// Category Archive for: Music

Waxing Nostalgic: Failure, “Wonderful Life”

By Jeffery X Martin

The college rock scene was disintegrating in the mid-Nineties, and the Alternative Nation was annexing everything. Think of it as the Continental Drift of rock and roll. Bands had one leg on underground radio and the other on the set of a blue-tinted video with spinning chairs and dystopian decay, hoping to get some MTV rotation. But the college scene and the MTV kids started moving away from each other, both sides saying, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

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Music Review: Unwound, Rat Conspiracy (box set)

By Pres. Bystander

Unwound’s output from 1993 and 1994 is built on contradiction. Hyperactivity and hyperfocus in equal measure. It is the sound of deeply ADHD kids who alternately forgot to take their pills, took too big a dose, or self-medicated themselves into a stupor. This is the sound of blast-off, free fall, weightlessness, and submersion. Tension colors every corner, as does suffocation and kicking against the heavy blanket that covers.

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Music Review: Lowell, I Killed Sara V.

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto and London-based Lowell has the kind of voice that veers dangerously close to being exploited in an iTunes commercial. Which is why it’s significant that her new EP I Killed Sara V. opens with the blisteringly original “Cloud 69.” That music and those lyrics could never be used to sell hybrid cars. The crush of percussion and synths and the descending “oooooh” in the chorus make the heart pound faster. It’s an extraordinary song and unlike anything else I’ve heard.

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New Video: Dub Thompson, “Dograces”

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Ward Robinson

Based on this interview from The Independent, Dub Thompson members Evan Laffer (drums) and Matt Pulos (vocals/guitar) sound like the kind of 19-year-old guys who play music and have not yet been indoctrinated into only responding to interview questions with pre-packaged sound bites. Which is refreshing.

Also refreshing is their new song and video, “Dograces,” from their upcoming debut 9 Songs (it has eight tracks). It looks like one of those ’70s videos that you used to see on MTV Classic back in the day but then it looks like it might be a new video that was intended to look that way. The song itself is an odd mix of disaffected vocals and heavy bass, with a burst of shiny keyboards serving as a chorus of sorts that will either annoy you or intrigue you. Or both, especially when the band sort of gives up about two-thirds of the way through and leaves the stage. Speaking of which, who are those people, anyway?

9 Songs was recorded by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, who also plays keyboards for the band at their live shows. It will be out on June 10 from Dead Oceans. In the meantime, if you live in New York, you can catch them on April 3 at Pianos and on April 4 at Baby’s All Right.

New Video: The Cybertronic Spree, “Nothin’s Gonna Stand In Our Way”

By Less Lee Moore

The Cybertronic Spree
Photo © Paul Hillier Photography

If you haven’t heard of The Cybertronic Spree, listen up. It’s a band of Transformers—well, Hot Rod, Arcee, Rumble, Unicron, Spike, and a Quintesson, to be exact—who perform songs from the soundtrack to The Transformers: The Movie.

Interested yet? They also perform these songs live and in full costume. It’s pretty amazing. They recently released a video of an in-studio performance and recording of “Nothin’s Gonna Stand In Our Way” that must be seen to be believed.

Here’s a video of them performing “Instruments Of Destruction” last August at the Horseshoe in Toronto, as part of Nerd Noise Night.

And yes, they do perform “The Touch.”

For the full spectrum of the band’s online presence, check out TheCybertronicSpree.com

Waxing Nostalgic: The Five Eighties Bands You Should Still Be Listening To

By Jeffery X Martin

I’ve been writing this column for a year now, completely immersing myself in coming up with new words about old music. A lot of it, frankly, just doesn’t hold up. It’s the aural equivalent of parachute pants. Why did we like it? Why did we buy it? What were we thinking? Were we all mad? Nobody would be caught dead in parachute pants these days.

Some bands still make the grade, though, and are still insanely listenable after all these years. Following are the bands I implore you to listen to again, or maybe for the first time.

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Music Review: Fox, Images ’74 – ’84

By Hanna

Fox is one of the few bands that have truly crossed over from junkshop glam into mainstream glam rock over the past decade or so. They always had people—notably Steve Wright—lobbying for them, but it wasn’t until Cherry Red started re-issuing the albums and YouTube allowed them to be rediscovered that they took their proper place in the genre. That initial wave of interest has only become stronger, and with this compilation most of their known music is now available. The three albums (Fox, Tails of Illusion, and Blue Hotel) were previously re-issued by Cherry Red, and there have been a number of compilations by various companies, but none as comprehensive as this one.

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Music Review: Giallos Flame, Archivio Giallo, Volume One

By Jeffery X Martin

Fans of horror movies from the 1980s know that half the fun of those flicks was the crazy synthesizer-heavy soundtracks they all seemed to have. Haunting melodies, strange electronic sounds, and spatial effects only served to accentuate the atmosphere, making the blood and guts more shocking.

It’s a weird groove to fall into, being a fan of music like that. You start bringing up musicians like Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Frizzi, Riz Ortolani, or Alan Howarth and most people stare at you like you’ve lost your mind. Then you start bringing up the movies those people have scored. Have you not seen Zombi? The Beyond? Buio Omega? How about The Fog? The original Dawn of the Dead, for cryin’ out loud?

You get a lot of blank looks and sympathetic nods, lots of people silently blessing your heart.

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DVD Review: The Punk Singer

By Brad Henderson

Kathleen Hanna was my dream girl growing up. It all started when I went to a record store and found a copy of Reject All American by Bikini Kill. I had no clue what it was but the cover intrigued me. I gave it a shot because it only had a 99-cent price tag.

I left the store with a few CDs that day (mostly punk) and listened to them throughout the rest of the week, but that night I popped that one in and it did a number on me. First, it sounded completely badass. It was raw and ferocious. The lyrics were well thought out and this girl singer was not fucking around. Between “Rebel Girl” and “Statement of Vindication,” this was the best album that I’d heard in years. I immediately found out who Kathleen Hanna was and tracked down everything she put her hands into.

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Music Review: The Dandy Warhols, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia Live At The Wonder

By Melissa Bratcher

Never a band to do things in a conventional way, The Dandy Warhols have released a live version of their seminal album Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia recorded in its entirety at The Wonder Ballroom in their hometown of Portland, Oregon. Thirteen Tales is a damn near masterpiece of smart pop sensibilities, great hooks, and the occasional space rock excursion, and represents the Dandys at the height of their powers. It’s hard to believe it was 13 years ago.

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