// Category Archive for: Music

Peter Project, Fresh EP

By Megashaun

Based on how much I loved and listened to Peter Project’s self-titled debut (reviewed in Popshifter ) I had some rather high expectations when I had heard he released a follow-up in the form of a bar of soap.
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Venus Bogardus, Spitting At The Glass

By Jemiah Jefferson

When does influence become imitation? When does homage become outright copying? These questions illuminate upon listening to this album, the third from UK-to-Santa Fe art rock transplants Venus Bogardus.
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Accept No Substitutes: Cheap Trick In Toronto

By Less Lee Moore

Sound Academy, Toronto ON
February 4, 2010

I don’t care what Lester Bangs said: Cheap Trick was, is, and will always be the best rock and roll band of all time.

They more than proved this (again) at Thursday’s Sound Academy show in Toronto.
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Bettina Köster, Queen Of Noise

By Ann Clarke

I love it when you put on an album, and it just kicks ass immediately. I love it even more when it continues to kick ass, and then when it’s over, you feel compelled to listen to it again! That doesn’t always happen, even with some of your personal favorite albums.

Bettina Köster’s Queen of Noise might not be my favorite album, but it certainly falls into the realm of the type of album I just described. It just kicks ass, and continues to kick ass! (I apologize for my lowbrow description, but I guess it sort of brings the cave-girl out of me!) I mean, seriously; when something just rocks your lame ass, you know it instantly.
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Gorevette, Lustfully Yours

By Mandy Mullins

Grab your dancing shoes and head out onto the floor and get ready to have a great time! In a match made in rock & roll girls heaven, the wonderful Nikki Corvette and Gore Gore Girls’ guitarist/leading lady Amy Gore have teamed up to form an ultra-fun little Detroit super group called Gorevette. Along with Lianna Castillo on bass and Al King on drums, Gorvette have just released their seven-song debut EP, Lustfully Yours.
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Them Crooked Vultures, S/T

By Adam McIntyre

Come over to my recording studio and let’s listen to something very loud.

Here’s why I have a major hard-on for Them Crooked Vultures: it’s tailored for me. I mean, I am its target audience. I have intense respect for each of the four musicians involved, certainly bordering on talent-based mancrushes. I mean. . .
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The Living Sisters, Love To Live

By Chelsea Spear

Listening to Love To Live on an iPod feels wrong. The maiden voyage by The Living Sisters requires the listener to lower a needle onto a fat slab of vinyl and listen to a brief overture of static before their music begins.
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Irish Folk With A Twist: Frank Tovey and The Pyros, Grand Union

By Emily Carney

Starting in the late 1980s, Frank Tovey (also known as Fad Gadget, whose music and general adventures were chronicled in a past Popshifter article) departed from avant-garde synth-pop, and started making Irish folk records.

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Images of Peter: Finding Peter Godwin

Interview and introduction by Emily Carney

Cherchez la femme: “Images of Heaven”

Years ago (it’s been so long, I’ve forgotten what year it was exactly), I was watching one of those late night “alternative” music shows on MTV, looking for videos by my then-favorites, Joy Division and New Order (I regularly bored friends to tears in school gushing about these two bands). I thought it was slightly insulting that the very best musical artists around were only seen on a Sunday night at 12:00 a.m. and later.

I had a crappy circa-1983 VHS recorder I would tape these videos on. . . I remember these tapes were filled with old-wave hits. Pete Shelley’s “Homosapien,” the Psychedelic Furs “Love My Way,” and the Human League’s “Love Action (I Believe in Love)” were just a few of the videos I remember seeing over and over again on extremely grainy videotape.

. . . But I digress. This one particular night a video by a guy called Peter Godwin flickered to life on the Magnavox TV screen. It was called “Images of Heaven” and it straddled the line between being ridiculously 1980s and strangely intriguing. The plot of the video included a man living in a rather sophisticated townhouse (with a spiral staircase!) being tormented by a sexy woman who existed in his television, and in his mind. His apartment was filled with fur, leopard-skin rugs, and silver couch cushions. (I’ll bet it smelled like Opium by Yves Saint Laurent.)
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Nine, A Soundtrack Review

By Danny R. Phillips

I’m not much for musicals. People walking down the street, spontaneously breaking into song. . . it’s all very hokey and unrealistic to me. Generally, I think it’s a stupid genre. . . wait, does Walk The Line count as a musical? If so, I liked that one. Anyway, soundtrack albums to musicals are often more painful than the actual film, but there is something about the soundtrack of Nine that makes me let my guard down and dial down the hate just a bit.
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