Huh. So that’s what going to one of those big, weekend-long festivals feels like! It was a fun weekend, even with 8-9 hour days of walking and standing. The best part of a festival experience is getting to see so many bands you’d be interested in at once. I’m so excited that I finally got to experience ...
This year’s festival lineups have been a weird beast. When most of the major festivals were announced, their lineups felt incoherent, like they were just grabbing as many big names as they could without concerns for fit or overarching vibe. By trying to appeal to as many people and genres as possible, ...
It’s been a bit! Finals and life and other things threw me a bit off schedule, but we’re back and I’m ready to tear into more 90s music. I feel like most of what needs to be said about this album is with the songs themselves, so I’ll make this intro brief. NOW 2 was released in July 1999, 8 ...
Scott (left) and Grant Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit during their 2009 Pitchfork performance. Image Courtesy of Heidi Weber, https://www.flickr.com/photos/dirty_black_chucks/3736979274/, No Changes Made CW: Mentions of Suicide Well, this wasn’t the article I was expecting to write this week. ...
Trying to constantly fit a musician into a specific genre is a mostly worthless task. It does a huge disservice to the musicians because any single genre they could be lumped into would likely be too broad to actually mean anything or so specific and constricting that any kind of deviation or experimentation ...
The Now music collections are a weird and unique beast. The collection, running in the US since 1998 and now 65 volumes deep, has consistently worked to transcend genre and deliver a snapshot of the musical zeitgeist in the months before the album. It’s an audacious and laudable goal, and it’s one ...
Rating: 4/7 RTs: 2, 3, 4, 5 RIYL: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Van Morrison, late 60s-early 70s Rolling Stones The garage punk heroes in Titus Andronicus have followed up their biggest, most audacious album (2015’s epic A Most Lamentable Tragedy) with something much more focused, but ...
Release Date: 1/17/2018 Album: I’ll Be Your Girl (out March 16, 2018) Rating: 5/7 Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting this. The Decemberists have been working on an album for this spring, and I got to hear a few of the potential tracks for this album live last spring. Based on those, I figured this ...
Spotify failed me. I finally found some artists that are relatively popular whose best works simply weren’t on Spotify. I was recently in a particularly Americana/Red Dirt mood, so I decided I’d take the time to finally get into Lucinda Williams and Cross Canadian Ragweed. Unfortunately, most of ...
Frank Turner-Songbook Rating: 6/7 RIYL (for the non-greatest hits): Disc 1- 19; Disc 2- 2, 3, 7, 8 Release Date: 11/23/17 It’s not very often that a greatest hits album comes along that’s worth reviewing or even just talking about. I’d say that’s because greatest hits collections ...
