Met a phantom, memorized a song
I didn’t stumble across Unwound until maybe a year or a year and a half ago. Shortly thereafter I purchased their double album Leaves Turn Inside You after hearing the hypnotic and blissfully melodic “Demons Sing Love Songs” for the first time, easily one of the most solid, haunting and inventive tracks I have heard. [...]
Good hip-hop you probably haven’t heard before
I’m not sure what it is about Hilltop Hoods that reminds me of Gang Starr– maybe it’s the decent rhymes with a good mellow flow well-matched to creative, catchy beats. Granted, there’s no one quite like DJ Premier and Guru, but listening to these guys might make you wonder why there aren’t more Australian hip-hop [...]
Nowhere
For fans of My Bloody Valentine’s 1992 masterpiece Loveless (like myself), Ride’s Nowhere has been proclaimed by at least a few to be the nearest runner-up among the records released during the shoegazing wave of the early 1990′s. That said, it’s definitely worth listening to all these years later. Taste and Vapour Trail remain two [...]
The Road – Track 5
Patty Larkin – Who Holds Your Hand I love this song for the four lines: So I put a cup of tea on And I looked at Rand McNally I put a couple shoes on And I hurried down the alley Sometimes, it is just that easy.
Something for the summer
I’ve been looking forward to the next Silver Jews release for a few months now. The fact that the master tapes narrowly escaped being burned up in a fire last spring at a Memphis studio adds a little something to the anticipation. I won’t deny that I stumbled upon Silver Jews only after coming to [...]
The Road – Track 4
Blue Rags – Must Be Movin’ On The Blue Rags released two mediocre albums. One of them on Sub Pop, which is probably how it ended up in my hands for a ridiculously cheap college student price. After negotiating the purchase, I went straight home and played it to great excitement. My flatmate came home [...]
Howard Hello
When I was in college, “movie night” was nearly synonymous with Fridays after school. I know a lot of people that probably spent those same evenings I spent watching classic foreign cinema or Woody Allen films with my friends getting trashed and making out with as many girls as possible. It’s not that I had [...]
Limitations
This song was inspired by the film Magnum Force, the second film in which Clint Eastwood plays bad ass loose cannon San Francisco Police detective “Dirty” Harry Callahan. The title is a line that Callahan says to his corrupt boss Briggs (played by Hal Holbrook!) before he drives off in a car that explodes at [...]
Radio Goes Farther At Night
Dar Williams – Are You Out There Vagabond Lovers – Midnight Radio I’ve been listening to Sirius radio recently. Surprisingly, I really like it. I like it enough I’m eyeing that lifetime subscription and reviewing bank accounts. It’s sick how much I’m willing to spend on my ears. However, financial reason has prevailed – for [...]
The Road – Track 3
Eszter Balint – Amsterdam Crown This song isn’t about the feeling of ceaseless motion or a straight travel song. This song isn’t about travel at all. This song is about cities. Eszter perfectly captures the feeling of being a city without any connections to the city, its people, or its culture. The feeling is a [...]