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(04/12/18 7:37pm)
https://soundcloud.com/seriouslymbanks/interview-with-carlos-arevalo-from-chicano-batman-wiux
Just a couple of days before Chicano Batman's headlining Culture Shock 2018 set, guitarist Carlos Arevalo was able to have a quick phone conversation with WIUX! Carlos talked about Kamasi Washington, the importance of multilingual music acts, Jonny Greenwood's film scores and more.
(04/01/18 5:30pm)
BLOOMINGTON - Brand new to the local music scene, Alley Oops, a basketball-themed cover band of the ever-rising Bloomington native band Hoops, has been added to the Culture Shock 2018 lineup.
Alley Oops formed when the members of the band wanted to cover the music of Hoops and give it a little Hoosier twist by crafting lyrics with zany basketball lyrics and lingo since the band's name is Hoops and they're from Indiana and everyone from the Midwest knows how Indiana loves its basketball.
So far the band has only released a cover of their song "Cool 2" off their 2016 self-titled EP called "I Wish I Could Be Cool 2 and Make the Varsity Team". The band is currently working on its debut album that's a cover of Hoops' debut album Routines called Routines To Get You in Shape for the Big Game. Some songs to look forward to on the album include a cover of "Sun's Out" called "Sun's Out (It's Time to Play Some B-Ball)" and a cover of "Rules" that's actually just called "Rules".
The band's live performance at Culture Shock is not one to be missed. A halftime show during their set in which members of Alley Oops strap on their candy-striped pants and dunk off a trampoline is planned as well as a song performed with a synchronized basketball dribble beat à la "Get'cha Head in the Game" from High School Musical.
A rumor has been circulating that IU Mens Basketball Head Coach Archie Miller will be introducing the band's Culture Shock debut due to how instrumental Hoops' music was in Miller's decision to come to Bloomington.
(03/04/18 6:58pm)
In this first episode, Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist Aaron Guevara details his journey from Christianity to atheism, as well as offers insights into his personal thoughts on the atheism vs. theism debate, the state of intellectual discourse in our country, and how we as Americans must undergo a change in mentality to restore this discourse to its rightful state. The views presented in this podcast are of host Aaron Guevara and his guests and do not represent the views of WIUX.
(03/04/18 6:58pm)
On this first episode of Herstory, hosts Madison Brandl and Maggie Crady delve into the life of Mary Pickford, the first Hollywood film star. Listen in to find out more about the actress/producer once described as "the most well-known woman in the world," and why she should hold that title today. Later on the hosts discuss Amy Schumer's upcoming movie "I Feel Pretty" and what it means to be a woman in Hollywood.
(11/27/17 6:06pm)
https://soundcloud.com/seriouslymbanks/interview-with-steven-hyden-wiux
Steven Hyden is a music journalist who wrote the 2016 book Your Favorite Band is Killing Me, the host of the Celebration Rock podcast, a former editor of AV Club, and has done other awesome stuff! Listen in as WIUX Specialty Programming director Mitchell Banks has a phone conversation with Hyden about finding music when growing up in the Midwest, the decline of classic rock, Kid Rock, John Mellencamp, music journalism, and more!
(11/17/17 8:39pm)
https://soundcloud.com/seriouslymbanks/interview-with-alice-wetterlund-wiux
Actress and comedian Alice Wetterlund was recently in Bloomington to perform stand-up at The Comedy Attic and WIUX was lucky enough to snag an in-studio interview with her! You may have seen her in the movies or on the TV screen in Silicon Valley, Girl Code, People of Earth, The Interview, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, and others. Listen in to hear WIUX's Director of Specialty Programming Mitchell Banks talk to her about performing stand-up at music festivals, her appearance on Prairie Home Companion, how Prince is the Bill Clinton of Minnesota, Star Trek and more. Special thanks to Joanie Dugan and Olivia Harshbarger for coming in to help in interviewing!
(07/10/17 6:39pm)
Festival Preview: Ironing Out Schedule Conflicts at Forecastle 2017
While the Pitchfork Music Festival, a festival favorite among music nerds, is going on up in Chicago, the Forecastle festival will be going on down South in Louisville, KY boasting a great lineup this year featuring headliners Odesza, LCD Soundsystem, and Weezer. Even with music festival competition only four and a half hours away, Forecastle holds their ground as a excellent medium-tier festival that has one of their best lineups this year since their legendary 2014 lineup featuring Jack White, Beck, Outkast, and The Replacements. This year marks the festival’s sixteenth birthday and has a beautiful location at Waterfront Park right on the Ohio River on the Indiana-Kentucky border.
But while an incredible, varied, and plentiful music festival line is always ideal for maximum bliss, it just means that there will be more tough schedule conflicts you will have to choose between dozens of acts. Luckily WIUX will be covering the festival this weekend and is here to offer an opinion about what are the best choices for the toughest conflicts.
