Album Reviews

Don't know much about these pricks, but goddamn if they didn't up and gut punch my nut guts without asking permission. And that's the kind of initiative that gets this kind of noisy shit that nobody normal likes made. Even the album title made me want to fucking hi-five myself, From This Normality We've Taken Our Leave. The name of the band, The DeathMedicine Band, reminded me of those fucking death shrooms that alternate versions of Super Mario Brobros throws at you from time to time and make you chuck your controller across the room and submit to Koopa once and for fucking all. Fuck a princess, amiright!? It also reminds me of the now-closed concept restaurant here in LA called, Red Medicine. It was the kind of place to make a pork tenderloin look like a log on the forest floor...

I sort of met these Dubldragon dudes for like a split second when I went to say hi to my friend Sammy Warmhands as he passed through LA. Ever the opportunist - this is rap music after all - Skeptik (aka the rapper in Dubldragon) passers me a copy of Y Wulvs?.  Outside of conjuring an immediate Adventure Time hug wolf image, this record high-wire walks between Eyedea's sensibilities and Ugly Ducklings sense of humor. It's a good thing there's a safety net, but the chops are real and so are the numerous laugh out loud moments. #NoHopsin Y Wulvs? is one of those rap records you used to have tucked into the console of your Toyota Corolla in college that you'd grab every now and then, post blunt, to just vibe on a good head nod, while adjusting the bottoms of your straight-...

Rast is the real genuine article, in a generation that's never truly gone without. I'm not saying this man's drug dealing, drug intake, and complete lack of respect for the law when he was a young man, is a testament of "realness" or a sense of what's genuine in the landscape of a thing like rap music. But, what Rast has, is a true sense of perspective. People don't understand what it's like to grow up a certain way, when their life is one of shelter and stability. They can never understand having to develop the camouflage of thick skin and toughness at an age when most of you only had to worry about what Santa was bringing you for Christmas. I decided to review all three albums Rast had on Bandcamp (Story of a Legend Vol. 1 / Story of a Legend Vol. 2 / Across West 3rd Street )...

Normally when you pop in an album and the album cover is completely fucking tropical balls, complete with palm trees and coconuts and a happy fucking font spelling out the band name, you're in for some tropicana. Reggae maybe? Possibly even some island shit you'd only ever listen to when trying to complete a vibe for a party with an annoying theme.  Enter the self titled album from Les Crazy Coconuts. This fucking album has NOTHING to do with tropical ANYTHING. Instead, Les Crazy Coconuts is surprisingly one of the better indie rock albums I've stumbled upon in 2015.  Les Crazy Coconuts sound like a perfect smooshwich of the bands Wool, Muse, and Solid Gold.  Wool was a band I got into in the 90s because they had a song with the lyrics "NOW THAT SUPERMAN IS DEAD, WHO WILL KICK ASS?" and I...

I don't know much about OptimisGFN aka GoldxHolyxWater except that I want to meet him. Originally from Cambridge, Mass., I want to wake up in his room and throw on my patterned socks and overstuffed backpack and fucking ROLL where it is he's traveling that particular day. Dude is straight living the indie rap punk dream.  His new record Iller Thriller on European art house label, Hello.L.A., is a strange trip - the words of a man, an expat if you will, living abroad, rapping his way through after-hours clubs in Berlin, taking trains between Belgium and France and fucking Heaven.  OptimisGFN's Iller Thriller is a stream of consciousness rapper whose off-kilter delivery isn't going to tame any hype beasts. It's an acquired taste. The refined taste of backpacking...

Until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, children, often the sons and daughters of recent immigrate, toiled endless hours inside the bellies of factories for wages that kept their families, living in tenements, in abject poverty. During the Industrial Revolution, the concept of children working amidst the most dangerous working conditions known to the modern man became, well, acceptable.  Lawnmower Men, a production collaboration between Portland rapper/producer Bloodmoney (the Syffal contributor formerly known as Ralphie) and Chicago beat maestro Morbidly-O-Beats, is the soundtrack for those children.  Lawnmower Men, the follow-up to the duo's previous The Art of Self Destruction, takes the listener into the heart of the machine. Inside the mechanism is its...

Music is sometimes functional. It provides a soundtrack to your regular life in a way that feels like assistance. It's like a little helper making the chores go by faster, more efficiently, making the long and dusty road more inviting, making life a little easier.  Should you have such a road laid out in front of you, or a gigantic pile of laundry doing the same, the folk sounds of John Heart Jackie is the perfect help.  This might sound demeaning. This band spends years cultivating a following, releasing lush harmonic dust-covered tunes of true romantic Americana, and I call them laundry help.  But it's the contrary.  You see, to a person not on the road, to a guy with mouths to feed and his preteen daughter's little bras to fold, a little help is welcomed, cherished even. So much music...

I stopped going to fancy seafood restaurants.  It's not because I don't like seafood. In fact, I love seafood and it's almost always amazing at these fancy seafood restaurants. You just can't butter a halibut or pair seered tuna w/ Asian slaw quite like the pros. BUT when I leave, and $100 later, I'm still starving. I immediately need to go find a sports bar for a dessert of potato skins and dinner rolls.  After I listened to Be Small, the new album by Here We Go Magic I was a little unfulfilled because after the first 3 songs (not including the Intro) they set the bar too high. Just like the latest Chvrches album, I though this was going to be the album of the decade after hearing those first few tracks, but it turned out that they were the main course, and the rest of the album...

After the first five seconds of the title track "Guilty of Love", I fucking know I love this band.  FUCK. This is that fucking dude Electric Guest after he's put together a Strawberry Alarm Clock cover band, but everyone in and around the band has their noses pierced and there's pubic hair all over the carpet but we can't see it because no one has pants on and looking down is rude when all of our keys are in the fishbowl over by the front door.  Unloved is, succinctly, Budos Band meets Amy Winehouse meets Mazzy Star meets the one image in my head from the classic adult film "Orgy of the Dead". If you have other shit to do today, you can just run with that sounds-like-sandwich bro, that'll get you listening if you understand them words bro. For those that don't know Budos Band or...

I say that there are a lot of things I like about music, but the most important trait of a great band/artist is getting the listener's feelings to adapt to the feelings they are expressing. Because in the end, music is supposed to be art. And art is supposed to effect you on emotional level... if it's good.  This is the single trait that in my opinion makes an album go from good to great. The delivery of the trait can come in multiple ways: a simple melody, a bunch of minor chords on an acoustic guitar, or in the case of Dilly Dally the mix of 2 parts unadulterated rage and 1 part quiet frustration.  Co-founder and vocalist Katie Monks has this salty/sweet vibe and she sings with two different personalities: One is Sheryl Crow post Lance Armstrong break-up and the other is Courtney Love...