The Black Heart Procession, Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit

By J Howell

Throughout the eight tracks on Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit, the new mini-album from San Diego’s always-intriguing The Black Heart Procession, there’s plenty of what fans love about the band: their noir feel is present in spades. Overall, though, while Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit is an enjoyable record, as a whole it feels a little like what it is, I suppose: a short work between larger, more cohesive artistic statements.

BHP mainstays Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel have always produced impressive work, and over six albums the band has carved its own dark, beautiful, and often sexy niche in modern music. While this record is quite good, it doesn’t expand much on that remarkable body of work.
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The Legendary Pink Dots, Seconds Late For The Brighton Line

By Hanna

Seconds Late For The Brighton Line is called the Legendary Pink Dots‘ 30th anniversary album, and while I can’t find anything specifically 30th anniversary about it, it does fit that title to some extent.

The album is not an overview of all their styles; in fact, it has a rather specific style, especially for an LPD album, but in other ways, it is extremely typical and in some ways, familiar. This is helped by the the fact that several of the songs were premiered during the band’s 30th anniversary tour. “Hauptbahnhof 20:10” and “Russian Roulette” were both very impressive live, and do not sound much different on the album.
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Let Me In

By Lisa Anderson

As the leaves turn and the air grows colder, a few extra horror movies always make their way into theaters. This year, one of the most anticipated new releases is Let Me In, a remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film, Let The Right One In. Transplanted from 1980s Stockholm, Sweden to 1980s Los Alamos, New Mexico, this version is helmed by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves.

The basic storyline is the same: a bullied 12-year-old boy in a dreary, snowbound apartment complex befriends a mysterious new neighbor his age. At first, their relationship appears to be typical preteen love, albeit between two strange children. It turns out though, that she is a vampire, and the adult human who lives with her has been committing murder to obtain blood for her. Before the story is over, vampire, boy, and man all see their lives change permanently.
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Kristian Hoffman, Fop

By Hanna and Matt Keeley

Kristian Hoffman is perhaps best known for working with the brilliant Klaus Nomi; he was Nomi’s musical director and the wordsmith behind Nomi’s original songs. If you’ve sat down with the records, you know how good those songs were and still are, both in performance (there’s a reason Nomi’s one of Rush Limbaugh’s favorites) and in songwriting. Nomi should have conquered the world; instead, he died too early.

Hoffman, on the other hand, didn’t sleep, and has been working with loads of cool people, including James White and the Contortions, Rufus Wainwright, Sparks, Lydia Lunch and. . . look, this’ll just be a laundry list of who’s who in good music, so just rest assured: if they’re talented, he’s probably worked with ’em. He’s also done solo records, of which Fop is the newest. It’s such an event that Popshifter enlisted TWO, count ’em TWO, reviewers to cover it.
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Pixies Doolittle Anniversary Tour

By J Howell

Click for full image.

Uptown Theater, Kansas City MO
September 17, 2010

As I see it, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who love the Pixies, and assholes. All kidding aside, is there another band as universally loved as Pixies?
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Our September/October 2010 Issue Is Out Now!

September/October 2010 Issue – Halloween Horrors III: Season Of The Witch

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to read the issue!

Issue 018—Halloween Horrors III: Season of the Witch—Staff Picks: Horror Movies For People Who Don’t Like Them, Top Five Scariest Things, Ten Psychotics With Style; Interviews and Q&As with Shonen Knife, Alex Bledsoe; Features: K-Horror, Armchair Casting Director: Dark Shadows, The Stanley Hotel Ghost Tour, Ghost Stories, Slumber Party Slaughter, Les Oraliens; Reviews of Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated, The Devils, I Spit On Your Grave, Friday the 13th, Rituals, Near Dark, Coisa Ruim, and Session 9.

The Monstrous Feminist

Sometimes it’s hard being a horror movie fan, especially of the female persuasion.
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Five Horror Movies For People Who Don’t Like Horror Movies

By Chelsea Spear

The autumnal season is upon us, and with it, the onslaught of Halloween in all its grease-painted, fun-sized glory. This is great news for the gorehounds and horror-movie fanatics . . . but what of us petite flowers who faint at the sight of blood? You, my friends, are in luck! Herewith are five feature films that eschew the viscera in favor of suspense and chills.
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The Rotary Phone of Doom: My Top Five Scariest Things

By Emily Carney

5. Recurring dreams about high school

I have had the same dream continually over the last few years. It’s about high school. Mind you, it’s not a bittersweet, Breakfast Club-style reminiscence; the dream involves me having to go BACK to high school after being informed not-so-politely BY MAIL that I had somehow “forgotten” to attain my high school diploma. The same thing happens in every damn dream: for some reason, I start skipping classes, I fail most of them, and thus I become trapped in high school, never being able to get out. Suddenly, the halcyon greenish-blue corridors of good old East Lake High school become a horror show on par with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. By the way, I generally had a good high school experience in real life, so I have no idea where this dream is coming from.
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Killer Instinct: Ten Psychotics With Style

Idea by Matt Keeley
With Contributions By . . .

Everyone knows that psychos in movies are good at one thing: killing. But honestly, that’s unfair. So many of these “homicidal maniacs” as some might call them have other interests. After all, are YOU just one thing? It’s time we set the record straight and give credit where it’s due, so here’s Popshifter‘s list of top multi-faceted murderers in alphabetical order because we don’t want to play favorites and take chances incurring their wrath!

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