A Place To Bury Strangers : Pinned

A Place To Bury Strangers has always been an exercise in pain to my ears. The New York post-punk/noise rock band deal in angst and sonic annihilation and have since their beginning. From their debut self-titled in 2007 to now I’ve attempted to find an in with them, but each time would end up in […]

Preoccupations : New Material

I’ve been known to feel a bit down from time to time. I can be a bit hard on myself when I feel I’m not doing enough or trying hard enough in this crazy thing called life. But I don’t think I’ve ever been clinically depressed. I carry my share of anxiety and self-imposed guilt, […]

Protomartyr : Relatives In Descent

The Motor City’s Protomartyr sound like modern harbingers of doom. Singer Joe Casey takes the podium front and center like a prophet telling us the secrets of our demise as a society in riddles, suggestions, and proclamations. Guitarist Greg Ahee blends melodic moments with outright blasts of contempt, while bassist Scott Davidson and drummer Alex […]

METZ : Strange Peace

I will admit that I have a bit of a dude crush on the Canadian rock band METZ. There’s just something about their intense brand of noise rock/post-punk gumbo that gets me in the gut. It’s a kind of rush that comes with a special sort of experience. Maybe like jumping out of a plane, […]

LCD Soundsystem : American Dream

There’s always been something about James Murphy that I’ve been drawn to. Ever since I bought LCD Soundsystem’s Sound Of Silver on a whim back in 2007 I’ve been enamored with the guy. Maybe because he’s close to my age. Maybe because he’s a middle-aged guy acting like a middle-aged guy. He’s not posturing the dude-isms […]

Preoccupations : Preoccupations

Preoccupations is the band formerly known as Viet Cong. Viet Cong was a band that put out one of my favorite albums of 2015. Preoccupations is a band that may have put out one of my favorite albums of 2016. Not only for the fact that their self-titled album is a beautifully dark concoction of […]

Cate Le Bon : Crab Day

Cate Le Bon makes music that is happy and sad at the same time. It’s a mix of 60s euro pop and 70s lower east side New York post-punk. The guitars never get too loud, but they’re played with an attitude by Le Bon that brings the Tom Verlaine/Richard Lloyd guitar interplay to mind. 2013s […]

Wire : Nocturnal Koreans

Wire have been one of the most quietly profound bands for the last nearly 40 years. They’ve been labeled punk, post-punk, art rock, pop, and I’m sure countless other genres throughout their massive career, all the while being a band that has influenced and inspired generations of alternative and indie bands that have -for all […]

Kicking A Can Of Worms

Damn. I don’t know what it is about Metz that really gets me wired up and ready to take on an army of replicant Ninjas with laser eyes, but I feel 10 feet tall, part man/part machine, and all jagged indifference when I listen to them. There’s an anxiety-driven angst in their music that pushes […]

Viet Cong : Viet Cong

“Newspaper Spoons” opens like a distant canon firing into the abyss. An overblown kick drum beats like a death knell before Matt Flegel sings “Writhing violence essentially without distortion, Wired silent, vanishing into the boredom”. It’s a hell of a way to open a debut album, but that’s just the kind of album Viet Cong […]