Review: Tomeka Reid Quartet – “Old New”
Most of us know or associate with the cello as a staple of the classical and post-classical world, an instrument whose deeper breaths can elicit comparisons to the bowels of…
Album Review: Pitfalls by Leprous
These are songs from the inside, a discovery of hope in understanding one’s own hopelessness.
ALBUM REVIEW: POPULUXE, “Beauty In The Broken Place”
This is not a band to be taken lightly – the name “Populuxe” should be self-explanatory. While the melody and song structures are of a “poppy” nature (versus abrasive and…
Review: Brat Curse – S/T
Brat Curse writes in earworms. That’s the only logical conclusion you can come to after listening to the Columbus, Ohio quartet’s new self-titled outing, which features hooky blasts of noisy…
Review: The Zells – “No More Heroes” EP
The Zells’ No More Heroes EP – the six-song follow-up to 2018’s excellent Failure to Slide, out today via Pittsburgh indie Crafted Sounds – starts with reverby, almost spacy guitars…
Review: Eric Bachmann – “Misinformation Age”
Only Eric Bachmann could make rage over the Trump era’s alienating 24-hour-a-day mind-fuck seem elegiac. His new, one-off single, “Misinformation Age,” out yesterday via Merge for $1 on Bandcamp and…
Concert Review: Melvins Live In Pittsburgh 10-5-19
Melvins know no years. They’re just too fucking good to be bothered with them. So, seeing the trio, now nearing its fifth (!) decade in existence, destroy a stage live…
Review: Not Your Friends – “Constructing A Mental Breakdown”
Constructing A Mental Breakdown, the ambitious burst of post-hardcore noise by Pittsburgh quartet Not Your Friends, is a vexing little document. First things first, it must be said that, when…
Review – Doug Walker, The Nostalgia Critic, “Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall”
Pink Floyd is not and should not be immune to criticism. Nonetheless, this does not pass muster.
Review: DANA – “GLowing Auras & Black Money”
The cover for Glowing Auras & Black Money, the sophomore outing from Ohio art-punk/mostly punk outfit DANA, is all wrong. The image, which features a glossy illustration of a woman’s…
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 – The New Pornographers, “In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights”
If we are lucky, we'll listen back in ten or twenty years and smirk about its undercurrent of disappointment.