Duck & Cover :: Indie rock music writing from Arcade Fire to the Zygotic Minci

Internet radio / social network / music discover tool Last.FM has released its Best of 2008 list. There are going to be dozens of "best" lists coming out in the next few weeks, but this one should command your attention. The list is not based on radio play, and it is not based on best selling albums. It is based on the number of times we (that's the royal "we" in all it's regal garb) have played tracks from our iTunes, iPods, Songbirds, or any other player that allows scrobbling. It is based on what we wanted to hear. We pressed play. We made the playlists. The only fault I can find lies in the Top 10 Tracks, which basically MGMT and Colplay. But that's what you get with raw data. To me, the Artists list is the most compelling. You will find no Kanye West on this list; no Britney and no Janet. You will only find the artists played incessantly and obsessively.

Grayson Currin, columninst for Nashville Scene , wrote an insightful and higly readable review of O’Death’s third LP, Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin . What lifts this particular article from the doldrums in a sea of music reveiws is how Currin presents the album as a metaphor for the digital music age. At a time when so many writers can’t craft a single sentence without opeing thesaurus.com (::cough:: Insound ::cough::), a review like this is refreshing. Currin’s central argument is that sourcing your sound from hundreds (Currin tosses out the "B" number) of influences does not guarantee your band will break any ground. In fact, it will most likely just make your album sound schitzophrenic. From the article: The band represents the label's eclectic aesthetic, then, to a world (minus the dwindling ranks of purists) that's realized through praxis that there's less room for genre strictures. This is the time where Hootie goes country, Nelly jams with Kenny Chesney, Lil...

Happy Birthday, RT. Hope you got my spoken-word cover of Koyanisquaatsi Rough Trade, London label and champion to hipsters all over the world, is celebrating its 30th birthday. And the only present they want is your demo. All you need to do is attend one (or all) of their five birthday parties . They'll have a deposit box outside the door, and you simply slide in your demo. That is if you can fit it inside the slot; no doubt the thing will be stuffed tighter than Beyonce's underwire. However, like me, most of you won't be able to make the trip. Or maybe you just don't want to waste the plastic and paper that goes into a demo CD or tape--because green is the new black, if you haven't been paying attention. Never fear, the ever-thoughtful chaps from the motherland have you covered. You can either email your demo to A&R guy paul.jones@roughtraderecords.com, or snail-mail it to their London addy: Rough Trade Records 66 Golborne Road London, W10 5PS So you really hav...

A summer release just in time for winter Buy CD: The Lord Dog Bird Sounds Like: halfway into your long journey from home, you fully realize the devastating truth you've been avoiding: you can never go back. RIYL: Iron and Wine, Rachel's, Afghan Whigs, moping Response: When Colin McCann went off to make a solo album, I assumed it would be filled with more of the pounding, gritty riffs that he was known for as the guitarist for Wilderness. However, The Lord Dog Bird, McCann's solitary moniker, is one of the most haunting, emotive albums I've ever heard. I would rank it with Master and Everyone , Ugly but Honest , and Devotion and Doubt as an album that wraps a tight, stubborn fist around my heart. If the sense of alone-ness on Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago made you phone your friends just to hear the sound of their voices, then the eponymous album by The Lord Dog Bird will make you feel like every soul on earth is just out of reach. McCann's trebly acousti...

Nickerless, guest blogger and User Interface Designer extraordinaire, is based in London, England I eventually didn't mind that my work bud admitted to "scraping the barrel" before asking me if I'd join him for a Black Keys gig. He had bought two tickets to go see them and had asked everything wearing a skirt and/or a bra, then all those in jockstraps before finally turning to the guy next to him - me - and saying, "I don't suppose you are free tonight?" Well I was... but blowed if I actually knew who The Black Keys were. They were playing at the Carling Academy Brixton in South London, a venue I'd never been to before, but one which draws in a lot of great bands like the Killers, Primal Scream and The Raconteurs. Despite the reputation South London has, especially Brixton, I wasn't stabbed when i got out of the tube. This made me happy. The venue was awesome though. Like most London gig venues, it was an old stage theatre but this had a huge st...

