Album Reviews

This band Wild bug the fuck out of me. For a few reasons.  First and foremost, why is this shit being sent to SYFFAL? This is the most obvious Top 40 perfection I've ever fucking heard, there should be no "grassroots PR campaign" by the three members of this fucking band. There should be no "hey will you listen to my album?". These assholes should be wearing free clothing from Kohl's as of YESTERDAY. These assholes should be signing the trapper keepers of every kid attending their JC Penny clothing line release party spectactular that includes free popcorn and buy one get two thin bedazzled belts. The sound of Wild is so EXACTLY what the radio is going to swallow whole that I'm surprised as shit we were even considered as a recipient of such blatantly perfect radio fodder. Two, every damn...

Balthazar’s last album Rats was in my ears for a good six weeks straight because immediately following the first time I heard the song “Sinking Ship” I got all itchy and started wearing an ankle length trench coat and talking with a lazy jaw. Holy shit that song was my lover for a while there, my wife was kinda pissed. I was seriously smitten, but smitten is a shitty excuse for the word to use here bro. Smitten is your basic Boones Farm to my fuck you this is super uber dank bourbon barreled craft rareball’d high ABV booze bro. I was druuunk on that Balthazar bros. Numb at the fingertips and loosey goosey in the neck; I was making poor life decisions based around my assumptions about how the members of this band saw life around them. Obviously European as fuck, where...

Except for all of the actual real life problems, being a music junkie isn't that different from drugs. I wake up with weird zip files in my downloads. I can't remember where exactly I got them. Was is another blog or podcast? A friend? A Syffal submission? Somebody I met? A sponsored Facebook post that to be honest annoy me most of the time I see them like I'm not seeing this because I truly like you but because you spent real-life money to make sure that I did and for that I probably wouldn't click it because I have problems like that?  But there it is. Its eyes closed. I can see it breathing. Sleeping. I know it's not dead. Exactly how deep did I go, here? I try falling back asleep pretending that maybe when I wake up it'll be gone. But there's no use.  I start to piece back together...

LIfe has a way of pointing you in the right direction. As mine was falling apart, I was living in the back bedroom, separated from my wife and feeling like a ghost under my own roof. It was in this tired, huddled, poor state that I found a voice from the fog. Each week I would return to Syffal for the words of one Timothy Baker and my all time favorite Syffal column, "Music Ruined My LIfe". Tim had a way of reminding me that everything has always sucked. He pulled no punches in reminding me how far I'd come. His tales of confusing sex, awful influences, terrible fashion, and questionable life choices broke me down and built me back up. I had convinced myself that I was the only one. It was life affirming to read that someone else out there was as confused, and broken, and annoyed by...

I make music. People always tell me I'm on some early Anticon. I always take that as a compliment whether that's what they meant or not. Jel is a founding member of Anticon and if how much I like this record is any indication, I hope I STILL sound like Anticon.  Among other thrones in Valhalla, Jel is, along with Doseone, the Notwist and throngs of other mother fuckers, also part of the incredible 13 & God.  Greenball 6 is the latest installment in Jel's beat tape series. I'm not exactly sure if it's the sixth actual installment in the series, as I'm pretty sure in my library there's a Greenball 3.5. But you get the idea.  Greenball 6 is the soundtrack to the base jumps I haven't ever done because I'm a husky gentleman and a father and nobody wants to read...

There's a song on this album with the word Kowloon in its title. I somehow noticed that white stepping into Fennec's world, and it quickly painted a darkened vertical slum of an entire city this album seems to take place inside of.  Whoever the hell Fennec might be, there's a shitload of brooding ass burnt motherfuckin hues on the painter's pallete bro. The entire R.I.P. City album goes from one definition of dank to another with such subtle intensity, I'm certain this is the electronic album of the fall, even though it dropped this summer.  Since R.I.P. City is a gapless listening experience, I've taken to it on the whole, unsure of track names or exactly when I'm leaned over with my eyes closed lost in the thoughts of nothing in particular. The entire album plays out...

Sometimes, when you're sitting at the edge of your bathtub, with a fresh pack of razorblades. You think to yourself, what would be the best soundtrack to listen to while I bleed out into my own warm, pink-watered oblivion? Oh wait, that's just me? Well, fuck you AND your happiness! For the other six billion people in the world, beside you (twat), we have Marilyn Carino and her new album Leaves, Sadness, Science. I know what you're thinking. The album title sounds like its going to be the illest party record of all time since "Whoop, There it is" by Tag Team. Well, you're in luck, it's not. The whole album is like a triumphantly depressing Dan Lish drawing. Also, if you dont know who Dan Lish is we can't be friends. Leaves, Sadness, Science is an electronically driven,...

I'm a pretty blatant Blind Melon fan. Their self titled album came out right when I started realizing how important this music shit was to me. I don't just remember the feeling of that cassette case in my right hand with my walkman in the other, I can still imagine the fucking smell of that album as I sat in the backseat of my parents' minivan on some vacation to nowhere in particular.  Those solo road trips with my music took me from a fan of music to a fucking fiend for music. I started to take these road trips with one or two friends once I got my license and the truckstop tape displays were where I would drop 5 bucks on some random tape I would never even think of buying on CD from Sam Goody bro.  One tape I remember specifically (as it pertains to this band Moondog Matinee) was the...

When you listen to hundreds of bands and artists a month, it's sometimes tough to gauge technical skill when you're listening for something that excites you. You aren't listening to new music to hear something "better" than everything else, you're listening to new music in an effort to keep an ear out for that same feeling you get when you hear music you're already in love with.  Oftentimes the most amazing musicians are horrible gift wrappers. They don't understand how you can have ALL THE CHOPS and could beat Steve Vai in a guitar solo battle for your very fucking soul yet still suck fucking ass. These are the guys who can scale their asses off and even play along to an Invalids album like it's easy, but when you sit down next to them with your own guitar they couldn't GDCG to save...

I have a thing for bands with a style. Sure, if the music sucks shit the fucking style matters naught, but music I like coming from a band with their stylistic shit together makes my man meat moistened and my manfingers move.  One of the few bands that I can picture after a mere mention of their name is the LA post-punk/amazing vegan chefs Ballerina Black. I picture them in black denim, a few members in black button downs, maybe a black fedora on the one with a flower print v-neck and a black sport coat on top of that, and they look disinterested as fuck. And five seconds after I wrote that I checked out their website and HOLY BALLS ON A VENEZUELAN MASSEUSE NAMED MASSEUAZUELAN, I WAS RIGHT! Ballerina Black have this mope-rock shit down, and it doesn't just make me want to listen to them...