There are not many bands whose live act could not benefit from a spectacular setting. Surely even the bowel-loosening, Juno-award-winning strains of Nickelback could become magical and intoxicating if you saw them in the right place (inside a burning freight car, in a...
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Spin of the Week: Thee Oh Sees
Thee Oh Sees ÛÒ Carrion Crawler/The Dream A combination of two separate EP's, this latest release from John Dwyer's Thee Oh Sees is a relentless, no-frills collection of garage rock stompers, as opposed to the psych-pop tunes showcased on their earlier 2011 album...
CMJ 2011: A Place To Bury Strangers @ Union Pool
CMJ's schedule is full of tiny bands playing half a dozen shows each in an effort to get noticed by college radio stations and blogs and to interface with promotional companies. However cool these bands may try to appear (and I watched two separate bass players try...
Electric Factory with Louise Brask Presents: Harry Ransom
Opening for Switch & Scottie B this Saturday at U Street Music Hall, D.C. Drum & Bass DJ Harry Ransom is undoubtedly one of the upcoming creative minds of Drum & Bass in the D.C. area. A man with a tinkering intuition for developing production techniques,...
Midwest Musings: Cloud Cult
Writing about Cloud Cult is hard. Listening to Cloud Cult is easy – with mellow percussion and violin melodies, the music feels like something your ears don't just want but desperately need to hear. But thinking too long or too deeply about Cloud Cult is simply...
CMJ 2011: Atlas Sound @ Ace Hotel
Without getting all Almost Famousy, what I love about music is that it celebrates what is real and messy and honest. School and society are often preoccupied with perfection and having it all together (it's stressful, man!) but CMJ and more specifically, Atlas Sound...
Label Fables: Merge Records
Merge Records – “The indie label that got big and stayed small.” While many indie record labels strive for the “we're doing our best” mentality (Fat Possum comes to mind), Merge seeks perfection. But does their quest for Billboard ranks and Grammys stray away...
"Grandma, I’ve Been Unruly" – Purity Ring @ Soft House
“Grandma, I've Been Unruly” is just one unique lyric from Purity Ring's collection of tracks. Purity Ring's songs are as naÌøve as they are passionate, and their performance is no different. Purity Ring is an electronic Canadian duo that favors abstract lyrics and...
From the Outside: No New York
The year was 1978. Brian Eno, famed English musician/producer, was in New York assisting The Talking Heads produce and master their sophomore effort, More Songs About Buildings and Food. While there, Eno attended a four day long underground rock festival held at...
A Young Gypsy: Janis Joplin and Bobby McGee
This could be the hysteria of post-midterms, a 40% on a psychology exam and a C on a paper speaking, but sometimes I feel like I'm not supposed to be in college. More times than not, I am plagued with some sort of crisis where the only obvious answer to cure it is...