Fighting Dragons With Stratocasters

Last week was a hell of a long week. I’m not even sure if it’s really over. There’s a possibility I’m still at my desk last Tuesday and I’m currently in some sort of state of suspended animation. I’m stuck in-between the space/time continuum bookends like some discarded copy of The Canterbury Tales or What To Expect […]

Ridiculous Vinyl Purchases Part II : “Don’t Wanna Dream No More”

Occasionally you just need to step in the wayback machine, regardless of what hell hole it’s going to drop you off in. Sometimes you need to own your past and say the hell with it. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. No more red-cheeked embarrassment over something I liked when I was 14. At […]

Kurt Vile : b’lieve i’m goin down

Kurt Vile comes off as a bit of a mystery at first. You listen to the guy as he mumbles and shrugs his way through a song, surrounded by some really great music. You wonder is this guy for real? You listen some more and little details, shaded nuances, and sly phrases begin to make […]

Battles : La Di Da Di

Listening to Battles is like plugging into the mainframe of some futuristic generator. You are instantly pulled into this stream-of-consciousness robot groove that acts as some sort of virtual yellow brick road to meet the fantastical Oz. But Oz isn’t some little man that flew in on a hot air balloon. No, Oz is this […]

Youth Lagoon : Savage Hills Ballroom

Trevor Powers has the kind of fragility in his voice that when you hear it you feel at any time during a song he may just disappear into thin air. A pin hole leak in a balloon that slowly releases air into the world. Any kind of pressure or pushing will cause a bevy of […]

Growing Up Gory : A Horror Film Adolescence

I have to say that I was surprised and saddened to hear that Wes Craven died just a little over two weeks ago on August 30th. I mean, this guy’s films pretty much informed my movie viewing during my pre-teens and teen years. When he had a new movie dropping it was an event. This […]

Ridiculous Vinyl Purchases Part I : Morton Subotnick’s ‘Silver Apples Of The Moon’

I think it’s safe to say that if you’re a vinyl collector/lover/addict/sociopath, then more than likely you’ve got a few “Whaaaa????” purchases in your collection. Sometimes curiosity, nostalgia, melancholy, uncontrollable urges, madness, and even possibly pride pushes us to snag some record that you may listen to once and then shove it into the record […]

Slayer : Repentless

One of the scariest moments I ever had at a concert(besides that Petra concert at the Notre Dame ACC when I was 17…long story) was the Clash of the Titans tour in July of 1991. My older brother and I headed down to Noblesville, Indiana and for $7 we were granted access to the lawn […]

Brian Ellis Group : Escondido Sessions

As soon as the first notes begin to play on “Via De Mi Rancho”, the opening salvo on Brian Ellis Group’s Escondido Sessions, you know you’re in for something special. There’s a hypnotic urgency in the organ/sax/drum combo. A slow build into chaotic energy that can barely be contained within the parameters of space and […]

Diamond In The Rough : A Conversation With Carlton Melton

Back when I was a little kid and I used to hear my brother talk about “Led Zeppelin” and “Def Leppard” and “Thin Lizzy”, I always thought those were names of people, not a band. They just seemed like actual human names to my 8-year old ears. I think that’s just the kind of stupid […]