Review: Tender Mercy – “War Within”
Under the moniker Tender Mercy, musician Mark Kramer creates eerie and unnerving skeletons of songs out of little more than a few carefully plucked notes on guitar, some semi-whispered vocals…
Review: Bonnie “Prince” Billy – “BPB Mix Tape Vol. 5”
Any musician who’s released 25 studio LPs (did I count that right?) must bear a treasure trove of outtakes and demos, amirite? But Will Oldham always has been more than…
Review: Mike Patton and Jean-Claude Vannier – “Corpse Flower”
I first heard vocal shape-shifter Mike Patton’s collaborate with John Erik Kaada, the Norwegian composer, back in 2004. It was, even in the light of a performer known for not…
Review: Kal Marks – “Let The Shit House Burn Down”
Now, I’m not always prone to deflect a kind remark when something better comes along, but, listen listen, follow my logic here. At the end of the month, Exploding In…
Review: Trvss – “Absence”
Holy shit, man. How a rock band sounds so vicious, yet so calculated and razor-sharp precise on a record, never mind a debut LP, is beyond me. In short: the…
American Don: The Damon Che Story
At the time, everybody in Pittsburgh knew Damon Che. But few really knew him. Che, who now lives an uneventful life in the Amish countryside 15 miles southwest of Punxatawney,…
Review: The Turbosonics – “Bedrock Stomp” b/w “Journey to the Center of the Sun”
The Turbosonics, one of Pittsburgh’s more reliable surf bands, always has been a bit of a cultural throwback for me, and I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. Yes,…
Review: The Lampshades – “Forget Me Not” b/w “Sadly True”
As posthumous releases go, the new 7-inch from Pittsburgh-by-way-of-Altoona’s The Lampshades, out today, is the exception to the rule in this fatalistic sub-genre: an afterthought of sorts that is actually…
Review: Meeting With Hans – “Genius Loci”
Multi-instrumentalist Tomas Svoboda is clearly out to toy with listeners’ expectations of recording fidelity. The Czech musician’s third LP as Meeting With Hans – titled Genius Loci, available now on…
Review: Picastro – “Exit”
Liz Hysen’s reliably dissonant acoustic guitar might ground her as Picastro, but her work on six strings, however interesting it might be, is only the sparest introduction to this highly…
Review: Demons – “Uglier Americans”
As protest songs go, this one, yep, is pretty damn angry. “Uglier Americans” – the new MAGA-targeting protest song, out today online, from Virginia noise-rock quartet Demons – is a…
Review: INUS – “Western Spaghettification”
Cherish this, kids, because records like Western Spaghettification don’t come along often. The trio INUS, whose full-length debut is out Aug. 9 from San Diego’s Three One G, prominently features…