Friday: Run the Jewels vs. GRiZ vs. Teddy Abrams & Friends
Honestly most conflicts that will be talked about will just be a matter of musical taste and opinion. In this case, if you’re a hip-hop fan, RtJ, EDM? GRiZ. Avant-garde or classical? Teddy Abrams & Friends. But in my personal opinion RtJ is one of the best live rap acts on the planet and have a few of the best hip-hop albums of the past decade. Killer Mike and El-P are a couple of the most affable but hardcore, political, and poetic MCs in the rap world today, and you owe it to yourself to see them in the flesh.
Saturday: Phantogram vs. Vince Staples vs. Beach Slang
Oof. What a hit. If you’re a electronica geek of course Phantogram is the obvious choice but otherwise Beach Slang and Vince Staples is the big conflict for me personally. As a big follower and fan of punk, Beach Slang should be a shoe-in but with Staples’ new album Big Fish Theory being released a couple of weeks ago and coming out of the gate of one of 2017’s best rap albums, Staples would be a hard set to miss. I’ve seen Staples a couple of times in the past, but hearing the Big Fish Theory tracks live is a good reason to catch Staples this weekend.
Sunday: Spoon vs. Tycho vs. Rayland Baxter
Yet again, Tycho for the electronica geeks so that puts consistent rock mainstay Spoon against blooming singer-songwriter Rayland Baxter. If you want to see an extraordinary alt-country singer-songwriter getting bigger every year that he’s around, definitely consider Rayland Baxter but otherwise get your rock on and see Spoon. Spoon are currently touring Hot Thoughts, their excellent take on psych-rock that they released this year and they proved that they are still as relevant and full of ideas as when the Austin, TX band first formed. Rock acts keep on dwindling off of music festival lineups and Spoon is a great example that rock music is alive and well and can still be exciting.
(05/23/17 4:16pm)
Last week I covered the Shaky Knees festival in Atlanta, GA for WIUX. The best word to describe the festival was pleasant. The festival was located in the lush and historic Centennial Olympic Park in Downtown Atlanta and is only in its second year of being at this location even though the festival was celebrating its the fifth anniversary. The location allotted three stages for the bands on the sufficient lineup which allowed for intimate sets and easy access for going in between stages. Being in mid-May the weather was, of course, hot but fairly dry throughout the whole weekend. There were a couple of scares of storms in the area possibly evacuating the festival but either there was little or no rain and everyone was able to continue in their festivities.
It was an incredible weekend of music and I wanted to write an article about my favorite acts of the weekend. I was going to praise LCD Soundsystem’s return and how joyous it was to see the band come alive again and how great it was to hear the new material live. I was going to talk about how magnetic of an entertainer Ryan Adams is and also how engaging The xx’s live show was. But thinking about writing that article, I realized I would just my already present and admirable feelings about those bands. I was going to love those acts going into the festival and I left loving them. Out of the overall acts I saw at the festival, probably half of them I had either not explored their catalog enough or hadn’t heard of them at all and I drove back from the south obligating to myself to listen to their music more. So thank you to Shaky Knees for turning me on to my future favorite bands and I encourage readers of this article to explore new music that reaches outside of one’s musical palette for the chance of finding auditory pleasure and possibly a new obsession. These are my favorite bands that took me by surprise at Shaky Knees 2017.
Cymbals Eat Guitars
The entire weekend was kicked off on Friday at 12:15 at the small but comfortable Ponce de Leon stage with the wiry New York punks. As a punk and metal geek I actually never really explored Cymbals Eat Guitars’ music. But from Joseph D'Agostino’s intimidating frontmanship, chaotic punk jams, and the band’s hypnotic punk anthems, it was a fitting start to the weekend. I was also suspicious of how exceptional keyboard player Brian Hamilton’ playing was and how layered his keyboard sounds were and how he was constantly tweaking his knob from both his keyboard and pedalboard to later learn he that is the founder and operator of the guitar pedal company smallsound/bigsound. Neato!
Wolf Parade
Before going into Shaky Knees, I knew that Wolf Parade was Canadian and that their 2005 album Apologies to the Queen Mary is known as their best work. But hearing their material live I was immediately hooked to their music with their synthy guitar tones, incredible synth hooks, all around upbeat and frantic tempos that actually reminded me a bit of Strawberry Jam-era Animal Collective. Wolf Parade live was what their music was like, loud and unabashed. The band played as 5 o’clock on Friday just as the sky was clouding up (but luckily it didn’t rain out the festival) and the sun was just done beating down on the crowd. Nevertheless, the mid-size mid-afternoon crowd persevered through the difficult weather just a little before to get one of the most fun, forward-thinking, and still-ambitious bands of the weekend.