Sounds Like: Thom Yorke, if Thom Yorke were a girl from Denton who played in a punky grunge band. RIYL: The Jesus Lizard, Geraldine Fibbers, The Apes, sitting in the corner of a bar taunting hipsters Response: I ask that you please take note of the un-contemporary (I hesitate to say "old-fashioned") nature of the bands in the "recommended if you like" line. I did that on purporse. Why? Because Record Hop's sound elicits scenes from a bygone era I fondly refer to as "the 90s". An era that saw the rise of dark, dirty music clubs where the walls would sweat more than the audience. The Record Hop dredges up these images for one primary reason: they're from Texas. Texans, you see, have never really been on board with any trend. They can be genre bending and/or genre defining, but they'd never admit it. Texans would hurt me if I said it, but they're kind of America's France. Or perhaps more accurately, America's Quebec (chill out, long...

It's a little like the music blog hall of fame, but with neither the hall nor the fame The good folks over at the [exclusive] Groove Network have invited Duck & Cover (that's us) to be counted in their number. Check out their site. See how many blogs are members? Talk about indie! So, what does this mean to the blog? It means we're in a community of serious music bloggers, and we're referring one another. It's kinda like a bunch of traffic cops in the blogoshpere. What does it mean to you readers? Cast your eyes banner-ward, my friends, and find out. See that horizontal row of links up there? That's the Groove Network. Well, THAT's not the network; it's a bunch of links. Anyway. Go ahead. Click one. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Thanks to Paul from GN for being so groovy as to invite us on board.

Sounds Like: the farther north you go the more constricted your voice becomes; Santa sings in the boys' choir. RIYL: Pedro the Lion, The Thrills, Band of Horses, rearranging the furniture because it's Tuesday Personal Response: While Norwegian band Lukestar is not breaking any ground, they're far from tired. Within the signature pop staccato riffs and big chords there lies comfort in the familiar. Honest and unrepetitive (so long as you don't count refrains as repetitions), Lake Toba belongs on the playlist for your next indie/emo dance party--just be careful trying to sing along. Front-man Truls's vocals take falsetto to new heights, which is tricky for me because I'm a guy who likes to sing along (although recently I've been relegated to drum solos and spoken word while everyone else rocks out to The Darkness . . . bastards). Lukestar is touring the US in the Spring, and will also be at SXSW. Be sure to hop over to Duck & Cover Video to see what...

Sounds Like: The New Pornographers on a strict diet of baguette and escargo. RIYL: Feist, France, Blonde Redhead, sewing, wearing tight red turtlenecks. Personal Reaction: Ménagerie, the latest album from Francophonic popsters Nous Non Plus, which includes an homage to "Tuff Ghost" by Montreal's Unicorns (en Français, naturellement) will find a home in fans of indie pop (emphasis on "pop"), French new wave, and classic emo. Though they sing in French, Nous Non Plus is from NYC and is composed of five Yankees plus one Swiss-German, lead singer Céline Dijon. Most of them were previously in the faux-French band Les Sans Culottes. In 2005, several members of Les Sans Culottes staged a coup d'état--a grand French tradition--and Nous Non Plus (literally translated to "us no more") was born. All the blogs and reviews I've read about them tout the band as great purveyors of 60s French pop. However, they seem to ignore that French pop is clean and mi...

Disclaimer: Idea (and most of the images) stolen from the Fight the Big Bull MySpace page Sounds Like: RIYL: Personal Reaction: Band :: Fight the Big Bull Album :: Dying Will Be Easy Song :: Ken Vandermark Experiments 1 (studio version)

Go to Wilcoworld , and you can download a free MP3 of Wilco and Fleet Foxes covering Boby Dylan's "I Shall Be Released." The catch? You must promise to vote. But since I know that all our dedicated Duck & Cover readers are voters, anyway, I'm billing this as a free MP3. So go tell Wilco that you're a voter and get your reward. (photo of guitar rack on-stage at Wilco's set during Outside Lands via Crowdfire ; image by John Battelle ).

