Secret Drum Band : Chuva

featured photo by Marcus Fisher It’s hard to describe Secret Drum Band’s Chuva, the Portland music collective’s second full-length album and first with the great Moon Glyph Records. It’s nothing like anything Moon Glyph has dabbled in before, with the focus here on rhythm and powerful soundscapes created with intricately orchestrated percussion, ambient electronics, and […]

Visual Connection : Great Album Art of 2020

Every year I like to take a moment and pay my respects to the folks behind the amazing album art that don the gatefold jackets and cassette sleeves and Bandcamp pages. Not just any album covers, but the ones that pull you in. The kind of album art that makes you want to own that […]

The World Is Still Ending But A New METZ Album Is Coming In October So It’s Cool

Well it seems the unbelievers are out in full swing. Unbelievers in contagion and unbelievers in thinking of their fellow human being. So most of the big box stores are enforcing masks in theirs stores if you want to shop there. That’s great. I have older parents and I have friends and family with compromised […]

Martin Rude & Jakob Skøtt Duo’s “The Short Sun” Is A Hazy Summer Dream

Somewhere in the heat of the summer lies a place where Martin Rude & Jakob Skøtt Duo’s “The Short Sun” is the score. It’s the sound that emanates from asphalt on a scorching summer walk. It’s the sun barreling down on you, bringing you into a sort of solar, psychedelic state of peace. Shuffling drums, […]

My Morning Jacket : The Waterfall II

It’s been over five years since My Morning Jacket have released an album. That album was The Waterfall, a solid set of pop and rock tunes that followed in the footsteps 2011s Circuital. Circuital seemed to be looking for a middle ground musically between the shoot-for-the-moon audacity of Evil Urges and the band’s earlier, more […]

Pandemic 2020 : Favorite Albums So Far In The Year Of The Great Sigh

It feels trivial to sit here and write about my favorite albums of 2020, but I guess I’m trivial. There are far more important things to be talking about, I’m perfectly aware of that. I look out my window and see the same fires burning as you. I see people ignoring science and believing lies […]

Listen To New Lightning Dust Track “Material Life”; EP Coming 7/23

Lightning Dust, aka Amber Webber and Joshua Wells, have been quietly releasing beautifully ornate folksy rock records since 2007. The two former members of Black Mountain started Lightning Dust while still in the Canadian stoner/doom/prog rock outfit, using the project as a means to write more pop-oriented material. Webber’s vocals are one-of-a-kind, putting her in […]

Zombi : 2020

In a year of near post-apocalyptic proportions, which includes a lockdown-level pandemic, protests worldwide against police brutality, a near authoritarian regime in the US that’s doing nothing to bring us together, music is something I’m finding much solace in. Back in April or May one of my favorite artists announced a new LP, their first […]

“Stuck In Indiana With A Bug In My Banana”

I think it was 1988. Or maybe it was 1989. It was still the neon decade and I was a middle schooler on the cusp of being a high schooler. I wasn’t popular or even barely noticed in school, but I had a small crew of friends that I could relate to. My older brother […]

Psych Rock and Sunday Jazz : A Conversation With Glass Parallels’ Justin Pinkerton

Justin Pinkerton is a musician’s musician. Playing in bands as diverse as Golden Void, Planes of Satori, The Roots of Orchis, Eyes, The Finches, Moholy Nagy and with such artists as Rafter Roberts and Scott Pinkmountain over the last 20 years, Pinkerton has built a reputation as a go-to collaborator. Firmly entrenched in the California […]