravans of outrageous garage/punk rock bands throughout the country. Burger’s focus on the audacious purity of rock ’n’ roll parallels immaculately with Davila’s Beibi, one of the best “sugary, flower-punk” garage albums of the year (since Terror/Amor, of course).
(11/13/14 5:25am)
'Tis the season.
(11/12/14 5:50am)
To Brother Ali, hip-hop is about more than music. It’s a culture, a lifestyle, a community and an account of the social and cultural issues that the evening news can only speak of in the third person. This Thursday, Nov. 13, Brother Ali returns to his hometown for an eagerly anticipated show at the High Noon Saloon. I spoke with the artist about his upcoming show, what music means to him and the potential it has to change the world, one listener at a time.
(11/11/14 7:43pm)
We’re just past the halfway point in the 2014 NFL season, and absolutely no team has separated themselves from the rest of the pack as the bona fide Super Bowl favorite.
(10/24/14 3:15am)
As artists like the Replacements and U2 spent the 1980s paving the roads leading to the many futures of rock music, a band of rebels from New York’s alternative scene tore up the same roads, carving their sonic landscapes deep into the American music consciousness. After carving his teeth in experimental guitar orchestras and hardcore bands, it's with these rebels that Thurston Moore first made his name. In Sonic Youth, Moore helped tear apart rock music convention, crafting soundscapes of distorted noise rock and fury driven punk.
(10/21/14 3:50am)
Oct. 17 at 9:00 p.m., it was hard to tell the casual food munchers apart from the eager concertgoers at Der Rathskeller. Both groups were ordering food that looked way tastier on the menu than in reality, but regardless they went with their empty gut and took the plunge to order. After the inevitable culinary disappointment settled, the rustic tables and stools were parted to make way for around twenty-five ragtag flannel-wearers eagerly anticipating the performance of Alex G.
(10/20/14 9:28pm)
Surfer Blood exploded into notoriety in 2010, with the release of their debut album Astro Coast. The album, along with its effortlessly catchy lead single “Swim” were featured in numerous “best-of” lists for the year, and the band found themselves going from relatively unknown to being on everyone’s radar in only a few months’ time. After much touring, Surfer Blood released their sophomore album Pythons in 2013. Pythons was not met with as much critical acclaim and many music publications deemed the band to be in a “sophomore slump,” although fans were in no way disappointed with the release.
(10/20/14 3:50am)
Foxygen are a band so painted by their influences that, for better or worse, it’s impossible to talk about them without comparisons. The artists they try to emulate are engrained in every bar of every song. Flipping between the elegant monotone of Lou Reed and the howling of Mick Jagger, the California duo own their nostalgia, but their record collection may have failed them on their new release, …And Star Power.
(10/14/14 3:44am)
J Mascis’s last record, Tied To A Star, was far more subtle than Dinosaur Jr.’s power-trio theatrics normally lend themselves to. Mascis, the lead guitar-player and vocalist for the Massachusetts alternative rock legends, turned in his thundering riffs and blazing solos for a gently picked acoustic guitar and meditative falsetto. While his fluid electric guitar stylings would occasionally make themselves known in Tied to a Star’s more dynamic moments, it was still largely another Mascis acoustic album.
(10/13/14 3:22am)
A war on the people who have the audacity to make budget-priced or free, independent games that represent characters other than grizzled white dudes has been ongoing since August. Their games push back against the idea that games must be power fantasies, whether the power in place is the ownership of a vehicle worth millions or being an individual assassin striking terror in the hearts of the orcs of Middle Earth. Most, if not all, of these games are pretty easy to acquire, run on your college laptop, and cost $20 or less.
(10/09/14 4:00am)
The liberating drawl that swims through alternative rock staples like You’re Living All Over Me is a humbling one. J Mascis is a man whose guitar sings opera. His drumming sounds off a demolition man’s battery. He laid a defiant foundation for alternative rock in the 1980s with Dinosaur Jr. and delivered a Nordic thunder behind the drum kit in doom metal outfits like Witch. Yet, if it wasn’t apparent in the melodic heart in even Dinosaur Jr.’s heaviest moments, Mascis has a tender side.
(10/08/14 5:49am)
How long has it been since the first indie artist turned toward a troubadour’s drawl and a Western backdrop? While the answer may be a little ambiguous with some answers tracing back to the early 2000s and others even farther, it’s hard to argue that indie folk as a genre has seen itself withered down over the years. Now the troubadour writes bad pop songs, their acoustic guitars strumming a few poorly mixed chords and their lyrics playing with uninspired—or maybe over-inspired?—hooks, blending them into songs more indulgent than impressive.
(10/08/14 4:12am)
After receiving my first CD player and a gift card to a local music store, I was the definition of both a “lost puppy” and a “kid in a candy shop.” There was so much music at my fingertips and I didn’t know what to do with any of it. I went into this music store without any idea of what I wanted and about an hour later, eight-year-old Owen walked out with a Louis Prima CD, still not knowing if he wanted it.
(10/07/14 3:42am)
I’m glad that I came out of this month’s Spoon show (you know the one) feeling so maligned, because it provides a perfect foil for the wonderful of Montreal show Sunday night at the Majestic Theatre. For those who don’t remember (or don’t care), I left Spoon’s set disenchanted with indie rock and its ethos; it seemed hollow and depleted and it was distressing seeing a staple band of the scene just going through the motions to an apathetic and cooler-than-thou crowd.