I forgot to mention you can dance to it Sounds Like: Ten years ago you left your mother and father and sisters and your best friend and your good friends and you promised to write and you meant what you said and you tried to you really really tried to call but there were waves and the night swallowed everyone and the food on the islands and those accents and all the sounds from across the desert and it's funny what makes you miss Kansas and you finally come back not for good but you return even if only for one day and we're all there and this is what we sound like when we finally see you again. RIYL: Josh Ritter, Hefner, The Shins, Elvis Perkins, Richard Buckner Reaction: It is difficult to hate a defenseless fluffy mammal. It's even harder to listen to Scottish alt-folk-singer-songwriter-laddie-lads Frightened Rabbit and not feel the hot rush of inspiration creeping through the notches in your spine. I have a tendency to gush about bands I like, but who can fault a ban...

Here at Duck & Cover headquarters (read: my office cubicle), we were stunned to learn that UK prog band Marillion was releasing a new album through the P2P channels as a free download. Stunned and dismayed because we had no idea Marillion was still together, let alone up on the P2P action. Well, the joke's on us. Here's how it works, according to their Wikipedia page: Upon downloading the files and attempting to play them, a video from the band appears explaining why they had taken this route. Downloaders are then able to opt to puchase the album at a user-defined price or select to receive DRM-free files for free, in exchange for an email address. The band explains that although they do not support piracy, they want to attempt to engage with p2p users and extract value that currently did not exist. Not to pick at semantics, but I think they mean't " previously did not exist." And while I love arguing about "piracy" and "illegal downloading...

Constant Reader- Yello! It is rare that I must come speak to you in this milieu, but sweet baby jesus, you must be made aware of this before it's too late. As you may well know, the great historical works of our mutual heritage have been co-opted, and we sit idly by, somewhat bemused, as mewling imbeciles press buttons and strum their controllers, attempting to capture the maudlin themes of Black Sabbath, KISS, AC/DC and other fine minstrels of our ill-spent youth. True, some make th e argument that this introduces a younger generation to a time when rock actually Rocked, and there may be merit to that, but as with all things, the tangent of a tangent of a tangent eventually completely loses the original benefit. Thus is the case with Guitar Praise . For fuck's sake. Seriously, where do you go with this shit? Where do you begin? It is common knowledge that Rock = Satan. That's Algebra 101, Constant Reader. At best, you're looking to gods of sex and drugs, but jesus? ...

As it's Friday, we like to round up a few of the stranger music-related stories and share them with our beloved readers. First, there was the TechDirt article about bands (or the labels who represent the bands) who pull their songs from iTunes after said songs have become popular. Apparently, they think it will force people to buy more CDs, which is kind of like selling tires, then shutting all the stores and telling people they have to buy cars to get the tires they want. TechDirt reacts with the appropriate "WTF". Moving on, we find a lovely post about the "peculiar pocket trumpet" from Trumpet Instruments. Finally, there's this: a homemade hurdy gurdy built from circut hacked Furbies, appropriately named the "furby gurdy."

Guest blogger Drew Zackary needs a day off. We wonder where he finds time to send us his guitar player's pick each month. The underground eats the years, breaks all your E strings; spits out death, obscure city workers, and suburban gardeners decades after the cocaine and long hair. . . I Digress. Robert Buras. 1975-2007. Found dead in his apartment in Oslo ( here's an amazing video of his band with him as the corpse ). Lead guitarist for Mudugrada. Lead singer and guitarist for My Midnight Creeps. I loved Mudurada for years before I understood it. Buras had the secret down. He played his soul through his right hand, man. Typically, when we watch the guitarist on stage, we focus on his orher left hand. But the soul-- the damn soul comes from the right hand . We can all marvel at the hyper speeds that the best players finger; the frets, pentatonic minor scales forward and backwards they play with their eyes closed. But it's those staccato upstrokes; the hard pounding; t...

