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Azerrad – Our Band Could Be Your Life

Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad

Our Band Could Be Your Life is probably the most compelling book on music that I’ve read since Simon Reynolds’ Rip it Up and Start Again. Published in 2001, Michael Azerrad was the first to sing the praises of an era of music largely overlooked: the American independent scene from 1981-1991. Our Band Could Be Your Life documents thirteen bands in particular: Black Flag, The Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat, Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Continue reading →

Tags: 3-Way Tie for Last, Atomizer, Bad Moon Rising, Beat Happening, Big Black, Black Flag, Brown Reason to Live, Bug, Bulldozer, Butthole Surfers, Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat, Damaged, Daydream Nation, Death Valley '69, Dinosaur, Dinosaur Jr, DIY, Double Nickles on the Dime, Dreamy, Eight Miles High, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, EVOL, Flip Your Wig, Fugazi, Goo, Guy Picciotto, Hairway to Steven, Henry Rollins, hipster, Hootenanny, Husker Du, Ian MacKaye, In My Eyes, indie, International Pop Underground Convention, jam econo, Jamboree, Kill Yr. Idols, Let it Be, Locust Abortion Technician, Margin Walker, Metal Circus, Michael Azerrad, Minor Threat, Mission of Burma, Mudhoney, Nervous Breakdown, Nevermind, New Day Rising, Nirvana, Our Band Could Be Your Life, Out of Step, Paranoid Time, Project: Mersh, Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sac, Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Repeater, Rip it Up and Start Again, Seven Songs, Signals Calls and Marches, Simon Reynolds, Sister, Songs About Fucking, Sonic Youth, Sorry Ma Forgot to Take Out the Trash, Steady Diet of Nothing, Superfuzz Bigmuff, Sweet Thing Ain't Sweet No More, The Minutemen, The Replacements, Thurston Moore, Touch Me I'm Sick, Vs., What Makes a Man Start Fires?, You Turn Me On, You're Living All Over Me, Zen Arcade

Passion Pit’s ‘Take A Walk’ Wanders in the Wrong Direction

15 May

Passion Pit’s first LP Manners exploded onto the east coast music scene in 2009. The Kidz Bop electro-twee of Manners is sweet enough to rot teeth at times, but several of the tracks are mercilessly catchy and were played on repeat in my apartment. Passion Pit’s sophomore record Gossamer is due to be released this July but unfortunately, the debut single ‘Take A Walk’ will have fans of Manners and the earlier Chunk of Change EP wanting to do the same.

Passion Pit fell off the musical map for only three years Continue reading →

Tags: Columbia Records, Desaparecidos, Gossamer, hipster, James Blake, Manners, Michael Angelakos, Passion Pit, Take A Walk

Gravenhurst – The Ghost in Daylight

7 May

Bristol’s Nick Talbot has been releasing music as Gravenhurst for over a decade now. That being said, The Ghost in Daylight is his first release in half a decade. Since 2007’s The Western Lands Talbot jettisoned the band that he had toured and recorded with. On The Ghost in Daylight he melds elements of finger-picking folk, shoe gaze and Continue reading →

Tags: All I Need, Blow Up, Bristol, Carousel, Circadian, dream pop, Elliott Smith, Fitzrovia, folk, Gravenhurst, hipster, In Miniature, John Talbot, Kraut rock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Peacock, Radiohead, shoe gaze, The Foundry, The Ghost in Daylight, The Ghost of Saint Paul, The Prize, The Western Lands, Three Fires

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Categories Uncategorized
Author the self-hating hipster

Passion Pit at Northern Lights (4/23/2012)

28 Apr

I was rather looking forward to seeing Passion Pit regardless of the fact that they were playing at Northern Lights on a Monday night. It’s usually okay to show up fashionably late, or just plain late, and not miss much at a Northern Lights show. The doors for this particular event opened at 6:30 Continue reading →

Tags: ape shit, Arms, Chunk of Change, hipster, Little Secrets, Manners, Michael Angelakos, Moth's Wings, Northern Lights, Passion Pit

Clarke – Exley

19 Apr

Exley by Brock Clarke (2010)

“Sometimes you have to tell the truth about some of the stuff that you’ve done so that people will believe you when you tell them the truth about other stuff you haven’t done.”

