SOTD #717 – Ratbath
My brother Ben and I, we used to be like crossed fingers. I didn’t need any other friends on the playground, because I could always just hang out with him after school. We told stories together, played word games and card games and our modified version of Rock-Paper-Scissors. In the mornings, we’d just lie on […]
You Beauty – Illywhacka (Bedroom Suck)
As someone who broadcasts opinions (not for a living, tho), I worry when a band strikes my fancy and I can’t explain why. By all accounts, You Beauty shouldn’t charm me as they do – they’re the usual four-man rock band outfit from Sydney, albeit with slick new wave haircuts and humming basslines and banshee […]
SOTD #716 – Animal Daydream
Well, here we are again. Another year, another lush EP for running through cornfields barefoot, another suggestion that Gothenburg might float on a cloud high and away from the tumultuous river of now. I’m not about to renounce any of my thoughts on how music needs to keep moving forward, that musicians need to challenge […]
SOTD #715 – Bernays Propoganda
Words. Pah. What are words, but bricks laid in sequence? We learn the patterns from the people we meet, and we mimic those patterns to communicate with others who build the same designs. I see people who don’t so much speak as deploy barracks, whole chains of bricks, and thus safeguard themselves from thinking, from […]
SOTD #713 – Halfsour
Say you’ve gone out to see a gig in a new town. You’ve arrived early, as is your custom, but already people are crowding the couches and milling in bunches. You don’t know any of these people. Your legs lock as you stand at the threshold, scanning for somewhere unobtrusive to sit. Twenty minutes crawl […]
First Impression: Pete Astor – Spilt Milk (Fortuna POP! / Slumberland)
Oftentimes, when I’m given a list of albums I could review, I’ll pick some names that I’ve never heard before. Now, in a legit music blog like Drowned In Sound, I have to pretend that I know something about the artist, and thus drudge up some “research” listening. But I figure, first impressions count when […]
SOTD #712 – Hag Face
The very name should chill your bones. As your lips form the words, you should welcome the slight shudder that slips down your back. You should feel compelled to fear. You should embrace the fear. As you would with Satan, Voldemort, Napalm Death, or the Glow Cloud. O great conjurers, o great terrors of the […]
Backwards Is A Forwards – Lee’s 2015 in Albums
Above: ABRA, Atlanta’s self-claimed “darkwave duchess”. Picture courtesy of FACT Mag. I can measure a year’s worth by the number of diaries I’ve filled. The number of times I’ve felt my head expand, or met new people, or brushed the cusp of a new horizon…all these urges to write, to organize thoughts and record the […]