Sounds Like: It's 2am on a clear, early autumn night and your friends say, "let's go to a club;" the song that pops into your head. RIYL: The Presets, Riton, Human League, Depeche Mode, LCD Soundsystem Personal Response: The invitation is white with red letters reading "Dance Hall, Rm 16", and the outside looks familiar enough: iron door, dark facade, bass you feel in your feet--your stock standard dance venue, you say to yourself. You knock on the door. Woodhands answers wearing a black tie, white oxford shirt, and black trousers. "Meh," you think as you saunter past. You begin to get settled into a run-of-the-mill room full of boogie tracks when Woodhands shuts the door behind you and starts re-arranging all the furniture. What follows is a twisted, dark scene from Dragonball Z: You watch Woodhands's face go from average to pleased-yet-slightly-creepy. "That's right," says Woodhands. "You thougt we were just ripping off ...

They're calling it "the Firefox of media players." Which is catchy. A lot catchier than "what iTunes could have been were it not linked to the evil that is the iTunes Music Store." Although both descriptions have their particular charms. But not as charming as the Songbird mascot, which appears to be a flatulent sparrow. If you want a good description of the features (built-in Last.fm scrobbling, custom add-ons, concert ticket link) then I suggest reading the article on Webmonkey . But if you were the kid who played the game before reading the instructions, then here's the link to the download on the Songbird site . You'll notice that the player is still in beta. This is just geek talk for "we're not done yet." Personally, I enjoy the graphic of the Songbird player (on both Webmonkey and the Songbird website). It displays a library filled with the likes of Fugazi, Fruit Bats, and Gary Numan. What does that mean? It means the developers list...

Contributor and friend of D&C, Nick recounts the worries and glories of searching for beer in a new country. When Nick is not recovering from bouts of drunken debauchery, he whiles away the hours as a kick-ass User Experience Designer in London. You'll have to excuse the short break between this and the previous post of mine about beer. I've been testing my Spanish while hanging out on the beach in Spain. "Dos cerveza por favor” will get you two beers (why settle for just one) delivered to your table. I’ve also been climbing mountains in the South of France, which is where I discovered perfection in a bottle – a 9% Leffe! There is a god! There could be many but my recent discovery of this elixir means there should be at least one. There are probably two because surely another one needs to exist in order to explain the perfection that is Charlize Theron (thank you Lord). I’m not prone to stalking beers on the web but I perhaps should have been as the bottle I came acros...

Arms is on tour with Vampire Weekend. That's as interesting at it gets. Sounds Like: A band who has found their sound . . . wait, they just lost it . . . no--there it is . . . nope, gone; it's gone . . . RIYL: The Strokes, Kings of Leon, Silver Jews Personal Response: I went to college with a guy who didn't know he was funny. Yet some of the quips and observations that came out of his mouth were sometimes so side-splitting hilarious, it was sublime. The problem was that when he realized he's said something amusing, and that we were all laughing, he would try to continue the joke; only he didn't know what the joke was. He was simultaneously the funniest and most drole human I've ever known. I thought of him while listening to Arms because they approach music in much the same way. You will hear key changes inspired and passionate followed by hackneyed riffs that are downright boring. It's as if they trip accidentally over brilliance, but like my friend from...

