03.Jun.2011 Moving Pictures: “Hey Friend” by JEFF the Brotherhood
JEFF the Brotherhood’s “Hey Friend” is a tale of two songs played out over a tale of the road. The first half is an extended jam into murky, Southern psychedelic rock, all dark and winding with sick riffs in the style of bands like Black Mountain or Dead Meadow. The second half has a noticeably [...]
11.Dec.2010 Moving Pictures: “Sharevari” by The Dirtbombs
Now, this is interesting. The Dirtbombs, the Motor City garage rock band who first made a name for themselves ten years ago with Ultraglide in Black, an album of rocked-up, mucked up covers of classic soul, have a new album coming out early in 2011 called Party Store. This time around, they’re re-interpreting classic Detroit [...]
01.Dec.2010 Moving Pictures: “Don’t Stop Now (Live at Matador’s 21st Birthday Party) by Guided by Voices
There’s a moment when Guided by Voices play the ballad, “Don’t Stop Now,” live, it happened in Columbus, it happened in Detroit, and I’m willing to bet it’s happened every other stop on the tour, where the crowd loudly joins in during the line, “King Sht*t and the Golden Boys!” This video from Matador Records’ [...]
09.Aug.2010 Moving Pictures: “Heathen Child” by Grinderman
Warning: The video you are about to watch contains brief nudity, comedic violence, mildly disturbing imagery, an incredible song with the most bad-ass electric bouzouki ever, caricatures of the world’s great religions which some may find inappropriate, and the men of Grinderman dressed as immortal centurions behaving rather badly. In other words, it totally rules. [...]
26.Jul.2010 Live: Black Mountain @ Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland. 07.24.10
If the crowd Saturday night at the Beachland Ballroom for the heavy, psychedelic grooves of Vancouver’s Black Mountain was sparser than expected, it was not without good reason. Hometown heroes, The Black Keys, were playing in front of a sold out crowd at the Nautica Pavilion in the Flats at roughly the same time. The [...]
19.Jul.2010 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival: Pavement
Thousands of people came to Union Park to see indie-rock icons, Pavement, reunite. No one came to Union Park on Sunday for Rockin’ Rian Murphy. Yet, there he was, up on the big stage, introducing the night’s headliners. And from the moment he opened his mouth, it was a disaster. First, he said he was [...]
2010 Pitchfork Music Festival: Lightning Bolt
At approximately 3:45, a text message was sent from a music critic to his photographer. It read, “All these bands are boring the sh*t out of me.” At approximately 4:15, the maniacal Lightning Bolt took to the A stage. Goodbye, boring. Hello, thrashing. To imagine the sound of this Providence, Rhode Island two-piece, think of [...]
24.May.2010 Moving Pictures: “Little Old Me” by Prisoners
Jason Look and his bandmates in the Cleveland garage-rock outfit, Prisoners, have come a long way from those first in-stores at Blue Arrow Records. Early on, you could tell Look had the persona of a rocker, with his hell could care mop of hair, and his throttling voice, eerily similar to a young Paul Westerberg. [...]
