// Category Archive for: Music

Music Review: The Move, Move and Shazam (Reissues)

By Less Lee Moore

Though I’d always been a fan of “Dream Police” and “She’s Tight,” it wasn’t until 1993 that I fully embraced the many pleasures Cheap Trick had to offer. Checking the liner notes on their 1978 album Heaven Tonight revealed that amongst the album’s many fantastic tracks was a cover by someone named Roy Wood. “Who the hell was Roy Wood?” was my first thought and my second was “This song is incredible!” As it turned out Wood was the main songwriter for British band The Move, who’d found much success in the late 1960s and was a big influence on Cheap Trick’s musical style.

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Waxing Nostalgic: Lou Reed, Magic and Loss

By Tim Murr

“There’s a bit of magic in everything
And then some loss to even things out”
—Lou Reed

I haven’t had many mornings this year where I didn’t wake up with the Alice Cooper lyrics “Enough’s enough’s enough/this year’s been really, really tough” in my head. 2016 has seen many of our heroes go to the grave and in February I lost my friend Jason “Jase” Gollihar, who I’ve known since I was eleven years old. Couple those losses with numerous little personal tragedies, a couple of huge ones (that have just recently started correcting themselves), and an election year that I’m still trying to get a mental grip on… Yeah, this year’s been really, really tough.

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Music Review: Masked Intruder, Love and Other Crimes

By Tyler Hodg

Who needs time machines when throwback bands like Masked Intruder exist? The band’s latest effort, an EP titled Love and Other Crimes, sounds like a direct callback to pop-punk’s heyday in the early 2000s, but perhaps a little too much. Although still a fun listen, a lack of originality removes much-needed substance from the album.

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Music Review: The Muffs, Blonder and Blonder (Reissue)

By Less Lee Moore

For the first half of the 1990s, if Redd Kross was involved in something, I was interested. Any band they toured with or recorded with or even name-checked was a band that I would check out. I was rarely disappointed. Enter The Muffs, who I associated with Redd Kross originally because they were both from Southern California and had both punk rock and bubblegum pop cred. And there was the Bill Bartell connection. Plus, Kim Shattuck and Melanie Vammen were ex-Pandoras members, a band I was fond of after hearing them on WTUL New Orleans in the mid-’80s.

Not long after the band’s eponymous debut, Melanie left and former Redd Kross drummer Roy McDonald replaced original drummer Criss Crass. So I was extremely interested in hearing Blonder and Blonder, The Muffs’ 1995 release from Warner Bros./Reprise Records.

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Music Review: JG Thirlwell, The Venture Bros. Original Score, Volume Two

By Ben van D

The truly terrific soundtrack should be harmonious with its narrative and transcend and elevate the work as a whole. After all, Psycho isn’t Psycho without its violent shower strings; Star Wars isn’t Star Wars without its “Imperial March;” and the panther isn’t pink without Mancini setting the palette. JG Thirlwell is equally inseparable from the DNA of the Venture Bros., and this collection is hard evidence as to why.

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Music Review: J.D. Malone and the Experts, Town and Country

By Tyler Hodg

The genre of country music is one of the worst offenders in producing soulless drivel. J.D. Malone and the Experts’ latest effort, Town and Country, is superior to the work of most mainstream artists in the same classification, but that’s not saying much. Where the album succeeds in exerting passion, it lacks in quality songs.

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New On Vinyl: Soundtracks for Basket Case 2 / Frankenhooker

By Tim Murr

You know, I don’t talk enough about Frank Hennenlotter. He made six insanely funny body horror/exploitation films including the cult favorites Basket Case, Frankenhooker, and Brain Damage. If you take the heady, wet horror of David Cronenberg and the gleeful sleaze of John Waters and drag them through the gutters of 1970s 42nd Street, you’ll still be surprised at how crazy a Frank Henenlotter movie can get.

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Concert Review: Odonis Odonis At Velvet Underground

By Less Lee Moore

Post Plague Record Release Show
June 24, 2016
Toronto, ON

At last year’s NXNE, Odonis Odonis played a show with A Place To Bury Strangers and Iceage and despite both of those bands having huge reputations of being incredible live, the Toronto trio more than held their own. This past Friday’s show was even better. The band has an impressive light show to accompany their newer material and this time, they weren’t plagued with the technical issues that threatened to overpower last year’s Opera House performance. In fact, they almost literally blew me away. But more on that in a minute.

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Exclusive: New B-Side From Close Lobsters “Wander Epic Part II”

By Less Lee Moore

Back in the days of MTV’s 120 Minutes, C86 darlings Close Lobsters were a fave. “Let’s Make Some Plans” reminded me of the heady days of when I first got into college radio. Granted, those days were just a few years earlier, but when you’re a teenager, that stuff matters. I listened to their ’88 releases Headache Rhetoric and What Is There To Smile About? fairly obsessively well into the early ‘90s.

After a hiatus of almost 20 years, the Scottish band returned briefly in 2009 with a retrospective singles collection, but reformed for real in 2012 for a few live shows, releasing the EP Kunstwerk In Spacetime in 2014. On June 3, the band’s newest EP, Desire and Signs, was released by Shelflife Records.

“Wander Epic Part II” is the B-side to the latest single “Under London Skies” and here’s what the band has to say about it:

“’Wander Epic’ is a yarn/yearn of disorientation in the spirit of Close Lobsters. Saudade for the vast and endless sea. Who are we and what do we need to do to be part of the world? If you listen to all three parts as a continuous (w)hole the streams that run down to the sea are revealed.”

Music Review: Vallens, Consent

By Less Lee Moore

After several years paying her dues in various Toronto bands, Robyn Phillips was visited by a vision. Adopting the name of Isabella Rossellini’s character from Blue Velvet, Phillips began writing songs informed by this persona, eventually gathering other musicians to complete a full band. Vallens’ first album Consent is out today and it reveals that Phillips’ commitment paid off: it’s a stunning debut.

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