Car Seat Headrest
I understand. You can call me biased and throw your hands up in confusion as to why Car Seat Headrest is included in this list because I actually met Will Toledo from CSH at the check out at my hotel on Sunday morning of Shaky Knees and included the band on my list of bands to catch at the festival on the WIUX blog. But hear me out. CSH is included because of how was surprised at how good they were. First off, the band are incredible musicians: Toledo flaunted himself as a worthy and outstanding frontman and songwriter, drummer Andrew Katz absolutely pounded the skins with hard fills that kept the music going heavy, guitarist Ethan Ives shred his way through the set with Teens of Denial’s sharp and catchy guitar hooks, and bass player Seth Dalby held the band together with CSH’s crucial basslines. The band’s setlist included mostly tracks from Teens of Denial sans my favorite CSH song “(Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn’t A Problem” (and I’m kicking myself for not going to the CSH Shaky Knees Late Show Saturday night of the festival because they played this track as a part of their encore), but also “Maud Gone” from underrated album Teens of Style, closer “Beast Monster Thing (Love Isn’t Love Enough)” from How To Leave Town, and a cover of DEVO’s “Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin’) that has been making me listen to DEVO daily since I’ve been back from the festival. Overall, the band’s set blew me away after going off of my medium-tier expectations and is making me promise myself to catch the band a couple of times this summer. CSH proved themselves to be contenders as just an excellent and unique rock band in anera where rock music isn’t necessarily in the spotlight for American music culture anymore. All hail Will Toledo. All hail Car Seat Headrest.
Sylvan Esso
I’ve neglected to check out Sylvan Esso at previous music festivals I’ve attended due to my impression of the band that they are rehashing the formula of the band Purity Ring of having an airy, lyrically-deep female vocalist and a male electronic music producer guru backing up said, female vocalist. Watching Sylvan Esso’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert, listening to their solid new album Back Up, and actually seeing them at Shaky Knees proves how dead wrong I was of putting Sylvan Esso under that unfair classification. Seeing Sylvan Esso live show how great of a dance band they are and also how deep they are emotionally when it came to more lyrically deep songs like one of their most popular tracks “Coffee”. In comparison to Purity Ring, I felt that Purity Ring is most sonic, dreamy, and atmospheric while Sylvan Esso is a band you listen to when you want to feel dance-y or hip-hop-like swagger. I was glad I was able to catch the electronic act in the midst of a weekend of watching rock music for a breath of fresh musical palette air but also to get my dance on and to catch a fun band that has sort of became a music festival staple.
Bleachers
Listening solely to Bleachers’ sleek indie-pop music and knowing that the band’s big creative mind ad frontman Jack Antonoff is a member in the massively successful pop band fun., I wouldn’t normally give Bleachers a chance to see them at a festival due to my more rock-oriented music taste. But on the contrary, I’ve listened to Antonoff on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast a few years ago and got the impression that he was a smart, bright, and gifted musician and songwriter. At Shaky Knees, Bleachers were the act before one of my most anticipated acts of the entire festival Ryan Adams so I had no other choice but to check out the glittering and poppy band and experienced easily the most surprisingly superb set of the weekend. The band, unfortunately, got a late 15-minute delayed start to their already meager hour-long set but Antonoff handled the situation like a trained professional. In the middle of the delay, the crowd heard the Third Eye Blind-hit “Jumper” soundbleeding from the Peachtree Stage and so the crowd started a 90s throwback singalong by chanting along with the popular 1997 track. Seeing this, Antonoff smiled and encouraged the crowd to keep going due to the technical difficulties and joyously asked his sax player to play along. After about 10 minutes of the sound being down he went ahead and asked his sax played to join him in a stripped-down guitar and sax only cover of “Like A River Runs” that the crowd sang along to and absolutely ate up. After this track, Antonoff got the news that the sound was fixed and was absolutely grateful and in high spirits when Bleachers ripped through the next track “Everybody Lost Somebody” with no issues. After this fortunate fix the fast pace didn’t let up with the setlist weaving between tracks from Bleachers’ relatively small catalogue, a faithful and admirable cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way”, and finally closing with the infectiously catchy and bright pop hit “I Wanna Get Better”. In the unlucky 45 minutes, Bleachers got to play, the band still banged out 11 songs with Antonoff still being an affable and charming frontman prowess by working the crowd, having fun with his band, and still taking the time to talk to the audience and introduce his band he obviously loved. A band I would initially write off as a just another indie-pop startup actually ended up being one of the most capable and talented acts of the weekend and has me really looking forward to the next time I have the pleasure of catching Bleachers again live.
(05/14/17 7:53pm)
Most Anticipated Sets at Shaky Knees 2017
Every weekend of the summer an opportunity for a festival cash grab. Every festival is an opportunity to book whatever bands are touring during the summer to add to a festival lineup to generate profit. This formula has been used in the past few years to book bands for certain top tier festivals that don’t necessarily promote musical diversity but generate festival lineups that are bloated with EDM acts, indie pop bands, and lackluster headliners. Doing this causes festival lineups to start getting lopsided and musical genres end up being underrepresented, like good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll.