Drew Zackary, citizen of earth and Old Denver, fights sleep to jot down his thoughts on Motel Motel's debut LP, New Denver. Sounds Like : New wave hipster psych- folk Americana with neither's existential terror or humor . . . and C-grade story-telling skills. Recommended if You Like : Eunuchized Nick Cave, Squirrel Nut Zippers on Bezodiazepines and PBR, or open mic night for folk-lovin' hipsters . . . and sleeping. Personal Reaction : Few bands practice and have visions of large orchestrations. And few bands of any experience level have such a grasp on what the arrangements should sound like recorded. This album is a great recording: great vocals, a keen understanding of the chordal structures of the lost traveling americana from the 20s, and a good mix of stringed intrumentation and other under-used instruments in rock. It's perfectly recorded and well thought out. Obviously made by people skilled in playing and passionate about making music they love. Yet for the gen...

Smashing Magazine has a lovely list of 35 beautiful music album covers . And while we at Duck & Cover Music disagree with some (for example, Appetite for Destruction, while certainly iconic, would not rank among the beautiful) and would definitely add one or two (In the Aeroplane Over The Sea, for one), we found scrolling through the list a joy.

In an update to last week's review of Light Pollution's enjoyable new EP, we, the editors of Duck & Cover Music, asked the band the hard-hitting questions. Read on: D&C: Do you have a favorite pair of shoes? LP: Boots! D&C: Is there a song you never get tired of hearing? LP: Evil Woman by ELO D&C: Were any of Light Pollution in the high school marching band? LP: Matt (our drummer) was in the marching band. Heather (viola) was in Orchestra, but that's not as cool. D&C: Any plans to play out west (specifically Seattle/Vancouver)? LP: We've been to Seattle, but never to Vancouver. We would love to go in the near future. So there you have it. Big thanks to Light Pollution, and to Brooke for getting us in touch with them.

Just when you thought modern music had lost its soul . . . While New York City churns out dance pop, Seattle cries tears of indie rock goodness, and Los Angeles provides us with all our Garage Punk needs, Chicago keeps relatively to itself: an introspective tinkerer, dabbling in the dazzling. From Chicago we get Steve Albini, Touch and Go Records, Cap'n Jazz, and now Light Pollution. The press release I received states that Light Pollution is, "never stagnant, and constantly expanding their musical horizons. [The] music is a kaleidoscope of sound, encompassing everything from backward tapes to dissonant piano rolls to even crunching leaves." In short, a band that is doing something interesting. And we like that. We receive a lot of music here at Duck & Cover, but Light Pollution stood out. As it played through we all sat back on the couch, put our hands behind our heads, and someone muttered, "Ah. Real musicians playing real music. So rare these days." Indee...

I hate personally have a problem with Kings of Leon . For the most part, it's not their fault. It's just the hideously annoying vocalist, Caleb. Musically the band is talented. I don't deny it. But the uninspiring, unoriginal, choke-inducing sound of Caleb singing almost makes me physically violent. Kings of Leon will be on tour soon, so here is a realistic list of things I would rather do than go to their show: 1. eat an entire jar of pickles 2. let a tarantula walk up my arm all the way to the shoulder 3. donate blood and watch (i hate watching) 4. go to a dinner party with all the people who irritate me (regardless of what you might think, it would be a small dinner party, but a very annoying one) 5. wear the same pair of shoes every day for a month 6. type using only my left hand for an entire day 7. go to church 8. watch infomercials 9. do the dishes 10. read Family Circus comics You see? Totally realistic. Notice nothing extreme like "make out with your grandfat...

Parkcow, author and intellectual, puffs his cedar pipe on this calm mid-summer eve and musters his creative command of the English language to describe Psychedelic Electronica trio School of Seven Bells thusly: "they are pretty good." When Jamie asked me to guest review the band School of Seven Bells, I must admit that I had rather mixed feelings. On the one hand, he threw out the qualifier “bit of an expert in the arena” in reference to the band’s electronica nature. It’s not often that I can claim to be a bit of an expert on anything (except Blue’s Clues, Yo Gabba Gabba, and, most depressing of all, the Teletubbies since I spend far too great a portion of my day watching these shows with my toddler), so I was naturally flattered and instantly turned on to the idea of doing something involving music that didn’t have an endlessly repeating, positive reinforcement message like “we’re really smart” (this coming after the solving of Blue’s Clues, which anyone familiar with th...

