i hate the sound of guitars

The Lizard Lounge was crammed to the gills for the very welcome work-night friendly early set. Joe Pernice opened with a handful of solo songs, including the title track from Goodbye Killer and “Telescope,” a sneak peek at the in-progress Pernice Brothers album (he said it was mostly too rockin’ to translate well to an [...]

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Ryan Walsh, leader of the much-beloved-’round-here Hallelujah the Hills, used to be in a band called The Stairs, who released a pair of albums and some odds-and-ends. Looking at ‘em with hindsight, The Stairs recordings seem like a bit of an exploratory/learning/growing experience, with Walsh and crew figuring out their songwriting and performing strengths, and [...]

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I’ve been disturbed that I’ve been enjoying some mainstream chart pop recently, with Ke$ha probably being the nadir. Does this mean I’ve lost my critical facilities completely? Is this some sort of mid-life crisis affectation? Or is it a basically harmless side effect of watching Glee? I wanted to listen to the new Britney Spears [...]

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You may have heard the story by now: Sick of Sarah leak their own album onto peer-to-peer sharing service; claim “platinum” status on basis of download counts; lotsa folks say, more or less, “Sick of who?“. More evidence, if you ask me, that it’s ridiculous to assert that each pirate download of a track is [...]

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Lesser bands could stretch the musical ideas Standard Fare crams into the 3 minutes of the A-side into an EP, or even an entire album. Every time the fast, bright, choppy, guitar chords return I think “Smiths!” but, there’s a whole lot more going on. In fact, if you charted all the changes this tune [...]

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Four more thoughtful, intricately assembled songs from this outfit that doesn’t quite fit in any of the genres you might try to box it in: not precisely shoegaze, trip-hop, nor electropop. Some melodic elements and arrangement details here and there impart a hint of Eastern flavor and lead track “Lemoncholic” is maybe one of their [...]

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I show no signs of getting tired of bands that worship at the temple of The Fall’s early days: ungainly lurch, quirky lyrics, atonal-but-strangely-catchy — I can’t get enough. S-S-S-Spectres’ “Witches vs. Wolves” might sound like a runner-up in a fake Fall album/song-title contest, but it made me say “what the heck?” in the its [...]

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I got Simulacra via eMusic, which meant I first heard this as a weird record, not as a novelty record. It was an arresting mixture for sure, blending the everything-distorted-all-the-time aesthetic of Parts & Labor/Times New Viking et al; a slow-tempoed, heavy, King Crimsonish vibe; and deep-buried, high-pitched female vocals a bit like Melt Banana, [...]

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There’s basically nothing I don’t love about Smokers Die Younger’s X Wants the Meat.
I love the cheap-sounding keyboards (Casio? I can live in hope). I love the also cheap-sounding and frequently fuzzed-out guitar and bass (Slates amps and Skinny Rat guitars? Sounds like they could be), the determinedly plonky single-note guitar lines they play, and [...]

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