But the Shaky Knees festival in Atlanta is trying to shake up that festival booking formula by putting on a niche rock festival with a dash of pop goodness for what will hopefully end up in a great weekend music in Hotlanta (Note: I promise to never say Hotlanta out loud in Atlanta.). Shaky Knees have pulled some of the best rock acts that never disappoint in a live setting like Phoenix, Pixies, and Portugal. the Man and but still try to offer diversity with fist-pumping punk bands like Cloud Nothings and FIDLAR(!), alt-country representation from Pinegrove and Ryan Adams, electro-pop from The xx and Sylvan Esso, and other wonderful varieties still to be found by just exploring the festival.
WIUX is making the endeavor out to the Georgia’s historic, eclectic, and all-around excellent capital city to cover the festival’s 5th anniversary. This is WIUX’s most anticipated sets for the weekend.
Car Seat Headrest
I’ve rarely seen a festival lineup that didn’t have Car Seat Headrest and the band’s festival slot conflicts with The Growlers and Pinegrove, so if you’re a bigger fan of those two bands and are going to be at another festival that has CSH this summer, go see them. But this article is the most anticipated sets at Shaky Knees, CSH’s outstanding Teens of Denial was one of the best rock albums last year, and my body is ready to hear those tracks live. The band’s frontman and songwriter Will Toledo can certainly craft an incredible rock tune and it will be exciting to see the music translate to a live setting.
LCD Soundsystem
I’m hesitant to “recommend” the festival’s top headliner because surely a good majority of the festival’s attendees have heard of the beloved New York band and their earthshattering reunion last year and know well ahead if they’re interested in seeing James Murphy and co. this weekend, but hear me out. I’ve got two words: new music. Just last Saturday LCD Soundsystem released their 1st two singles that are expected to be on their first album since reuniting and performed them on Saturday Night Live, and if they weren’t well worth the way. I can’t highly recommend the new tracks enough and my most anticipated moment of the weekend is going to be chanting along to “Call the Police” with a good crowd of people that feel as lucky and full of joy about LCD Soundsystem coming back from the dead as I do, and that’s why I’m “recommending” Shaky Knees’ top headliner and suggest not missing it for anything if you’re in Atlanta this weekend.
Public Access TV
One of the smallest bands on the lineup but still one of the most promising, Public Access TV and are currently on tour with Pixies and have opened up for other timeless rock acts like The Strokes and Weezer. The band released their fun debut Never Enough last year full of cool and catchy punk tracks. Check out this quartet for a pleasant early afternoon punk set on Saturday.
Cloud Nothings
Cloud Nothings is a Cleveland band founded by music prodigy Dylan Baldi after recording the band’s music all by himself and then getting recognized by a notable music promoter who being invited the band to open for a couple of successful indie bands. This prompted Baldi to form an actual band and thus the live entity of Cloud Nothings was born. Cloud Nothings’ music tends to be hard-driving, fuzzy, unyielding, and anthemic like on this year’s Life Without Sound and my personal favorite, 2014’s Here and Nowhere Else. The band first had their big break from 2012’s Attack on Memory, an album produced by the legendary Steve Albini and included the pop-punk classic “Stay Useless”. Cloud Nothings has one of the most solid punk discographies of the 2010s and should definitely should be on your schedule for the festival on Sunday if you want to catch one of the most prominent and tightest punk bands around.
Ryan Adams
One of the initial reasons why I wanted to go to Shaky Knees this year was when I was writing my review on Ryan Adams’ marvelous Prisoner a couple of months ago and was conceiving ways to figure out to see the singer-songwriter songsmith live this year. Adams got added to the lineup and then I knew I was in. Prisoner is Adams’ best since his work with The Cardinals last decade and arguably his most personal. Seeing Adams live is a spectacle of its own between his magnetic stage presence, wonderful live renditions of his music, and his band’s strong musicianship but seeing the Prisoner tracks live and the, surely, intimate Sunday pre-headliner mid-tier stage set is well worth the endurance from being at the festival from the rest of the weekend.
(04/10/17 3:46am)
Mitchell Banks talks emo music, spooky graveyard vibes, and fond memories of Culture Shocks past with local band, House Olympics--all while simultaneously playing a few rounds of everyone's favorite fighting game: Super Smash Brothers.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyf92UtOtaU&feature=youtu.be[/embed]
You can see House Olympics shred live at this year's Culture Shock on April 15.
