Heavy-hearted in the Midwest since 2011
Fort Wayne, Indiana’s Jonah Leatherman makes music that sounds timeless. Jangly indie rock that’s rooted in the tradition of big, classic rock and roll. Think 80s Springsteen, Petty, and The Hooters with more current bands like The War On Drugs and Kurt Vile thrown in for good measure. Those are the ingredients, anyways. Jonah puts […]
Read More Jonah Leatherman : Jonah LeathermanIt’s Thursday night and I’m enjoying a couple pints and listening to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. It’s a brand new piece of vinyl that I procured just this afternoon. First Flight To Tokyo : The Lost 1961 Recordings to be precise. It’s stunning. I never really got into Art Blakey and the Jazz […]
Read More You Do You(Or Whatever)It’s not that Herbie Hancock doesn’t get the love and heaps of praise that he deserves, but his trilogy of albums he released for Warner Brothers Records in the early 70s definitely do not. Mwandishi, The Crossing, and Sextant were released concurrently in 1971, 1972, and 1973, and saw Hancock expanding his sonic palate exponentially. […]
Read More “You’ll Know When You Get There” : The Genius Of Herbie Hancock’s MwandishiNearly two weeks ago my wife and I made the trek to Chicago and saw our first concert together in a very long time. I was trying to remember the last live show we saw and I think it might have been Steve Vai in October of 2016. We used to go to concerts on […]
Read More Bright Frights, Big CityBeach House, the Baltimore dream pop duo consisting of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, have been making dreamy indie rock since 2006. Right out of the gate these two have settled into a sound that is centered on melancholy keys, echoing guitar lines, and Legrand’s deep and hypnotic vocals. Their sound seems as if Cocteau […]
Read More Beach House : Once Twice MelodyMatt Pike is the king of the Heshers. Shirtless, long-haired Midwestern punk who relocated to Oakland, CA as a teen, if Pike hadn’t found his purpose in a Gibson Les Paul and a Marshall stack he probably would’ve ended up in jail. He took his teenage Black Sabbath worship and love of mind-altering substances and […]
Read More Pike Vs The Automaton : Pike Vs The AutomatonIn the spring of 2021 I was asked by Andrew Crawshaw to interview AE Paterra(Majeure, Zombi) about the vinyl reissue of Majeure’s excellent cassette-only release Union Of Worlds. Crawshaw had started his own record label, SFI Recordings, and was putting out forward-thinking electronic music in the spirit of 70s/80s Private Press and experimental Komische and […]
Read More When Worlds Collide : A Conversation With AE PaterraI’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve skipped out on some live shows that I’d actually bought tickets for. Yes, I know it’s awful. Back in 2014 for example, the wife and I were about an hour and ten minutes into 2 1/2 hour drive to see Spoon in Indianapolis when both of us sort […]
Read More Kurt Vile Returns With (watch my moves), Out 4/15; Listen To “Like Exploding Stones”As much as I’d like to say the Beatles or the Stones or Radiohead or Wilco were the most pivotal musical moment for me, I think the truth is that hearing Boards of Canada for the first time might be even more pivotal. There was something about hitting play on a Boards of Canada album […]
Read More Ready Lets Go : Board Of Canada’s ‘Geogaddi’ 20 years LaterI think it’s fair to say that Spoon have been one of the most reliable American rock bands in the last 20 years. While they released two great post-punk albums in the late 90s, their career in my mind truly began in 2001 with Girls Can Tell. From that point the Texas rock band started […]
Read More Spoon : Lucifer On The Sofa