Peachcake is sweet. Like sugary sweet. Like the kind of sweet that makes you feel guilty afterward, as if you should have spent your time building homes for poverty stricken families in Peru than indulge in this glucose bath. Yet the Arizona duo doesn't try to be anything other than bubble gum pop, and that's where they succeed. You'll enjoy Peachcake if you like Postal Service, or Lightning Seeds, or LCD Sound System, or techno of the happy hardcore bent. You see where I'm going? While their lyrics lack the poetic depth of Postal Service, Peachcake is arguably more fun. It will either make you want to dance, hang out with ravers, or punch bricks until they spit gold coins. Download a few tracks for a play list, but don't try to digest the whole thing in one sitting. I don't know many people who can handle an entire peach cake on their own. Okay, I know one person: my brother. But he once ate tacos until he couldn't see. Band :: Peachcake Song :: Stop Act...

The case of the overshadowing opener I'll admit it: I had to study for this show. Anyone who frequents live music knows exactly what I'm talking about. A band is playing nearby, so you buy an album and thrash it until the day of the gig. Hopefully, you'll know a few of the songs by then; you might even sing along. So it was with No Age. I picked up a copy of their Sub Pop release, Nouns (white vinyl!), from my local, and quickly got my free MP3s from the label (note to labels: you MUST provide free MP3s with vinyl. It's just the right thing to do). For two weeks leading up to the gig I listened to the record at least once a day. Come the day of the show, however, I was caught off guard by the opening band: Mika Miko. Mika Miko rock. It's like the girls from the library and the girls from the coffee shop got together and played a mix of Sleater Kinney and Chicks on Speed. Their set opening for No Age was as full of energy as it was full of off-color humor ("That...

Guest blogger Justin Z takes a break from hammering to reflect on something he may or may not have heard before. Hypothetical Auditory Amnesiamania is a mental condition where the subject secretly or publicly desires to experience amnesia for the sole purpose of listening to something they've already heard before and experiencing it again for the first time. Some people have this desire with movies or books as well, craving that initial thrill the mind undergoes when it first watches or reads them. In lieu of beating yourself in the head with a hammer (which only has a small percentage of causing amnesia, anyway) you can listen to Pickin' On Modest Mouse by Iron Horse. To truly appreciate this music, you have to meet two qualifications. First, you have to like bluegrass. Second, you have to have listened to enough Modest Mouse to consider yourself a Hypothetical Auditorial Amnesiamaniac. If you meet these two qualifiers, then you owe it to yourself to supplement your HAA ...

My ego is in a blender set on 'puree' I love a good game of trivia. Who doesn't? So when I stumbled upon Jams Match , I felt the Internet has just politely slapped my face with a gentleman's white challenge glove. However, after a few rounds of matching album art with the album's name, I realized that the Internet had, unbeknown to me, filled the glove with sand and was repeatedly taking swipes at my jaw with all it's might. Jams Match is hard. Really hard. But in a good way. The game isn't frustrating-hard (like the first Hitman or trying to play Duels without forking over any cash). Rather, it's challenging like trying to score a date with Beth from high school chemistry class: every rejection (and they were all rejections) were acknowledgments on her part that you existed. I've set the difficulty level to "novice" and have been working through the indie/alternative set of covers for the past two hours now. I still can't get over 80 p...

Montreal do-gooders Wolf Parade surprised me with their first album, Apologies to the Queen Mary . The Isaac Brock-produced record was laced with creepy off-key melodies, and singles like "Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" could carry me through a day as though I had my headphones firmly clamped around my noggin. At Mount Zoomer , however, goes off in a direction all its own. This time, the Wolf boys themselves turned the dials in the studio and the product is all the better for it. The story goes that when the band sent the finished album to Sub Pop, they included with it a small note: "No singles." This little white lie was propagated by the label itself as a tongue-in-cheek response to the direction Wolf Parade took with their sophomore effort. There are, of course, singles. Nothing like "Sons and Daughters" or "I'll Believe in Anything", mind you. "Grey Estates", "Language City", and "An Animal in Your Care...