(04/05/17 1:34am)
6/7
As general rock music fan, when I read a few months ago that Spoon was going to release a new album this year, I felt obligated to get into the Austin, Texas-based band. They released the excellent They Want My Soul in 2014 and while I thought the album was great, I got sidetracked by other superb rock releases that year like St. Vincent’s pristine self-titled album and The War on Drugs’ warm, grand, and magnificent Lost in the Dream. Spoon at the time was just a band that I recognized was good, but just didn’t help to keep my attention against the rock releases I was listening to at the time. Over the past few years and in the last couple of months of the band promoting their new release, I could recognize Spoon for the creative, prolific band they are. In an age where rock music in not in the spotlight of the cultural mainstream, Spoon are exemplary in being a wonderfully creative and exciting rock band by releasing consistently impressive records every few years and pleasing their fan base by touring extensively behind every release. So, after not giving Spoon my full attention after their last release, I committed myself to getting into Spoon and was pleasantly rewarded exceptional, swirling, psychedelic haze that is Hot Thoughts.
The reason I am so insistent about “getting into” Spoon because I knew they were great but I had never really delved into their catalog. Rock music hasn’t been as prevalent in the music world’s attention for about the last 15 years and I’ve always knew that Spoon was a hard working band and absolute champions of rock music since the band formed over 20 years ago. The band’s 2002 album Kill the Moonlight is #51 on Rolling Stone’s “100 Best Albums of the Decade,” 2005’s Gimme Fiction was released to universal acclaim and includes one of Spoon’s classic songs “I Turn My Camera On,” and 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, appeared in the top 10 of many year-end lists and is the band’s opus where nearly track is pop-rock perfection. After announcing Hot Thoughts, I felt that it was my duty as a rock fan to give the band a chance and it wasn’t too hard to do given the great material that Spoon has provided.
Hot Thoughts marks the first album Spoon has put out from the seminal indie rock record label Matador Records (a label notable for making acts like Pavement, Liz Phair, and Yo La Tengo reach indie rock royalty) since their 1996 debut Telephono. Famed psychedelic rock producer David Fridmann was brought in to produce the entire album after producing only about half of They Want My Soul. Fridmann has produced acclaimed albums for bands like The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, MGMT, and Black Moth Super Rainbow and his work on Hot Thought helps put Spoon as a great psychedelic band of its time with all of these outstanding acts. Fridmann adds his signature taste of trippy flavor to Hot Thoughts to build upon and innovate Spoon’s sound to keep to band as fresh as they’ve ever been.
While the band’s drummer Jim Eno has himself called Spoon a psychedelic band, many the band’s listeners would agree that Spoon is sound is strong indie rock. But if Spoon has previously been dubbed with the as being a psychedelic rock band, especially on select songs on They Want My Soul, they absolutely embrace and perfect that label with Hot Thoughts. This album is Spoon’s Revolver. An album that completely embodies an experimental and psychedelic sound that they’ve dabbled in before with talent, excellent skill, and clever songwriting to forward-thinking and admirable results. When the album was first announced earlier this year, the first and titular single “Hot Thoughts” was released not long after and immediately captured my interest and skyrocketed my expectations for this record because the track is, in my opinion, the best of the year so far. “Hot Thoughts” is a sparkling, bouncy, lush, and infectiously catchy single that immediately catches and keep your auditory attention for all of its overly fun nearly four-minute ride. The song makes a big splash as the opening track of the album as an absolutely energetic and lively first impression before winding down the album to an easy tempo on the second track “WhisperI’lllistentohearit." This track sets an accessible and smooth pace for the rest of the album to abundantly include all the album’s psychedelic motifs and nuances. After that track the album ebbs and flows between vulnerable and introspectives ballads like “I Ain’t the One,” groovy bangers like “Can I Sit Next to You,” and then back into more stimulating experimental tracks to keep a cohesion and psychedelic tinge to the entirety of the album. By the time you get to Hot Thought’s jazzy, experimental, and kaleidoscopic instrumental closing track “Us," you feel awash in Spoon’s ambitious achievement in crafting a potent and marvelous psychedelic rock album further justifies Spoon's winning streak in creating such consistent and phenomenal rock records over the past two decades, solidifying themselves as one of the genre's greatest treasures.
(04/01/17 12:38pm)
Last month marked 50 years since the the highly influential record, but how much do you actually know about what happened behind the music?
If you flip the album art upside down you will see a banana.
Andy Warhol originally wanted to paint a watermelon for the album art, but Lou Reed said that he felt a banana would be better since he a had strong connection to bananas due to much of his childhood being spent on a banana farm.
Then Warhol took a picture of Reed holding a banana to his face like it was a phone and wanted to use it for the album art, but the photo was lost and never to be found again.
When The Velvet Underground toured they had to stop playing the album’s songs because of how fans would throw bananas on stage when they heard the record’s material.
The band had problems with a drug trend called “banana slipping,” where one would slip on a banana and immediately eat the banana they slipped on after they hit the ground, when recording the album.
