// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Blu-Ray Review: The Walking Dead, Season Four

By Less Lee Moore

The first season of The Walking Dead was nothing short of brilliant (review). It went through some growing pains—literally—in Season 2, figuring out how to deal with a new showrunner as well as twice as many episodes. The criticisms of that season have been discussed to death and don’t need a rehash. Season 3 expanded the show’s scope further with even more new characters and 16 episodes. Amazingly, Season 4 is better than the excellent Season 3 (review); those who gave up on the show after Season 2 should definitely try and catch up, as it is on par with those first six episodes.

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Music Review: Naomi Punk, Television Man

By Less Lee Moore

Those who claim all The Ramones songs sound alike have clearly never listened to Naomi Punk. This trio from Washington has cast their lot with a very limited sonic palette. Each of the tracks on their newest release, Television Man, strain against those limits like fish in a tank that’s too small.

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Music Review: The Psycho Sisters, Up On The Chair, Beatrice

By Less Lee Moore

In the 1990s, I was lucky enough to live in New Orleans. The Continental Drifters lived there, too, and I’ve lost track of the number of times I saw them play live, mostly at The Howlin’ Wolf. Drifter Peter Holsapple played a free acoustic set every Sunday at Carrollton Station which completely obliterated the “Sunday night blues” for those of us stuck in that Monday to Friday, 9 – 5 grind. And occasionally, Drifters Susan Cowsill and Vicki Peterson would perform as The Psycho Sisters. Those familiar with The Cowsills or The Bangles who’ve never heard these two women harmonize are in for a special treat with Up On The Chair, Beatrice.

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Music Review: Spoon, They Want My Soul

By Noreen Sobczyk

Guess what? This review isn’t going to compare Spoon to their possible influences, nor will the author jack herself off by citing said influences with hipper than thou references. Spoon has been, at the very least, a good band (with moments of a great band) for a long time. You may or may not know that yet, but They Want My Soul is worthy of your time and money. Knowing how cool you are by “getting” an author’s dazzling musical knowledge has nothing to do with that. The short version of this review is that the lyrics are clever, witty, and at times acerbic, and the music is interesting, melodic, simple yet layered, and other bits are more complex or partially in conflict with the general melody, but never cacophonous. It’s worth buying and unpeeling the onion skin of lyrical meanings at your leisure—or not. The album sounds great and stands alone whether or not one cares to excavate lyrics like a scholar examining cave paintings.

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Music Review: Royal Blood, Royal Blood

By Melissa Bratcher

Jack White, what hath you wrought? The debut album from Brighton UK’s Royal Blood sounds amazingly like the White Stripes, from the gutbucket blues stylings to Mike Kerr’s anguished howls and yelps. They, too, are a duo, though the thing that sets them apart is they are a bass and drum combo. I have no idea how one can make a bass sound so guitary, but Kerr does it. Hell of a trick, that is.

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Music Review: Mortals, Cursed To See The Future

By Tim Murr

The debut album by Mortals from Brooklyn, NY is a black/thrash/sludge metal-enthusiast’s dream. Cursed To See The Future hits hard and never relents across six tracks, clocking in at around 50 minutes. With brutal, pummeling rhythms, throat-shredding vocals, and unimpeachable guitar and bass work, Cursed sets a high bar for a debut.

I don’t think it should be necessary in 2014 to make a big deal about Mortals being an all female power trio that rightly earns comparisons to High On Fire and Darkthrone, but there you go. These three women—Caryn Havlik (drums), Lesley Wolf (bass/vocals), and Elizabeth Cline (guitar)—create rhythmically exciting metal that stands shoulder to shoulder with any of their contemporaries. Track 5, “Series Of Decay,” backs up that assessment nicely.

After buying this album, it’s been pretty much all I’ve listened to, and before that I’d been listening to their Death Ritual EP and Night Terror Demo. I like Mortals quite a bit and highly recommend Cursed To See The Future. It’ll be exciting to watch this band continue to evolve; they’ll certainly be one of Relapse Records MVPs. If you can catch them on tour make sure you buy them each a quadruple espresso!

Cursed To See The Future was released by Relapse Records on July 8 and can be purchased on the label’s website. You can listen to the album on Bandcamp and purchase it from there, too.

Movie Review: An Honest Liar

By Noreen Sobczyk

An Honest Liar is a documentary about James “The Amazing” Randi (self-described liar, cheat, and charlatan) directed by Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein. I was surprised by how many people to whom I mentioned this film had not heard of “The Amazing Randi.” Perhaps he’s one of those people locked away somewhere in the brain along with Tang™ and some random fact that you can’t quite access but know you know while playing Trivial Pursuit™. After all, helping Alice Cooper with a little stage decapitation and appearing on Happy Days in cahoots with The Fonz are among his lesser-known activities.

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Movie Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

By Lisa Anderson

The vampire movie renaissance, of which Let Me In was the high point and Priest may have been the low point, appeared to be drawing to a close. Then in late 2013, Director Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes) came out with Only Lovers Left Alive. This moody, atmospheric, bohemian tale pleased both critics and fans alike, especially the built-in fanbases of its leads, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. However, underneath the dark rock-guitar score, the musings about art, and the familiar vampire lore, there’s something more going on. Only Lovers Left Alive is, at its heart, a movie about marriage.

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DVD Review: The Den

By Brad Henderson

Found footage films are getting more eyerolls every year, it seems. I’m a huge fan of this subgenre but I will be the first to admit there are some films out there that are not that great. Also, the ones that are not that great are the more popular ones for some reason and that I just don’t get.

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Music Review: Lower, Seek Warmer Climes

By Less Lee Moore

“Cause fancy disguises deceive no one
But yourself.”
—Lower, “Arrows”

Recently I’ve realized that I’d prefer to watch a movie that doesn’t arrive at any sort of definite conclusion. I’d rather sit during the credits wondering what exactly it was I saw and trying desperately to figure it out for the next few days, and if it takes me that long to decide if I actually liked the movie or not, even better. The same goes for music. Hearing so many of the same types of bands over and over again, from disposable, EDM-influenced Top 40 pop to the kind of beardy and/or tremulous music found in commercials for Apple products, it’s become increasingly difficult to find something that has genuine staying power.

And that’s where Lower comes in. Rarely does a band subvert, confound, and exceed expectations as much as this. I can honestly say that I’ve never heard anything like Lower. For the last few weeks, I’ve vacillated between whether I loved or hated them. Such an extreme reaction can only signify one thing: Lower is doing something genuinely unorthodox and you need to hear them for yourselves to figure out upon which part of the spectrum you reside.

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