Home is Where – I Became Birds [Father/Daughter Records 2021] Though they allegedly bristle at comparisons to The Hotelier (but not their hero Jeff Mangum) it’d be almost impossible to ignore the spiritual influences in 25-year-old frontperson Brandon MacDonald’s finished product. Impressionistic writing, a voice like a horn, and a sound that toggles between the …
Continue reading “Queer Emo Up-and-Comers & Classic Hip Hoppers”
Drive By Truckers – A Blessing and a Curse [New West Records LLC 2006] It feels forced, like a piece that was so frustrating they just put it out to get it off the workbench. From the schlocky drumming that opens to the way Cooley splits the difference between Mick Jagger & Rob Thomas to …
Wednesday – Rat Saw God [Dead Oceans 2023] Initially I’d almost written it off completely as a Difficult Listen, a minus considering how appealing the “country + shoegaze” descriptor really is since everyone seems to be ‘gazing and mashing up with disparate sounds. Good shoegaze isn’t just a blast of atonal powerchords, there’s riffs and …
Continue reading “This whole commuting an hour thing really drains a fella”
Failed attempts at corralling bodies for a podcast has left my energies elsewhere. But also I work on my own time anyway so what does it matter lol. This batch is stronger than most, nothing under a 3 which means there’s probably something for everyone. As always, I’m continuing my journey through the Drive-by Truckers, …
Sleater-Kinney – Call The Doctor [Chainsaw 1996] Riff kweens, truly. But also, friends and lovers. Sometimes when youthful desperation sounds this loud there’s a chance it gets written off as pure histrionics, but I think the clear intelligence of the two songwriters tempers some of the callowness associated with such drama. For explosions, please turn …
The word itself means “a collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject”, so think of a canon or anthology except it sounds more esoteric than it actually is, which is pretty in line with my aesthetic. It’s going to serve (I hope) as a collection of a single artist’s releases, usually chronological, …
Beyonce – Renaissance [Parkwood/Columbia 2022] She’s never been so unrelentingly sultry on a song-by-song basis like this, weaponizing an appeal that she was already a veteran of utilizing by the time she became a mother. After achieving creative freedom at the turn of the last decade every record since has been artier and more visceral. …
Continue reading “Sowwy fo’ taking so wong to post new content :3”
Three years in and maybe it’s time to put out something like a rubric or framework so that the varying degrees of good and bad that I end each of these blurbs with has some reference. Let me also say that it’s not lost on me that these collections of song that I grade are …
Cosmic Hero