It would be easy to dismiss Here We Are Now as just one final opportunity for Seattle writer and Kurt Cobain biographer Charles Cross to go back one last time to see if any money was left on the table. But in doing so, you’d miss out on one of the more thoughtful studies on the impact Cobain, and in many cases his scene mates in Olympia and Seattle,…
Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna has always been an interesting figure, but it wasn’t until the release of this documentary about her that you realize just how important a cultural figure she was. In the early 90’s, first through a zine she co-founded and later with her band, she was one of the main founders of the Riot Grrrl movement which gave a much needed jolt to contemporary…
PT Walkley may just be the missing link between Rufus Wainwright, the thoughtful jazz-inspired, sophisticated troubadour, and The Kinks, god’s gift to lovers of pop hooks and sing-along melodies everywhere. The fact that he pulls all of this off with an above-it-all indie vibe (despite still being able to shill for everyone from McDonalds to GE in TV ads) is all the more impressive. His latest, Shoulders,…
How do you know your core audience is hipsters? You record a song with Aubrey Plaza. The Parks & Recreation actress, and fantasy of skinny-jeaned beardos from Williamsburg to Bushwick, “plays” alto sax on “Bona Fide” the second track on Ben Cassorla’s debut EP.
Once you get past how instantly enjoyable Hayley Reardon’s new EP is, your hit by the stunning news that this singer/guitarist is only 17 years-old. Her voice and lyrics (with the exception of the cover of Taj Mahal’s “Fishin’ Blues,” all the songs here are penned by Reardon) are far stronger than anything you’d expect from a teenager and bring to mind everyone from Mary Chapin Carpenter to fellow Bostonian…
Calling to mind everyone from the B-52’s to the dB’s, Athens, GA-based Casper & The Cookies have always revealed in catchy, jerky synth pop that you can’t help but sing along to (quirky choruses be damned!). On Dingbats, their eighth release (their sixth or so with the band full band, The Cookies), the group is still uncompromisingly odd and just as fun as when they first surfaced. Their latest is…
Shit got real in season three of Games of Thrones. You know those annoying friends who have already read the books and would not shut up about “The Red Wedding” scene. Well, turns out they didn’t over sell this story line, for once. In the second to last episode in season three, just out on DVD, hell was definitely unleased at the wedding of Edmure Tully and Roslin Frey,…
Yes, there are bookshelves lined with bios about Bob Dylan – including a planned-three volume autobiography from the singer. But journalist Donald Brown approached American Troubadour, the latest Dylan book, in a completely original fashion, looking at the cultural landscape surrounding the release of each album. While many of the stories of Dylan’s life have been dissected ad nausea in just about every bit of medium imaginable, Brown’s approach is refreshing;…
Despite what appears to be another “poor pitiful me, I’m rich but bored” comedy/drama, Afternoon Delight is surprisingly good. Helmed by Jill Soloway (who snagged the 2013 Sundance Best Director award), the film follows Rachel (played by Step brothers’ Kathryn Hahn), a stay at home mom, married to a tech entrepreneur Jeff (How I met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor), living in LA;s trendy Silver Lake. Rachel has slew…
It’s a bit surprising this indie romantic comedy didn’t get bigger buzz on its initial outing. The leads (Justin Long and Evan Rachel Wood), while not exactly major box office draws are still pretty big names for a small budget film, and the story is quirky without being overly odd and sweetly romantic enough to have broad appeal. Long (who also wrote the screenplay and produced) plays Sam, a young…
One of the best noir books to come out in years was penned by the culture editor for The New York Times Magazine. Shovel Ready is just as sly and witty as it is dark and ominous. The man character is Spademan, a Jersey-bred former garbage man living in the not too distant future, where the streets of New York are almost abandoned except for those too poor to move…
With a title like Nothin’ But Blood, you half expect the latest from blues/soul/punk/Americana artist Scott H. Biram to be a rowdy collection of his loudest, burn-down-the-house compositions, but this 14-track effort is actually a pretty low key effort. That is certainly not a slam against these songs – far from it, as the record is simply amazing from the first track on – but more of a heads up…
Athens, GA indie pop band Eureka California take up right where Pavement left off after Stephen Malkmus realized he didn’t want to get along with anyone any more. Like their fellow 90’s rock obsessives Good Grief, Eureka California have a slacker pop sound that comes off uncontrived, but down right infectious. The pair, each contributing two songs to this split (“Turn on Autopilot” and “DC Sniper” for Eureka California and…
Despite the massive build up to the debut episode, the HBO series Treme never really managed to catch on with viewers like some of the other appointment-TV shows the network has offered up over the past decade. Part of this can be attributed to the impossible to achieve expectations that had been saddled on the show and its creator David Simon, with fans and critics expecting…
Metal may be the most maligned musical genre out there. But regardless of whether you think its rep is well-deserved or wholly unfair, there is no denying the powerful visual images that have been associated with it from the beginning, seen everywhere from album covers to black concert T’s. From the iconic Zombie-like figure of Eddie, Iron Maiden’s mascot, to the Misfits skull beaming from the front of t-shirts going…
Though best remembered for the beautifully raunchy, but oh so catchy tune “The Dirty Song,” Athens, GA’s duo Cars Can Be Blue are back with their strongest full length yet, Trace the Tension. Bringing to mind everyone from The Muffs to The Moldy Peaches, the band is still playful and still irreverent, but a tad more focused with this latest 14-song offering. From the pumped up album opener “You…
It’s pretty clear that South African writer/director Quinton Lavery is a big fan of Kevin Smith. From the black and white DIY aesthetics of Clerks to the more emotional (yet still raunchy and very funny) core of Chasing Amy, Smith’s style is all over Lavery’s hilarious indie Casting Me. The semi-autobiographical movie centers around Paul, a funny, but average looking casting director who never got around to…
There is no shortage of books out there about the love ‘em or hate ‘em thrash band Metallica. But at almost 400 pages, and just the first part of a two volume set, Birth School Metallica Death, might just be the only book you need on the band. While many of the stories in the first volume are lore at this point, the access these two longtime metal…
There’s a reason why The Angels’ Share took home the Jury Prize from the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Finally available in the U.S., the film is funny without being forced and endearing without being sappy, almost a novelty nowadays. The movie, from Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley), focuses on Robbie (Paul Brannigan), a Scottish juvenile trying to clean up his act after his girlfriend delivers his son.…
On the surface, Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, starting even with the film’s title, sounds like a bad indie movie cliché. A coming of age/road trip movie with plenty of subtitles, drawn out discussions about life, blah, blah, blah. But somehow the movie manages to play within these same overly-familiar set ups, but with impressive results. Michael Cera plays the typical American jackass abroad (well cast,…