During this era of the band, they had sort of a “fifth Beatle” named Raymond who was the band’s official banana peeler.
German singer Nico was brought into the studio to sing vocals for a few tracks on the album during a week where Reed was so upset at the fact that the atomic symbol for potassium is K that he refused to come in to record, so the band brought in Nico to finish the job.
When talking about bananas, the band always used the term “’nanners.”
“Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana Stand” in the popular sitcom Arrested Development was based on a banana stand that the band frequented on their lunch breaks.
A man dressed up as everyone’s favorite purple dinosaur Barney would occasionally join the band on stage at their shows to collaborate on a cover of the famous “Apples and Bananas” song from Barney and Friends.
The album was originally packaged with signed and numbered banana peels from the band with a huge disclaimer from their label warning its proprietors to not throw the peels onto race tracks.
(03/04/17 8:25pm)
Power Trip - Nightmare Logic
5/7
Dallas, Texas based thrash metal band Power Trip made a big splash in the metal community 2013 with their excellent debut album Manifest Decimation. The album was hardcore, tight, and definitely hit all the right spots when it came to new school thrash metal. Since then, the band has gone on to support absolute metal titans like Lamb of God, Napalm Death, & Eyehategod. With Manifest Decimation, Power Trip solidified themselves as top contenders in a class of exceptional new-school thrash metal acts alongside groups like Vektor & Skeletonwitch, defying the ideals of metal elitists that believe that thrash metal died in the 80s with the peak periods for the “Big Four” thrash metal behemoths, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, & Metallica. While it has a more composed yet less atmospheric sound than its predecessor, sophomore effort Nightmare Logic still proves itself a worthy, solid entry in the realms of new-school thrash metal with some strong tracks that can evoke that most evil of rage to anyone that has the pleasure of having this record grace their frail ears.
Single “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)” is easily the record’s highlight and one of the best pieces of material the band has constructed. This track personifies everything Power Trip is doing to prove themselves champions of post 2000s thrash metal. “Executioner’s Tax,” is the song from the album that the Texas five-piece themselves claim is the catchiest song they’ve ever written. The song has steady, catchy riffs, a fist-pumping chorus (“Swing of the axe!”), and just classic metal songwriting all over it. Moving on to the lead single from the album, “Firing Squad”, Power Trip speeds up the tempo with a hardcore-meets-thrash metal tune that sees the band at their toughest and most enraged. While it’s a satisfying lead single from the record, the excessively fast tempo from the beginning of the song offsets what would be an otherwise persistent pace for the whole album. With a smooth break in the middle of the track that lays out lush metal grooves while still being consistent and destructive, “Firing Squad” is another peak moment on Nightmare Logic.
In an age where exceptional new-school thrash metal is lacking, Power Trip adds another admirable entry into the modern metal world even if it doesn’t make as a massive, laudable impact that Manifest Decimation did in 2013. Both Power Trip & Arizona sci-fi thrash band Vektor are strong new-school thrash bands that surely will spark some powerful influence into the metal community with their forward-thinking metal sounds, tight production, and overall sharp songwriting. Both the titular track “Nightmare Logic” and the mid-album rocker “Waiting Around to Die” inject some memorable, shred-worthy solos to the albums and both album singles are defining examples as to why Power Trip are smart metal heavyweights and have been so important to the metal community for the last half-decade.
Check out the highlight from the album “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)” here:
(03/03/17 4:51am)
All Them Witches
Sleeping Through the War
6/7
All Them Witches’ Sleeping Through the War’s opening track begins with singular, hazy, guitar leads and closes with an intense kaleidoscopic jam all in about 6 and a half minutes. The band’s vocalist and bassist Charles Michael Parks, Jr. chants in anger and woe on the chorus of this track, “Cash in the broken hands / Pockets seen better scores / I built a house like this / I'm sleeping through the war.” Michael Parks Jr. says all of this in a serious tone to aggressively test his listener to find its meaning. It’s said with enough fury and hopelessness that it truly make the listener ponder what could make the band’s bassist-vocalist feel so scornful. “Bulls” is closed with a jam that lasts about 3 minutes that absolutely washes the track in fuzz bass, a killer lead guitar hook, and a powerful dignified drumming. If you like your rock scuzzy, psychedelic with Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers Band inspired jams, a dash of desert rock, all while sounding like Black Sabbath could have written it, Sleeping Through the War might be your album of the year.
