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

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...

Guest blogger Parkcow is not afraid of Captain Dan & the Scurvy Crew I found the band thanks to a banner add for another musician. It was an electronica, indie chick who was actually pretty good (kind of like Imogen Heap, sort of, from Frou Frou—let’s say if Hooverphonic and Regina Spekter had a baby and Imogen Heap raised it). Actually, after 13 years of using the internet (though I probably shouldn’t count the first two since that was when AOL was charging per minute so it’s not like I used the internet for anything but the high priority stuff: chat rooms and porn, and chat rooms about porn, of course), this was my FIRST purchase based on clicking through a banner add. I’m not sure if I’m the norm or not, but I don’t know how ANYONE makes money on the internet with that kind of year to purchases ratio. Anyway, CD Baby, where I found Captain Dan, suggested that if I liked Echo Slightly, then I’d also like Captain Dan (and about five other artists). It should be noted that NO...