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

You do what you do with what you've got I received a very helpful email the other day from Ian from tech support at Arts and Crafts Records. You'll recall I bought the new Constantines vinyl, Kensington Heights , and I don't have a record player (this is a story in itself; a story for later). Luckily, the album came with a code for a free MP3 download. Unfortunately, my code didn't work. So the emails began. After two emails in as many days, I got a response. "Your code is missing a letter," the message informed me. "The letter is 'j'." Indeed, the code was missing the letter 'j' for when I added it, the download worked like a charm. So after minor setbacks, here's the review. If some dude tells you rock is dead, don't listen. Two reasons: 1.) he's probably some 19-year-old hipster wearing neon lightning bolts on his hoodie who repeats everything he reads on Pitchfork, and 2.) He has not heard Constantines. While plenty ba...

I sing of Clae shoes, and what I shall assume you shall assume I like shoes. This not a secret. But I'm not the kind of sneaker freaker who will buy a new pair of Air Force Ones just because they're a limited edition. For that matter, I would never buy a pair of Air Force Ones, period. For me, the shoes need to be conversation starters; they need to be manifests of mood. It's not good enough for a pair of shoes to define a look. They must be a definition unto themselves, regardless if they are a celebration of color and fabric like D.A.T.Es , or pieces of subtle beauty like Zeha Berlins . The summer 2008 range by Clae Shoes fits this motif. And I mean the entire range. Clae began in 2001 as a sort of anarchic reaction to both athletic footwear and leisure footwear when they released their "athleisurewear" shoe hybrid. However, they haven't really released anything since 2005. I'm not sure if the three years was spent researching and designing, or if they ...

Or, "The review that WOULD have been of Constantines could I download the damn album from the label" I've been looking forward to buying the new Constantines album, Kensington Heights, ever since it came out six weeks ago. Reasons why I didn't buy it at the time stack up like beer coasters: I was between contracts, having just moved from New Zealand to Canada; I had a list of other albums to buy first; It was either new music or maintain my subscription to WoW; I couldn't find my wallet. See? Lots of reasons. Now gainfully contracted, caught up on albums, and happily resting my Night Elf, I decided to part with my money. I was in Zulu Records on 4th to buy tickets to Frog Eyes/Destroyer (watch for a live music review) when I saw Kensington Heights for sale on vinyl. Forever a geek for outdated formats, I grabbed it. And it wasn't until I was paying for the LP that I noticed a silver sticker on the cover, shimmering with potential like a new idea: "free di...

Guest post by Drew Zackary Ed. Note: Sometimes, we at Duck & Cover solicit reviews from other writers or musicians. We value the insight they can provide into an industry, of which we are little more than casual observers. Sure, the D&C crew loves music, buys music, watches live music. The problem is we don't actually play music (high school trombone doesn't count as "music"). No matter. You get to a point in your life when you just have to accept the fact you're never going to be a rock star, and no Guitar Hero score will change that. So we go about our lives living vicariously through the musicians whose music we follow. The solicitations for their written opinions are little more than thinly disguised invitations to participate in our fantasy. Because we don't have rock star lives; we have geeky, music-hungry, shoe-obsessed lives. So when I received this month's Guitar Player Pick from sporadic contributor and dedicated guitarist, Drew Zackary,...

After weeks and weeks of rain, the weather in the Pacific Northwest has finally changed. It's sunny. It's hot. It's no time to be at the computer research all those lovely musical tidbits we bring you here at Duck & Cover. So have a good weekend, readers. To paraphrase Comet Gain, if you're looking for me, I'll be drunk at the beach. Band :: Comet Gain Song :: Fist in the Pocket Album :: City Fallen Leaves

New Zealand bands--you can't get much more indie than that. Powering through the newly released EP by New Zealand indie power-pop duo The Naked and Famous is like being the star of your own action movie. Or at least the part of the movie where you're either a.) battling an army of zombie ninjas, b.) driving a rocket car down 4th street in the middle of the afternoon, or c.) driving a rocket car through an army of zombies who are waiting for the bus on 4th street at 2:30pm . . . Okay, it got out of hand there but that's because I'm listening to the aforementioned EP, This Machine , and I simply can't keep up. Although it's heading into winter down under, you'd think they wrote the album just for our northern hemisphere summer. This Machine is fast; it's poppy; it's perfect for right now--and frankly, that's all it has to be. My only complaint is that it always seems to end too quickly. Since releasing the EP in May, they've also received very ...

Because we all have at least one . . . hell, some of us are one It was 2001, and I was still living in Wichita, KS. Dakin, smart boy that he is, had high-tailed it to Seattle the previous year. Since arriving, he'd been diligently emailing me bands I needed to hear. Of course, most of the bands he mentioned had little more than an EP out, thus making their discovery in the Bible Belt somewhat rare. Thank god, then, that we still had Napster (or KaZaa, actually. Napster had just been shut down a few months earlier, come to think of it) because Dakin had told me the latest must hear: a little band from New Mexico called The Shins. I downloaded all I could; listened, loved, and decided I had to see them live. That year The Shins were touring to promote Oh, Inverted World . Being that they were a relatively unknown indie band at the time, they were hitting a lot of the college towns in the mid west. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch their show at my local college town (Lawrence...