Posted on: August 5, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Skyscraper #19 / $4.99 / 1:30 / 188M / http://www.skyscrapermagazine.com / [email protected] / 

Skyscraper is a tri-partite zine; featured in its run each time are equal parts of advertisements, band features, and reviews. This may seem to some to be a strength for the zine, but with this extremely long issue and a lack of mixture of these three parts, it becomes hard to read through the zine throughout with having one’s eyes glaze over. Not that the journalism present in this zine is bad or boring, but that there is just so much information that is present here. One of the best things about Skyscraper is that they do not conform to the dominant emo focus of many a PR and label but rather have their primary focus on indie rock, giving time this issue to bands like Mono, The Hold Steady and Out Hud this issue. The ads are pretty much everywhere through the zine, but really are not as garish as those in comparably-sized magazines, offering more of an informational instead of an annoying type of roles here. As for the layout, everything has the same font throughout this issue’s 188 pages, but a sharp reproduction of the pictures allow for some nice breaks from the overwhelming amount of text here. For any idea on what is going on in the current indie-rock scene, Skyscraper provides a tremendous service culling together all the news releases and band webpages into interesting features that allow individuals to really understand what an act is and where they are coming from. An interesting read, even to those individuals who may not like the genres covered.

Rating: 6.2/10

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