"music is the unknowing exercise of our mathematical faculties." --Gottfried Leibniz Seed Magazine has a wonderful--albeit long--article written by music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko. In it, he reduces the complex beauty of Western music to "simple" mathematical models. Please note the quotes surrounding the word simple. To Tymoczko, this stuff is no doubt like writing a grocery list on a napkin. To the rest of us, however, the idea alone is enough to make the brow furl. The thesis attempts to create a visual shape for music. By first reducing notes to numbers, Tymoczko pieces together an architecture for harmony. The essay is thought-provoking and insightful so long as you can push through passages like this: In this way each of the 88 piano keys is assigned a number less than 12: the "C" keys 48, 60, and 72 are represented by 0, while the "C-sharp" (or "D-flat"), keys 49, 61, and 73 are all represented by 1, and so on. Musicians say that...

Contributor and friend of D&C, Nick recounts the worries and glories of searching for beer in a new country. When Nick is not recovering from bouts of drunken debauchery, he whiles away the hours as a kick-ass User Experience Designer in London. I've now been to plenty of bars that serve a great selection of beers, like The Phoenix on Cavandish Square. Yet getting out of the bars and into the festivals and supermarkets can be very rewarding. Most of the English ales you will find in pubs will be mass-produced and the quality varies depending how they are stored. Getting yourself along to a Real Ale Festival will introduced you to some drops that will vary greatly in taste and will open your eyes to just how good these ales can be. Supermarkets, oddly, are also a great place to find a large variety of interesting ales, and you'll often be able to get them on special. I've just now made my way through a Black Sheep Ale and an Olde Trip. Yet after a few months I felt like ...

Contributor and friend of D&C, Nick recounts the worries and glories of searching for beer in a new country. When Nick is not recovering from bouts of drunken debauchery, he whiles away the hours as a kick-ass User Experience Designer in London. I departed the green shores of young New Zealand early last year, eagerly anticipating the welcome tastes of European beers. My grand idea was to write about every different beer that I consumed in an attempt to be like Michael Jackson--the beer writer, not the man(?) who grabs his crotch and squeals. My mouth could barely contain the drool as I thought of all the delicious and varied brews that were going to pass my lips. Some of my favourite drops while living in NZ were Continental beers such as Duvel and Leffe, plus I'd tasted several yummy ales and stouts from the Motherland (read: England). To say the least, I was excited. I've been in the UK for over a year now and have written nothing. They drink lagers over here. You should...

I've always had a soft spot for hard core. I think it goes back to when I was in grade school. As hormones started raging, Bon Jovi and Whitesnake just weren't cutting the angst anymore. Pantera was an obvious choice. But again, my tastes evolved and Pantera was just too simple. When I found Nirvana I'd thought I'd found, well, nirvana. And into high school it was Ministry, Helmet, and the heavier side of grunge. I remember nights sfter theatre rehearsal Justin, Josh, and I would sneak cigarettes in the parking lot while trying to determine who was better at headbanging. To this day, I believe those evenings did more brain damage than all the college keggers put together. Today, the musical genres of "hard" number into the ridiculous: heavy metal, death metal, puff metal, grindcore, thrashcore, mathcore, growlcore, screamo, punk rock, noice rock, Scandinavian costume rock. I'm not making this up (well, I made one of them up, but it's not the one you th...

