// Category Archive for: Reviews

Music Review: Golden Daze, Golden Daze

By Tim Murr

Shoegaze or Dream Pop was a genre I always liked in theory, but was never really able to embrace back in the early 1990s. So I don’t have a terribly wide frame of reference for reviewing Golden Daze’s self-titled debut, but leaving the album on hours-long loops has been a very enjoyable experience. Does this mean I like shoegaze and dream pop now? I guess so!

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In Case You Missed It: February 14 – 20, 2016

By Less Lee Moore

We are thrilled to publish a Retro Review of The Zombies’ classic Odessey and Oracle album from none other than esteemed musician, Lenny Kaye!

The Witch, which has received an overwhelming number of positive reviews, opened on February 19. Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life, but I think you should go see it. Here’s why.

There’s been yet another death in the music world this week: Vanity, who most will remember as a Prince protégé and the singer for Vanity 6, but who also delighted movie and TV audiences in Action Jackson and Miami Vice, respectively. Unicorn Booty has the scoop on this, the return of Orphan Black, Kendrick Lamar’s secret stash, and much more.

It’s February, and that means it’s Women in Horror month. Maybe Angela Lansbury’s role on Murder, She Wrote wasn’t straight-up horror, but it’s still iconic. Did you know that she’s going strong at 90 years old? It’s true. Just last year, she reprised her role as Madame Arcati in the play Blithe Spirit, which toured North America. Here’s a great list of nine of the best Murder, She Wrote episodes.

There’s been a lot of talk about Silence of the Lambs recently, as the 25th year of its release approaches. While it’s still criticized for its depiction of trans and gay people, the character of Buffalo Bill was a composite of several real-life serial killers, including Ed Gein. Although most crimes are still committed by straight folks, as this article points out, freaky sex crimes and murders are equal opportunity. Here’s a list of ten scary but true gay psychopaths.

We’ve got TV recaps on Popshifter, y’all! The new episode of The X-Files (which is probably my fave yet in this tenth season), Outsiders (where you’ll learn about a “pitfight”), and Lucha Underground (spoiler alert: it involves baby oil).

What happened this week on Today In Pop Culture? Turntables, flying cows, Modern Art outrage, King Tut, and cats.

Music Review: Emitt Rhodes, Rainbow Ends

By Melissa Bratcher

Where do we begin with Emitt Rhodes? He began gaining notoriety as the leader of 1960s band the Merry Go Round, who had the hits “Live” and “You’re A Very Lovely Woman.” In 1971, he released his critically acclaimed eponymous debut and the reputation as a “one-man Beatles,” so pure were his power pop hooks (and the fact that he wrote, produced, and recorded his album in his studio). He released Farewell To Paradise in 1973 and then… radio silence. Bad deals, shady contracts, it’s not a new story.

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Music Review: Santigold, 99¢

By Melissa Bratcher

Santigold’s follow up to 2012s dark Master Of My Make-Believe, is 99¢, a brighter, single-packed outing. She’s joined by a passel of new collaborators, including Rostam Batmanglij, Zeds Dead, Haze Banga, and Sam Dew. Her new tracks are inventive and fresh, exploring the current commercial nature of our culture. “We have no illusion that we don’t live in this world where everything is packaged. People’s lives, persona, everything, is deliberate, and mediated. It can be dark and haunting and tricky, and freak us out, but it can be also be silly and fun and we can learn to play with it,” she says.

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Retro Review: The Zombies, Odessey and Oracle

By Lenny Kaye

An Odessey in more ways than one, beyond the Y. These days the answer to that questioning why? is apparent, the oracular pronouncement of a classic album regarded as a touchstone for thoughtful, intelligent pop, as much a part of the last century’s sixties’ meritocracy as anything by their more famous peers. The irony is that by the time the Zombies made the album that is their crowning achievement, working in an Abbey Road Studio just recently vacated by the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Pink Floyd’s mercurial Piper, and saw its last-gasp single suddenly break worldwide, the group had already begun to part ways, moving into the seventies on their own solo missions without the refraction of each other.

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TV Review: The X-Files Episode 5, “Babylon”

By Jeffery X Martin

This week’s episode of The X-Files: The College Years gives us hope, but in the totally wrong way, leaving the viewer just as confused about the diretion and meaning of the entire series as Mulder and Scully are about the existence of God. Where the hell did this brilliant episode come from? Compared with everything else we’ve gotten from the reboot, this episode is as unexpected as hearing your toddler recite the Iliad in the original Latin while loading her diaper up during Yom Kippur.

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Blu-Ray Review: Pieces

By Jeffery X Martin

Horror fans have known for decades that there is no other movie quite as delightfully crazy banana-pants as Pieces. With the infamous tagline, “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre,” Pieces honestly attempts to be a straight-ahead horror film. It’s not.

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TV Review: Outsiders S1 E02, “Doomsayer”

By Laury Scarbro

The second episode of Outsiders, “Doomsayer,” continues to lay the groundwork for what we know will escalate into the violence and bloodshed we’ve come to expect from those living on the fringe butting heads with law enforcement agencies. Art imitates life after all. This episode has several points of interest, including our first look at the Circle of Elders, a “pitfight,” the beginnings of a love triangle, racism masquerading as innocence, corporate scheming, evidence tampering, and what appeared to be an oath of revenge.

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Retro Review: American Psycho

By Jeffery X Martin

Toronto residents! If you haven’t seen American Psycho in a while or if you’ve never seen it on the big screen, you’ll get your chance February 17 at the Carlton, where The MUFF Society is putting on a screening of the film at 9:00 p.m.

The quirky genius of Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner’s film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial novel, American Psycho, lies in the generic nature of its characters and its excoriation of the wretched Yuppie movement of the 1980s. The movie is infused with comedy as dark as motor oil, and social commentary so sharp that watching the movie could cut your retinas. For a certain level of society, this is the definitive Eighties flick, even more cynical and astute than Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.

There is also an extended scene with a chainsaw, so that’s an automatic win.

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Music Review: The Westies, Six On The Out

By Tyler Hodg

The Westies’ sophomore album, Six on the Out, eclipses their previous work to set a new precedent, which prior to its release, seemed impossible. The Chicago husband and wife duo builds off of their folk-rock sound and successfully balances a grounded, yet expansive style–both musically and lyrically.

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