Skyscraper #13 ($4.99 , PO Box 1595, NY, NY 10276)
First off, if anyone tells you that $4.99 is too much to spend on any zine, they have obviously never seen a copy of Skyscraper. While I received a copy of Skyscraper back a few years ago (and still read it to this day), I don’t even think I was ready to see #13, which shows a music zine that obviously knows its stuff. Me reading through Skyscraper is like me, the Latin major, trying to translate a passage in Spanish. Sure, I know of who some of the bands are that they feature, but the vast majority of names dropped just pass me by. Such an in-depth magazine comes at a steep cost; while the editors of Skyscraper have not literally sold their soul to the devil, they have sold it to pretty much any record label that happens to express interest in the magazine. I mean, I understand that glossy pages don’t print themselves, but it is almost absurd to flip through 10 pages in a magazine without seeing much more than the table of contents and a whole slew of advertisements. If you are looking for what is truly the cutting edge of music, take a look at Skyscraper. Just the bands on the cover provide enough fodder to get lost in innumerable albums : The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Gogogo Airheart, French Kicks, Black Keys, Get Hustle – I was completely lost when I was reading through the magazine, and yet the writers at Skyscraper know EVERYTHING about these acts, filling up two entire pages on some of them where I could only guess at the genre each band puts themselves. The featured bands are not just the only ones that get this wonderful treatment : each and every review provides the reader with enough information to accurately and objectively decide on the merits and weaknesses of a certain album, with little or no coercing by the magazine. Oh, and this issue comes with a CD, yet another reason to buy it.