I read Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes my freshman semester of college at the recommendation of a friendly book dealer. I loved it. After reading Clarke’s “Note From the Author” at the end of Exley, there’s really no wonder. Similar to Clarke (to a lesser, younger extent) who was similar to Exley (to a lesser, younger extent), I was living at home Continue reading →

Tags: A Fan's Notes, Brock Clarke, Exley, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Frederick Exley, hipster, meta-fiction, Miller Le Ray, Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, Watertown

TOPS – Tender Opposites

17 Apr

TOPS is the Montreal-based foursome of singer/synth Jane Penny, guitarist David Carriere, bassist Tom Gillies and drummer Riley Fleck. Their debut, Tender Opposites, was released in February of this year on Arbutus Records (also home to Grimes). I read only two things prior to hearing this record: 1) The production is similar to “new” Ariel Pink, and 2) TOPS bites a Fleetwood Mac sound, particularly Continue reading →

Tags: Aislers Set, Arbutus Records, Ariel Pink, David Carriere, Diamond Look, Dido, Double Vision, Evening, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Go Away, Grimes, Hall & Oates, hipster, Jane Penny, Pretenders, Riley Fleck, Rings of Saturn, Stevie Nicks, Tender Opposites, Tom Gillies, TOPS, TOPS Theme, Turn Your Love Around, VII Babies

Lotus Plaza – Spooky Action at a Distance

16 Apr

Lotus Plaza is the solo project of Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt. Spooky Action at a Distance is Pundt’s second release after 2009’s very bright but somewhat washed-out debut, The Floodlight Collective. Like Deerhunter frontman and bandmate Bradford Cox did with last year’s Parallax (#2 on my Top 11 Albums of 2011), Lockett Pundt proves once again that members of busy bands can produce wonderful things on their own time. It should also be noted that the outspoken Pundt may be the Continue reading →

Tags: Black Buzz, Bradford Cox, Deerhunter, Dusty Rhodes, Eveningness, hipster, Jesus & Mary Chain, Jet Out of the Tundra, Lockett Pundt, looping guitars, Lotus Plaza, My Bloody Valentine, Parallax, Robert Fripp, shoegaze, Spooky Action at a Distance, Strangers, The American Dream, The Floodlight Collective

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Categories Album Reviews
Author the self-hating hipster

Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town

10 Apr

A few months ago I placed an Amazon order for the Kids in the Hall movie, Brain Candy, which I thought would round out my KITH collection (owning seasons 1-5 of their sketch comedy), but I discovered thanks to “customers who bought this item also bought…” that they had released a mini-series on the CBC (reran on IFC) entitled Death Comes to Town in 2010. As a Kids shill, Death Comes to Town was an exciting and obvious purchase.

The series, directed by Kelly Makin (KITH director since the early 90’s), takes place in the fictional Shuckton: a small Canadian town with Continue reading →

Tags: Amazon, Big City, Brain Candy, Bruce McCulloch, CBC, Corinda Gablechuck, Crim Hollingsworth, Dave Foley, Death, Death Comes to Town, Doc Porterhouse, Dusty Diamond, Heather Weather, hipster, IFC, inept police, Kelly Makin, Kevin McDonald, Kids in the Hall, KITH, Levon Blanchard, Marilyn Bowman, Mark McKinney, Marnie, Mayor Bowman, Rampop, review, Ricky Jarvis, Scott Thompson, Shaye, Shuckton, sketch comedy

Disappears – Pre Language

9 Apr

Chicago’s Disappears has been busy, busy. Three albums in three years: 2010’s Lux, 2011’s Guider and this year’s Pre Language. Disappears is admittedly not doing anything new. Their three albums reclaim late 60’s garage rock (the Velvet Underground aesthetic on Lux and the White Light, White Heat structure of Guider), early 70’s proto punk and Krautrock, late 70’s post punk (particularly The Fall and Wire) and early 90’s shoegaze. Their sound also incorporates elements of frontman Brian Case’s former band The Ponys.

Pre Language wasn’t exactly what I expected Continue reading →

Tags: Brian Case, Can, Disappears, Fear of Darkness, garage rock, Graeme Gibson, Guider, hipster, Iggy Pop, Kranky Records, Krautrock, Love Drug, Lux, Mark E. Smith, post punk, Pre Language, proto punk, Replicate, review, Revisiting, shoegaze, Sonic Youth, Steve Shelley, The Fall, The Ponys, Velvet Underground, White Light White Heat, Wire

Wallace – Consider the Lobster And Other Essays

7 Apr

Consider the Lobster And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace (2005)

David Foster Wallace, most famous for his gargantuan novel Infinite Jest (as the cover of this book of essays will tell you), is an author that has been recommended to me countless times. Infinite Jest, widely regarded as one of the best pieces of fiction in the past two decades, is over 1,000 pages in length (reportedly 200 of which are footnotes). Because of its sheer size, Jest also joins my list, like Joyce’s Ulysses and Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, of “things that I really should get around to reading the next time that I have a three-week vacation.” For this reason and Continue reading →

Tags: A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, Adult Vidoe News Awards, Atlas Shrugged, Authority and American Usage, Ayn Rand, Bryan A. Garner, Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace, dictionary app, footnotes, hipster, Host, Infinite Jest, James Joyce, John McCain, John Ziegler, Maine Lobster Festival, narrative voice, Rolling Stone, self-conscious, SNOOT, Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness, Tracy Austin, Ulysses