i hate the sound of guitars

artist of the week: Dio
In my metal days, I followed guitar players from band to band, not singers. It was a plus, for instance, that Graham Bonnet sang with Alcatrazz, coz I knew him from Rainbow and the Michael Schenker Group, but Graham Bonnet wasn’t the reason I bought Alcatrazz albums; the reason (as embarrassing [...]

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song of the week: Pärlor åt svinen
album of the week: a reference of female-fronted punk rock 1977-89
Anybody who’s known me long enough is doubtless tired of my riff about how what jumpstarts the aging process is when you stop falling in love with new music. It’s a little worrisome that I followed up a spin [...]

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artist of the week: Good Luck
song of the week: When You Were Mine
I recently stumbled across Sound as Language, a blog which has a whole lotta overlap with what I like, but writes about quite a few things that are new to me. I liked the way Will wrote about Good Luck like I should [...]

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Artist of the Week: Museum Mouth
Tears in My Beer sounds kinda like a country album title, and maybe not a good one either, but this North Carolina trio’s debut is rambunctious, noisy indie pop. It sounds like not a lot of microphones were involved, and they were all pretty much traumatized. Bassist Savannah Levin takes [...]

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Artist of the Week: Standard Fare
I’ve been sticking with the new weekly format so far, but I’m starting to feel overwhelmed by the stuff slipping through the cracks:

I feel bad, for instance, for not devoting a week to Paula Carino and her excellent new Open on Sunday (at first I thought Ross Bonadonna’s guitar work [...]

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Artist of the Week: Love is All
It took me a while to warm to Love Is All. The coalescing of three members from the (underwhelming, to me at least) twee band Girlfrendo into the textbook post-punk act Love Is All made me suspicious of bandwagon-jumping, since it happened when retro post-punk was suddenly very marketable. [...]

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artist of the week: Ted Leo and The Pharmacists
Song of the Week: Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
After a few spins few through The Brutalist Bricks, it’s clearly another entry in Ted Leo and The Pharmacists’ increasingly long and impressive unbroken series of really good albums. I know that songs [...]

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Artist of the week: Vulgaires Machins
Here’s a working definition of lack of critical distance: on Friday, March 12th, I learn that the new Vulgaires Machins album, Requiem pour les Sourds had been released on March 2nd. I’m frustrated that there’s been nine whole days that I could have been listening to this album, but wasn’t. [...]

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Artist of the week: So Cow
On the latest release, Meaningless Friendly, So Cow basically sounds to me like a slightly (but not obnoxiously) lo-fi amalgam of Television Personalities, The Wedding Present, and Boyracer: smart, catchy, sometimes noisy pop with a distinctly from-across-the-pond air. (The original C86 scene is an obvious influence, and Beat Happening, too.) [...]

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Artist of the Week: Buzzcocks
I try not to get too caught up in the whole expanded/remastered reissue thang, but I’m making an exception for these updates to to the original Buzzcocks releases. The albums are rounded out not only by contemporaneous singles and a passel of demos, but also full live sets. I dived in [...]

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