No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

If you’re here for the music, there are some songs at the end. They’re Blood Brothers songs. Feel free to skip this.
So I’ve danced around it before, and will, out of respect for the clients I’m working with, never go into extreme detail, but as of the beginning of October, I work with [...]

global politics climb the hill in your backyard

So I was so bloodpumped about the new John K Samson EP, City Route 85, that I couldn’t help but expect to be let down when I heard it in it’s entirety. And, I’m not even going to preface this with a letdown, this is a great little album. There is no [...]

you’ve got that feeling, now lose it fast.

Three years ago last night, I was James K Polk. Preparation for that night was snorting, smoking and swigging (which, probably quickly devolved into slurping and from there further into supping, then slipping, then, somehow, scabies.). It lead to some questionable decisions but from what I recall, it was a pretty fun night [...]

don’t even get me STARTED on the applesauce problem.

not much new music in my pipeline at the moment outside of the Edward Sharpe album and the anticipation of the new Thao, Miles Benjamin, and John K Samson albums, but I’ve been rediscovering stuff up the wazoo. Maybe it was seeing a phenomenal Roadside Graves show a week or so back, but I [...]

the flowers at the landfill

So The Reigning Sound and Molina and Johnson. Molina and Johnson first.
This is one I’m frothing for, which is dumb. Jason Molina is the singer/guitarist/songwriter for The Magnolia Electric Company and Songs: Ohia, and Will Johnson is the singer/guitarist/songwriter for Centro-Matic (one of my favorite bands) and South San Gabriel (one of [...]

the modern exploits of our caged, horned, beasts.

transplanting life is never that simple. you can try to sever everything, blindfold it all up and drive it in circles ’till it loses directions, but somehow things manage to leave a breadcrumb trail. I said goodbye to jersey on saturday morning and fall asleep to Jay Z oscillating in different tones from [...]

take a number and call it your own.

Yo La Tengo were exceptional when I saw them at Roseland last Friday night. Roseland is a tough venue to play, because it’s just so big (maximum occupancy somewhere in the range of 3500). That hugeness has ruined shows by punk bands who couldn’t command the cavernous ballroom, and has been wonderful [...]

a downpour with something to hide

How does stuff like this happen? It’s been months since the newest Magnolia Electric Company album came out, and somehow I wrote lukewarm things about at least a few other albums before even mentioning this one?
I think at this point, everyone’s got their favorite Magnolia Electric Company album (ok, every Magnolia Electric [...]

Break the stereo if it’s not broken yet.

When a band get overly hyped, hyped to the point of near-ubiquity (Radiohead, Animal Collective, Dan Deacon, No Age, Wavves, etc.) I tend to swing back in the other direction and be absolutely and totally dismissive. “Dan Deacon, more like Crap Crapcon!” This is unfair to those bands, but it is my standard [...]

leap before you linger

Today I was going to do a post about the Muse album “The Origin of Symmetry,” in my opinion the last good thing they released, but now I’ve got a headache, so here’s a quiet song about a man’s love for his cat.
There’s something that shouldn’t work about Mark Kozelek and the various bands he’s [...]