One Song

Brzowski is the homie. He’s a kindred spirit out there on the road. When you realize you’re on the same bill as a rapper from Portland, Maine opening for Grandmaster Bizzy Bee in San Di-fucking-ego, you just know.  Ole Brz has teamed up with fellow Portlander, C Money Burns, and morphed into doomsday rap duo, Vinyl Cape with DJ Mo Niklz. (The lack of vowels in Maine, I find disconcerting.) Vinyl Cape's apocalyptic li’l ditty, “Ordinary Monsters featuring Renee Coolbrith” recorded as theme music for Damnationationland Horror Film Festival, makes me want to open my arms to the end. Makes me want to dance on our graves. Makes me want to bare ass, full moon a mushroom cloud. Makes me drive my...

I love being pleasantly surprised.  Wait. No. I love being unbelievably, undeniably, and perfectly in the right frame of mind in the right place at the right time to be in said frame of mind in the right place. (READ THAT AGAIN, YOU MISSED THE JIZZT.) This morning one of our twitter boyfriends named Ben Resnik was doing the dark lord's work by suggesting our faces get radical. Fifteen minutes later I have my pants pushed down around my workboots and I'm twirling around my pharmacy like a man who just won the ear-lottery, or the lotEARy (which is a word I just made up because I have the sense of humor of a high school science teacher). Radical Face is some shit! "The Road to Nowhere" sounds all at once like the first song I've ever heard and the last song I'll...

There are sacred places in this world. There are little corners of comfort. Little slices of home.  I'm not from Los Angeles. But having been here so long, after not being from here, those pockets have been priceless.  Those little sacred places where I can go to just be. No pretense. No put-ons. No straight face. No costumes or uniforms. No second guesses. And no half steps. Only pirate kings. Only dreamers and never-do-wells. A growling belly of beautiful hell.  They never last. They can't. They're too true. Too real for this world. Too dangerous. Too much fucking fun!  But when I find them, I cherish them. Frequent them often. Root for them. Join in the fury with a reckless fervor, I should probably thank them for.  And that kind of real freedom to exist is what makes me love the music...

AH JESUS BALLS ON A DILAPIDATED GAS STATION SIGN SOME SCHMUCK IN AUSTIN, TEXAS HUNG UP IN HIS GARAGE BAR WHERE HE PLAYS BARTENDER FOR HIS BUDDIES FROM HIS POOL LEAGUE, White Denim fucking kill me.  These motherfuckers just whip out guitars and MURDER everyFUCKINGthing EVERY FUCKING TIME! "Holda You" is fast as fuck, jammy as fuck, and holy shit I can't hit repeat fast enough. It's like every song they write is somehow a subliminal message telling me to drive, FAST. Every song White Demin writes and releases (for me alone) has me air guitaring and rapid head nodding, but while my adoration for their musicality is vast, their continuous ability to redraw their sound every few years is awe inspiring. The riffage contained in this fucking song is so...

This is the type of song that inspired Adam Sandler to stick a shampoo bottle in and out of his ass at a medium pace. This shit is perfectly medium. Right now, on my third listen, my boner is ticking like a metronome synched at 90 bpm.  It's my bonernome, bro. 'Bring My Baby Back' is a newly recorded track off of Dr. Dog's resurrected first album called Psychedelic Swamp. Yes, that's right Dr. Dog fans, adjust your couduroys and take a deep breath: their debut album Toothbrush was not actually their debut debut.  And while I may not classify 'Bring My Baby Back' as psychedelic (what the album title suggests) or retro (what I assume any Dr. Dog track to be), know that it's still 100% Dr. Dog.  What does...

I'm only going to mention the Bon Iver similarity once just to get it the fuck out of the way, so think it once, and then put that shit out ya brain, because this is better than a "it sounds like...". "In Your Blood" from Thom Byles is some motherfuckin' hot chocolate right the fuck now. The emotion this dude thumbslaps his acoustic guitar with is fucking gut wrenching. While the guitar is on a steady paced meter set to soothe, the percussive aspects of this song are captivating as fuck. Normally when you're looking to layer a song with vocals, the layered aspects are the focus for the listener, but while it starts out like that, the gradual move towards that drummed rhythm is gorgeous. And while I didn't notice all of the reverb on the guitar at first, holy shit...

This woman. This Wølffe. I don't completely understand what she's doin' to a motherfucker, but I've been interpretive dancing with this box of Kleenex for the last half hour with "Trouble Ahead" on repeat. Yes, I'm twisting and twirling and ripping individual tissues out the fuckin' box and dramatically draping them across my elongated neck and then Matrix-style dodging them like bullets shot from a pistol held by my OWN FUCKING EMOTIONS BRO. HOW FUCKING DEEP IN THE SHIT AM I? Fuck you Wølffe. I'm a man in 2016, I should not be more prone to pirouette than slowly nod my head. I should NOT be wearing these spandex.  Do I think I can dance (dance, dance, dance)???? HELL YEAH I CAN DANCE. I'VE MADE THE LOT OF YOU YEARN FOR MY SWEET SWEET AND SUPPLE MANPURSE HAVE I...

I like how immediately I'm envisioning The Monkees and In Tall Buildings and LCD Soundsystem all having a vegan and cocaine picnic and trading Pokemon cards in a rolling field of hemp.  Whoever the fuck TW Walsh is, his dirty ass drums, twinkling fuckin' piana (YEA PIANA BRUH), and form fitting plodding rhythms have me slow stomping around my world like an animated oversized man in a Grateful Dead music video with proportionately large shoes bro. Check these zapatos as they crush fountains and park benches, but notice how I avoid the paleta guy. Because the world needs more paletas. THEMS IS DELICIOSO.  I can't help but twirl around my aforementioned world with my arms above my hands because "Young Rebels" is just so fucking fantastically happy in this moment. ...

When I was in the early half of high school, any song that started with such a whimsical synth would get the gasface. I'd not only ignore anything I'd consider one of them synth shits, I wouldn't even test my ability to enjoy something based merely on the fact that it contained a "non-analog" instrument. HOLY SHIT I WAS A FUCKING ASSHOLE. I've really turned my life around since then, me swrrrs! Sure, I'm still a fucking asshole, but now that I'm in my mid-30s, the inclusion of a well crafted synth as a song is introducing its sonic-self to my side faceholes is something I welcome with open holes.  The intro on "Lean" from VHS Collection is fucking all sorts of hells yes. It's like the beginning of a workout video my tween self might consider masturbating to when...

Duuuuuuuuude. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.  Top Girls was my SHIT a few years ago, then word on the internet street is the dude got all into life and forgot about those of us with his name tattooed on our taints.  THIS shit right here tho. "On & On" is the subtle creepin' beatin' of a dude who knows his music is the aforementioned taint between R&B and electro and it's not only super fucking fresh, there's a fucking bead of either sweat or sex dripping down the crease.  The steady throb of that bass-synth. The dusty layers of static coating every inch of each individual bleat of those pleasurable meets painful vocals. THE SIMPLE DING DING DING DING at 1:28 SKRAIGHT KILLLLLS MEEEEEEE, but dude, the sly Beverly Hills Cop shit at 2:42 has me gorilla faced and neck...