Dark Matter Presents: Split LP #1 Wild Jesus & The Devil’s Lettuce Press Pot Recordings, 2016 by Matthew Meade The blues, jazz, and funk fusion ensemble Wild Jesus & The Devil’s Lettuce Family Party Band have been lurking around the weird back alleys of Chicago’s avant-garde indie music scene since at least 2011. They’ve released […]
Read more "Splitting The Weed, The LP, and The Atom"River Bones bleeklino Self-Released, 2016 By Matt Meade Judging by his Instagram account, Nico Haag is doing something with his 20s. He is going to interesting places, taking pictures of random things, spending time with beautiful people, and growing ironic mustaches. He is also working on the first full-length from his bleeklino project, which will […]
Read more "Just About to Climax"By Ben Hobbs
After wading through the sea of sparse imitation hip-hop that is their most recent albums, and mulling over my chances at starting my own hugely successful indie pop duo, I started wondering how TOP did it.
1989 Ryan Adams PAX AM, 2015 by: Scott Lowder Upon reading the title of Matt Meade’s review of Ryan Adams’ 1989, I threw up in my mouth a little. The nerve of a man to compare one of my favorite songwriters to Aaron Lewis of Staind! In most cases, I let things posted on the internet […]
Read more "Ryan Adams’ 1989: A Tasteful Rebuttal – OR – Why Ryan Adams Should Not Be Compared to Staind, Ever"1989 Ryan Adams PAX AM, 2015 By Matt Meade On September 21, 2015, Ryan Adams released a track-by-track cover of Taylor Swift’s 2014 release 1989. After much pre-release hype it turns out that, more than anything else, it reveals something about who Ryan Adams really is. Sure he has a bit of swagger and he […]
Read more "Ryan Adams Gives Taylor Swift’s 1989 a Coat of Staind"Miley Cyrus Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz Smiley Miley, 2015 By Matt Meade When I first saw the pictures of Miley Cyrus with Wayne Coyne on Instagram, (because yes I am a man in his 30s with a family who follows Miley Cyrus on Instagram), I wondered if she was taking for granted her […]
Read more "Miley’s Pet Cemetery"Something More Than Free Jason Isbell Southeastern Records, 2015 Americana artists are a dime a dozen. The field is as crowded as that of the 2016 GOP hopefuls, and sometimes it can feel just as stodgy and unimaginative. How long can a genre go back to the well of its influences – the cadences and […]
Read more "Roots and Roses"Guppy Ben Shaw Kirigirisu Recordings, 2015 By Matt Meade I’ve spent the year since Ben Shaw’s 2014 album Goodbye, Cagoule World listening to his back catalog. It sounds like he has too. When Ben Shaw turned in Goodbye, Cagoule World he was doing it because it was time for him to turn in that kind […]
Read more "Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy…"Apologies to the Queen Mary Wolf Parade Sub Pop, 2005 By Matt Meade The tragedy of young adulthood isn’t that young people don’t know their adolescence is precious and fleeting. Old people are known for blaming the young for wasting their youths on things like smoking too much weed, spending more money on shoes than they […]
Read more "The Middle Age of the Wolf"Get Behind Me Satan The White Stripes V2 Records, 2005 by Noah Kucij Now that the White Stripes’ story has more or less been written, let’s […]
Read more "Give The Devils Their Due"Solid Gold Heart Jad Fair & Danielson Sounds Familyre, 2014 By Matt Meade When I was nine, I used a Panasonic portable tape recorder to record a rock and roll song that I wrote entitled “Power Rock.” There were no instruments. There was no band. It was just me singing the words of this song […]
Read more "Solid Gold Weirdos"cozy body the mineral girls Self Aware Records, 2015 The mineral girls show up in my itunes in between The Microphones and The Minutemen and that feels just about right. (note: They actually show up in between Miles Davis and Missy Elliot, but I am ignoring that fact because that is not how the alphabet […]
Read more "From Mineral Girls to Mineral Women"Ten years ago, we thought Sufjan Stevens belonged to all of us. When he produced two state-themed albums, Michigan and Illinois, and announced a career plan to make an album for each of the remaining forty-eight states, we thought he would be our Walt Whitman. He would turn his unique musical and literary gifts over […]
Read more "Darkness and Light and Oregon"Father John Misty I Love You, Honeybear Sub Pop, 2015 “Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, then what […]
Read more "Liberation Through Sentimentality and Naivete"So Delicious The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band Yazoo Record, 2015 The anticipation of a new album from one of my favorite bands can be equal parts elation and dread. Inevitable questions like, “Is it going to be as good as the last one? What if it sucks? Did they change their sound? Will it […]
Read more "Country-Blues That’s Finger Lickin’ Good"
OLD SCHOOL RECORD REVIEW 