Hailing from down south in Nashville, Tennessee, All Them Witches is a four-piece that describe their sound as “Heavy, heady, and hypnotic” on their Facebook page, and the band couldn’t describe themselves any better. Their influences are clearly from classic psych-rock bands like The Jimi Hendrix Experience and also old-school heavy metal acts like Deep Purple and Mountain. Listening to their music, you can hear these influences from the acid-soaked guitar tones to the furious drumming of their virtuoso drummer, Robby Staebler. If there is anything that I should stress more when describing this band, it would be to keep a close eye on the Nashville quartet’s absolute guitar maestro Ben McLeod. McLeod’s guitar playing easily stems from guitar hero influences Duane Allman and Jerry Garcia while still crafting tight hooks, creative pentatonic blues scale runs, engaging solos, and beautiful psychedelic guitar tones. The band released their third studio album Dying Surfer Meets Their Maker back in 2015 and have easily topped it with what is the strongest album of their career.
Glancing at the album’s tracklist, the record consists of a compact 8 songs with just over half of them going over 5 minutes. While some might consider these track times to be a tad long (the final track “Internet” clocks in at 9:50), it’s all okay at the end of the album because All Them Witches clearly uses their time wisely with great instrumental breaks, well-written verses and choruses, and an overall interesting experimentation throughout the whole album. While the band is in top-form with their neo-psychedelic sound, they don’t by any means, struggle lyrically. For example, the track “Alabaster” opens with appropriate hallucinatory imagery, narrating, “I grew up in a town dancing on the alabaster / Some days I'd burn it down / If I could buy the gasoline." This kind of lucid wordsmithing is prevalent throughout the entire album to accompany all of All Them Witches’ perfected, heavy psychedelic sound. If you’re in need of being completely entranced and surrounded in the gorgeous sounds of a band on the top of their game in a new era of retro, psychedelic music, All Them Witches’ Sleeping Through the War may be your new obsession.
Check out the trippy video for Sleeping Through the War’s lead single, “Bruce Lee”
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1sXLG0M88U[/embed]
(02/22/17 4:59pm)
Actor Ashton Kutcher gave a powerful testimonial in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week asking for federal support in his fight against child sex trafficking with his foundation 'Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children'. Thorn was founded in 2009 by Kutcher and his former wife Demi Moore. The organization’s purpose is to develop software and to use existing technology to combat child sex trafficking.
During the testimony, Kutcher was visibly passionate when he spoke on the topic of child sex trafficking. He was even on the verge of tears during some extremely emotional portions of his speech.
He said that his day job was “the chairman & co-founder of Thorn” and his other day job is “that of the father of two” continued to state that “as part of that job I take very seriously, I believe that it is my effort to defend their right to pursue happiness and to ensure a society and government that defends it as well.” Later, the actor ruminated about a time when the Department of Homeland Security had asked Thorn for help. “We were the last line of defense, an actor and his foundation were the potential last line of defense. That's my day job and I'm sticking to it” Kutcher said.
While reflecting on his experience in working against sex trafficking, the former That 70’s Show star said that he met victims from across the world including Russia, India, Mexico, and even in the states of New Jersey and New York. Kutcher expounded that he’s “been on FBI raids where I’ve seen things no person should ever see” and was especially emotional when he told a story where he saw “video content of a child that’s the same age as mine being raped by an American man that was a sex tourist in Cambodia.” He expounded that the child was “so conditioned by her environment that she thought she was engaging in play.”
In Kutcher’s testimony, he explained that Thorn had developed a piece of software called Spotlight. In regards to how many victims of sex trafficking had been identified using the technology, Kutcher stated “In six months, with 25% of our users reporting, we’ve identified over 6,000 trafficking victims, 2,000 of which are minors. This tool is in the hands of 4,000 law enforcement officials in 900 agencies. And we're reducing the investigation time by 60 percent. This tool is effective, it's efficient, it's nimble, it's better, it's smarter.”
Kutcher closed his testimony with this statement: “...happiness can be given be to no man, it must be earned. It must be earned through generosity & through purpose. But the right to pursue it, the right to pursue it is every man's right, and I beg of you that if you give people the right to pursue it what you may find in return is happiness for yourself.”
You can view Kutcher’s testimony here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOc-SjcR6Eo
(02/19/17 5:40pm)
6/7
Is Ryan Adams at his songwriting peak when he is sad? His magnificent debut album Heartbreaker contains classic alt-country tunes about, if you will, heartbreak like “Amy” and “Come Pick Me Up,” and the record opens with a conversation that Adams has with bluegrass musician David Rawlings about Morrissey before going into the first proper track, “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)"--a song about being sad and getting stoned. 2004’s critically acclaimed Love Is Hell contains a dark collection of dirges that found Adams writing his most morose, but personal songs to date. And now with Prisoner, Adams has put out his best album since his work with his former backing band The Cardinals in the mid-00s. Prisoner is a strong breakup album with incredibly well-crafted tracks that channel the feeling of a loss of love.