Constant Reader- Rumors of his death having been evidently misreported , Kid Rock issued a statement today actually IN FAVOR OF filesharing! I won't rehash much further, beyond his complaint with iTunes pilfering the pockets of hungry country-rock rappers through the distribution of singles and asinine lawsuits against preteens who have no possibility whatsoever of paying the restitution ordered. Idiocy. Instead, Constant Reader, I'd rather express my boundless irritation with Apple and iTunes in general. How stupid does Apple think we are? They come at us with contradictory marketing campaigns: we must have an iPod to be included, but we're a worthless conformist if we don't own a Mac? And don't get me started on Volkswagen! Don't think they don't know what they're doing! Next time you see one of those fucktards driving around a VW, listening to his iPod, taking a call on his iPhone and blogging on his Mac, remind that pretentious, self-absorbed ...

D&C brings you music; we never said it was going to be NEW music There is grindcore, and then there is fury. Daughters falls into the latter category, but theirs is a worrying kind of fury: mathematical, purposeful. These are the controlled explosions of geniuses--geniuses who are very, very upset. From the first second of the first track, Daughters attacks from every angle: fast, screaming, loud, and (this is where they transcend mere scream-o) disjointed. To steal a Parkcow device: Daughters is what would happen if Napalm Death and Mr. Bungle had a baby, and it was raised by Deerhoof. They make bands like Blood Brothers and Black Mountain sound as harmonic as church choirs. In fact, the only facet where Daughters could be considered "light" is in terms of length. Clocking in at just over 12 minutes, Canada Songs is a frenzy. I was completely finished with the album before I'd finished my tea. Note: does not go with tea. So who cares of the album came out six years a...

The album title says it all . . . Ready, Fire, Aim are a little electro-pop group being pushed by a marketing firm called Two Sheps That Pass . Don't ask me what "Two Sheps" are and why they're passing, and be careful before visiting their website. I think it was thrown together by a first-year design student: poorly cut graphics, repeating background, misalignment, and images used as text. Seriously, I should do an entire post on the website alone, but this blog is about music. Music, and sometimes shoes, but mostly music. I couldn't find an angle by which to approach the review, though. Ready, Fire, Aim aren't my cup of tea. Too verse-chorus-verse. Too, I don't know, wimpy. I mean just look at the album cover! Is it a boy band? Is it a metal band? Is it a car logo? Who knows?! However, while listening to This Changes Nothing I realized exactly who would like this album: my friend Scot in New Zealand. Since he doesn't read my blog, I'm using him ...

In yet another example of how out-of-touch the record industry is with the buying public, it took a "mistake" to reveal that yes, we like music on vinyl. Not all of us, mind you, but some of us. The article at CNN.com focuses on what it calls the "resurgence" of vinyl. However, anyone who has been buying music seriously for the past 20 years will know that records never went away. Those beauties of analog have always stuffed the shelves of the best independent music stories all over the country (yes, even in Kansas). What's more, throughout 2007 the RIAA was busy moaning about dropping CD sales, suing people who downloaded "illegally", and generally being a bunch of cry babies. Yet what they were ignoring was the rise of LP sales by 36% between 2006 and 2007. So while they would have us believe that "the music industry is in disarray" because CD sales are down, we know that buyers' spending habits have merely shifted slightly. This is al...

Go to Last.fm's radio and search for bands *like* Modest Mouse or TV on the Radio. Of course, you get your usual Built to Spill, Mars Accelerator, Halo Benders, Ugly Cassanova--but you will probably see this lesser-known NW band. With growling lead vocals, eerie backing harmonics, heavy bass, and just enough synth, Feral Children play nicely with the well-established sound of Seattle's indie scene. Haunted by chagrin and misfortune, the voice of Feral Children's SXSW EP (a prelude to their new album, Second to the Last Frontier ) is reclusive, but lonesome. It yearns to be alone, yet once in isolation, it howls for our ears. In just four songs Feral Children create a distressing mood: one akin to being followed by not one but a host of pursuers. And like the choruses who follow Oedipus, the ghosts on Feral Children's EP sing of misdeeds--namely, your own. Even the relatively uplifting final track ("Zyghost)" is reassurance come too late; an apology for how it...