// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Music Review: Margo Price, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter

By Melissa Bratcher

Margo Price makes proper country music. Not bro-country, but honest to god, real live country music. She takes up the mantle of brilliant female singers: Loretta, Dolly, Tammy. Her debut album for Third Man Records, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, is throwback country on the surface, but her lyrics and sensibilities are completely modern. It’s an incredibly solid album, the kind of album that has staying power in your brain.

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Music Review: Davina And The Vagabonds, Nicollet And Tenth

By Melissa Bratcher

Davina and the Vagabonds are well-known for their live shows, blending jazz, soul, brilliant stage presence, and top-notch musicianship. Attendees walk away converts. It stands to reason then, that Davina and the Vagabonds would at some point put out a live album. So they did.

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Video Premiere: Dirty Sidewalks, “Hey Girl (I Wanna Be Your Man)”

By Less Lee Moore

Last Christmas I discovered a song that quickly became part of my annual holiday playlist: “It’s Xmas (And Everyone Is Miserable)” by Dirty Sidewalks, a Seattle-based band who traffics in the kind of poppy shoegaze that put bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club on the musical map. The undeniable hooks and straightforward attitude of the track won me over immediately.

Now Dirty Sidewalks have a new video: “Hey Girl (I Wanna Be Your Man)” is the B-side to the band’s recently released vinyl single, “It’s Getting Better.”

Filmed with a low-budget glitter aesthetic, the video suits the song’s sweet yet snarly charms perfectly and features subtle nods to both the Reid brothers and My Bloody Valentine. Singer Erik Foster sounds enough like his shoegazing forebears to reel you in, but Dirty Sidewalks have an appeal that’s all their own, and one that will keep you coming back for more.

If you like what you see (and hear), be sure to pick up the “It’s Getting Better” single, available on both black vinyl and white vinyl from No-Count Records.
Dirty Sidewalks have a full-length album planned for the summer, so follow them on Facebook to keep up with the latest news.

TV Review: Broad City S3 E05, “2016”

By Sachin Hingoo

“Abbi. Hello. Proud Demo-crat. College. Aquarius. I pegged.”–Abbi

It’s one of the biggest weeks in Broad City’s entire run so far, and one that’s unlikely to be topped for quite some time. In addition to the announcement that the show will have an entry in the Tribeca Film Festival’s TV section, this week’s show features their most high-profile guest star yet, even in an episode packed with cameos. All eyes are on our girls, and these kweens won’t leave us hanging.

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SXSW Movie Review: Beware The Slenderman

By Brad Henderson

Beware The Slenderman is one of the most intense, chilling, and scary documentaries ever to exist.

If anyone has surfed any Internet forums, then they most likely they know about Slenderman. What started as a Photoshopped picture on SomethingAwful spawned a urban legend that has made its way into stories, video games, and even movies. Slenderman has only existed for a little over a decade, but it didn’t really get popular until videos started appearing on the Internet.

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DVD Review: Children Of The Stars

By Jeffery X Martin

Documentaries about alternative religious belief systems are always a dicey watch, especially if the religion being examined doesn’t jibe with your own or sounds totally off the wall. The temptation to snicker or outright mock the people who believe this crazy stuff is always there. But religion is such a personal thing; laughing at someone about what they believe just feels disrespectful.

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TV Review: Lucha Underground S3 E08, “Life After Death”

By Sachin Hingoo

It’s a gigantic week in Lucha Underground, friends. After last week’s outstanding triple-threat match between champion Mil Muertes, Pentagón Jr., and Prince Puma, Fenix cashed in his Gift of the Gods title shot which is our main event for tonight. Let’s also hope that the inter-gender content will be handled better this week, because we have a Trios title match between the Disciples of Death and the team of Son of Havoc, Angelico, and Ivelisse that should be pretty good.

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TV Review: Outsiders S1 E06, “Weapons”

By Laury Scarbro

A bit of news for fans of the show: Outsiders has been renewed for a second season as of March 11. Ged ged yah!

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Music Review: Haircut 100, Pelican West

By Melissa Bratcher

It is a well-known, scientific fact that Haircut 100’s debut album, Pelican West, is the happiest album that ever existed (I just made that up, but hear me out). It’s full to the brim with sunny melodies, bold bursts of brass, and a weird but genius marriage of tropicalia and funk, with a dash of jazz thrown in. It’s a stunner of a debut, a fully-formed, exactly perfect right out of the gate album. It’s crushing, then, that by the time Haircut 100 returned to the studio to record a followup, the band was in tatters. Lead singer Nick Heyward had one foot out the door on his way to a solo career. Haircut 100 soldiered on, but it just wasn’t the same.

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TV Review: The Walking Dead S6 E13, “The Same Boat”

By Laury Scarbro

Remember last week I asked the question “How the hell do you get the drop on Carol and Maggie?” This week answers that question, but presents others.

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