While Ryan Adams is from North Carolina, he’s had strong musical and geographic influences from New York and Nashville. But Adams’ influences aren’t what you would expect from a guy whose music is generally categorized under the genre of alt-country. Adams is a metalhead, a pinball fanatic, a massive admirer of The Smiths, a Star Wars geek, and a skateboarding enthusiast among other hobbies that he shows interest in. A former frontman of the seminal alt-country band Whiskeytown, Adams operates his own label PAX-AM on which he’s self-released a handful of his own records, including Prisoner, in recent years. He also made headlines in 2015 when he released a bizarre track-by-track cover album of Taylor Swift’s 1989.
The central event to which Prisoner elludes is Adams’ divorce from actress Mandy Moore. With almost all the material of this album dealing with heartbreak, Adams shows that even if you’re rooted in just one subject, you can still write an incredible chunk of music if written individually and creatively, even you’ve already written about it before. Take the title track “Prisoner." On the song Adams sings passive-aggressively in the chorus, “I know our love is wrong / I am a criminal / I am a prisoner." Then he turns around and with raw, broken emotion recites, “Maybe I'm a fool, doesn't matter anyway / My chest is all tight, my hearts still aches” on “Shake And Shiver." Listening to Prisoner start-to-finish, Adams makes himself vulnerable on every track while still meticulously giving each track its own flavor and personal touch to create a powerful record that holds its weight with every single song.
Prisoner is the sound of Ryan Adams in his wheelhouse of masterful songwriting that pays off in all 42 minutes of the album. Opening with the hard-driving and self-described AC/DC and Prince inspired lead single, “Will You Still Love Me?” and closing with the self-deprecating and reflective “We Disappear," Prisoner takes you on a journey of heartbreak through Adams’ songwriting talent, showing just how ingenious he can be in crafting his music. While I don’t know how well Adams is coping with his divorce after listening to this album, we can all commend him on his brave exposition of his aching soul that he puts on record for the listening pleasure of anyone that has the honor of listening to this extremely potent, remarkable album.
(02/14/17 5:45pm)
“See, records have helped me to fall in love, no question. I hear something new, with a chord change that melts my guts, and before I know it I’m looking for someone, and before I know it I’ve found her.” This quote from Rob Gordon in the book High Fidelity shows how well music and love blend together! Love songs have been prevalent in music for centuries & luckily music streaming titan Spotify has bundled some of the best tracks that focus on one of humanity’s strongest emotions into playlists for its subscribers’ listening pleasure. These playlists differentiate its romantic music into certain types with playlists like “Love Pop” dealing with poppy love songs & “Jazzy Romance” being romantic jazz tunes. Some playlists are also curated into certain romantic activities such as playlist “Spooning” & another one called “Make Out Jams”. I’ve listened to some of these collections of love songs & have chosen the best so you’re able to have the best soundtrack for your Valentine’s Day!
In Love with the Crooners
When it comes to love songs, it can’t get much better than this. This playlist is a collection of love songs from America’s greatest vocalists & let’s face it, a love song is best sung with a buttery-smooth voice & a pure heart. The artists included with this playlist include Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Billy Joel & more. If you want to experience the pinnacle of love songwriting, look no further than this playlist.
Swagger
Maybe you want to stray away from some of the mushy, lovey-dovey nonsense & want something a bit sexier, fist-pumping, & upbeat. The playlist’s description says “These sexy, high-drama roots & Americana tracks pack some serious swagger.” The songs in this playlist are more prominent rock tracks of the last few years that still deal with the topic of love. Cage the Elephant, Jack White, & Nashville psychedelic rockers All Them Witches can be found on this playlist in addition to recent Country, Folk, & Bluegrass artists like Shovels & Rope, Laura Marling, & Miranda Lambert.
You & Me
Despite its vague name, this playlist includes many alt & indie rock favorites with their most tender selections dealing with the subject of romance. While calling itself an alt-rock playlist, there are some more commonly recognizable names on this playlist like U2, Twenty-One Pilots, Oasis, & Imagine Dragons. But if you do yourself some justice & dig deeper, you’ll find some awesome cuts from bands like Future Islands, TV on the Radio, The Cure, & Karen Elson.
Love in Paris
If you want to brush up on your world music & take in some of the best pieces from the City of Love, check out this playlist, which is a compilation of French love songs. France has historically produced some of the greatest romantic composers of all time, so expect some excellent, classical auditory pleasure.
Melancholia
Valentine’s Day isn’t for everybody. Maybe this year you’re ordering yourself a heart-shaped pizza for yourself & plan on catching up on Netflix while hoping that Mr. or Mrs. Right will be in your life in the near-future. Fortunately, Spotify has provided multiple somber and dismal playlists for the broken-hearted. “Melancholia” is a playlist that makes me want to cry just from reading all the tracks that are a part of this compilation. These are some of the best songs about break-ups & tough love. Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees”, Beck’s “Guess I’m Doing Fine”, Ben Folds Five’s “Brick”, & other solemn picks from Elliott Smith, Ryan Adams, PJ Harvey, & many others make the cut. Let the waterworks open with this playlist.