An anthology about relationships written by guys sounds about as appealing as…well talking about relationships with guys. But thanks to a stellar list of authors – heavy on comedians like Jon Stewart, Patton Oswalt, Stephen Colbert and Will Forte – and the comedy-prone topic of getting dumped, makes the task that much more compelling. The essays are offered as lessons of sorts, far from practical, but extremely funny nonetheless.
Listening to Death Cab for Cutie’s first proper release, 1998’s Something About Airplanes, there is little indication that the band would someday be headlining major festivals, churning our records for a major label and pretty much adding a touch of indie cred and respectability to mainstream radio stations. It’s not that the songs are not good, in fact for the most part they are just as beautiful as the latter…
Judging from the news coverage, you’d think Slumdog Millionaire and Benjamin Buttons were the only two movies nominated for Oscars this year. While those two movies have been sharing all the ink, thanks to genre hybrids and amazing special effects, the subtly stellar and so far grossly underrated Frozen River manages to get by solely on fantastic acting and a strong character driven storyline.
Mining influences as varied as the Beatles (before they discovered LSD and meditation), Buddy Holly and power poppers like Milk N’ Cookies, Central Pennsylvania’s The Tamboureens sound like just about nothing being released today… and that’s a very good thing.
You’d think making a comedy about rock would be easy, but Spinal Tap pretty much used up most of the good jokes. The video store shelves are lined with decent attempts to mine laughs from the world of rock music that never really manage to elicit more than a few chuckles (viewed sober, of course).
The Loved Ones may just be the most underrated band in punk rock today. Despite a handful of stellar records including last year’s stand out Build & Burn, paint by number bands like Fall Out Boy and Paramore manage to snag magazine covers and stadium tours, while The Loved Ones continue to slog it out on the punk rock club tour circuit.
British comedic writers Steve Lowe and Brendan McArthur have made a career of sorts bitching about ‘modern conveniences’ through a collection of books. The best bits have been sandwiched into Is It Me or Is Everything Shit? with additional observations added in by Daily Show writer/American Brendan Hay. For the most, the book has some pretty hilarious, astute observations. Like their straight to the point take on Hare Krishnas: “Hare,…
The White Stripes they aren’t. Though rock duo of Michael Van London and Rhiannon Jones may share the same stripped down guitar/drums lineup and gender makeup as The White Stripes, the comparisons pretty much stop there. The garage rock duo from Los Angeles can turn out sludge rock, but they hardly offer an original take on the genre. From the very beginning, with the rote album opener “Da Bomb,” the…
Dave Thompson is the Andy Rooney of music criticism. Bushy eyebrows aside, Thompson puts his stake in the ground early on in his latest manifesto, I Hate New Music, with the outrageous claim that rock music stopped being good sometime around 1978. Seriously. Like the aforementioned 60 Minutes alum Rooney rambling on about not getting as much coffee in the can as he did in the good old days, Thompson…
Johnny Cash was punk rock before the term was every created. So it’s only fitting that modern punk rockers would honor the man with a tribute album.
There’s something about acoustic guitars that draws former punk rockers like moths to a flame. Frank Turner, former member of Million Dead, unplugged after his band dissolved about three years ago and decided to go the route of Billy Bragg, writing lyrically smart, occasionally politically-tinged folk rock songs.
It’s amazing how desperate label reps get in trying to sell you on their latest signings. From the moment they were added to indie emo label Dog House Records, folks tried to remake these Oklahoma teens into a pop/punk band. Though they put out catchy pop tunes, someone thought adding the suffix “punk,†to every reference written and spoken about the band was a great was to try and add…
Eighteen years and still going for some unexplainable reason. New Orleans party band Cowboy Mouth have managed to take a handful of trite party songs, a strong word-of-mouth live show and shape a pretty decent career as second rate Jimmy Buffetts. On Fearless, their ninth full length, the band continues to confound. Filled with 12 mostly novelty songs about everything from big girls (Belly) to Kelly Ripa (Kelly Ripa), the…
Based on interviews alone, it’d be easy to dismiss The Killers as little more than naive keyboard rockers with laughably bombastic quotes about world domination or simply millennials who just discovered Depeche Mode and David Bowie and have a few more minutes left on their fame stop watch.
I’m certainly not the first to compare Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo to Brian Wilson, but the comparison is particularly apt with Cuomo’s second collection of home recordings released in just 12 months. The harmony-loving Wilson created some of the best pop records of the 60’s and Weezer took the stigma out of pop rock in the 90’s; the frighteningly talented Wilson has been rather prolific following a very long…
Joey Cape is certainly not suffering for lack of musical outlets. As the front man for Lagwagon, he also bounces between Bad Astronaut, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Afterburner and The Playing Favorites. You can now add solo artist to his every-expanding resume. Though he had a split record with No Use For a Name singer Tony Sly a few years ago, “Bridge†is Cape’s first full length solo…
Todd Snider has never made a bad record. Sure some have been better than others; some take several listens before they finally click and no two records are ever really the same, but none have ever been duds – his latest, the 8-song Peace Queer, included. Snider has always been comfortable doing his own thing, even when signed to a major label for his first couple of releases, he never…
Based on the past few years, you’d think every grizzled punk rocker wants nothing more than to be a folk musician. Hot Water Music front man Chuck Ragan put his band on ice for a year or two to pick up an acoustic guitar; Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin went rootsy on his solo record last year; and former Avail singer Tim Barry has been unplugged for several records now.
You can go into just about any major city today, toss a bagpipe into a crowd and hit a band playing Celtic punk rock. Over the past decade or so, it seems like everyone wants to marry The Pogues use of traditional Irish instruments and themes with the driving beat and heavy guitars of The Clash. Though not as well-known as The Dropkick Murphys or Flogging Molly, the Chicago-based six piece…
It’s hard to hear the songs off of Asteria’s self-titled EP over the sound of the final nails being loudly banged into the emo/pop-punk coffin. The paint-by-numbers, overproduced, polished-all-the-jagged- edges-until-they’re-shiny-and-smooth sound from this Indiana-based five piece is so mundane that the only thing to distinguish one song from the next is the titles.