Articles

Greg Laswell has the voice of a fucking guy who's seen it all. He's a small town sherrif, a big city coroner, a 19 year old soldier; each battling different demons. Whether it's nightmares that won't let him sleep, mirrors who show him who he doesn't want to see, flashbacks of what no one should have seen in the first place, Greg sounds fucking miserable.  Buuuuut, I won't lie and say dude isn't appreciated like a muthafucka. His voice is somewhere in between Chris Isaak and the guy from Soul Coughing, both romantic and deep like the mind of Minolta (now picture this. Not pic-a-nic baskets, pic-a-nic caskets). Greg Laswell's "Dodged a Bullet" has me jacked as fuck for another album I'll only listen to alone, but I'll end up telling everyone I know about it, so then we can all...

SYFFAL would like to formally and orally welcome Me Like Bees to the American heartland for their 2016 tour. Instead of asking them things we don't care about, we've decided to put together a running tour diary of their adventures trying to hide their bodily functions, fluids, and odors from each other for a few weeks! If you've never heard these shitstacks, scroll to the bottom (the power bottom) and hit play on the stream dreams! WE GIVE  YOU: ME LIKE BEES TOUR DIARY DREAM JOURNAL! Day One: 2/1/2016 "When playing our hometown crowd of Kansas City, they greet us warmly with plenty of Satan and whiskey. Kicking off our tour tonight at the Riot Room, we'll meet up with Never Shout Never and the rest of the boy wonders in Minneapolis tomorrow."  Tim Day Two: 2/2/2016 "Miles and miles of...

Holy balls orbiting around a black pepper steak topped with truffle sauce. Caveman has a new song out: 'Never Going Back'. I only write about bands and songs I love, so naturally, I always sound excited about music. BUT this makes me really, REALLY excited. Caveman's self-titled album was released in 2013 and it was easily one of my favorites that year. It was so dark and dreary, but could make me happy on a sunny day. AND a song off that album called 'Over My Head' is one of the best songs of the century; it makes my knees clatter against each other just thinking about it. But, but, but....there was another song on that album that wasn't as moody and it was their 'hit'. That song was called 'In The City' and you may remember the video because it featured Julia Stiles. Anyhoo, I...

Holy fucking gooseballs all up on my goosepimples, this dude sounds like a freshly shaven Glen Hansard. Not only is this Flora Cash song the first song to make me immediately look out my window to my right and watch each individual snowflake flake, but this might be the first time I've felt a song this huge make me feel this small. "For Someone" is the song that plays in my imagination when some young wide eyed little girl finds the music box you've been trapped inside for decades up in some random attic and casually turns the key expecting nothing. Then the picture quickly zooms out and we're living life through the eyes of innocence, experiencing love, heartbreak, success, failure, and then it somehow ends with the little girl I just mentioned dancing at her own wedding with...

Up until last week I knew nothing about Howard. PPPR sent over this link for their new single "Glass" that's dropping inside their new EP Please Recycle which arrives March 25th, 2016, but I only listened to it because PPPR seems to send music that tends not to suck as much butt as other PR peeps' rosters suck butt, so I clicked.  And then the fucking music started clicking and chirping and blurping and blooping and blorping and thwapping, and then here I am with my pants around my ankles and I'm shuffling to and fro and fro and to and I'm a fucking puddle of folktronica excrement bro. This shit is exactly what my thoughts sound like if you catch me staring off into the great yonder, especially considering how great our yonder is here in the Chicago suburbs. We're known...

Three things happened this morning. 1. L.A. Girlfriend dropped a new album titled Neon Grey that I didn't know was coming out. 2. I only got thru the second song, "XIV". 3. I've only listened to "XIV" on repeat since I heard it the first time. Jesus fucking balls on a two door wineberry Toyota Camry with the O, the T, and the A scraped off of the rear bumper so alls it reads is TOY, this fucking song is BALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLS. I don't care what songs she's planning on releasing as singles, this song is already at the top of my list for my favorite fucking song of 2016. I'm not only dancing under my desk, I've stood up and done the whole whip each individual arm in circles while my plaid skirt falls below my knees thing when the song demands I do as such.  Taking a...

All you holy rollers and rock n' rollers. All you Bro's, Ho's and MoFo's. All you shoe gazers, Major Lazers and grass grazers.  All you hipsters and sipsters.....sippin' from that indie Kool-Aid. That blue Kool-Aid that doesn't make you feel blue necessarilyish, but makes you feel ALIVE.  ALIVE like the left nut of Barry Gibbs that's singin' AH AH AH AH. AHHHhhhhh, MMMMMmmmmm.  Below are Tom's favorite songs for January of 2016. If you don't like then it's Obama's fault.  Love,  Mama Grizzly Dr. Dog - Bring My Baby Back: Still my favorite song this year...so far.  James Supercave - Better Strange: I swear this guy has been working on his full length album for 3 years. But if all the songs or EPs that are slowly leaking out are good....then I can wait. '...

Last weekend, I was going through SYFFAL music submissions while also reading packet information for my meetings this week. This isn't me being lazy on either the reading or the listening, it's just become something I've learned how to do since SYFFAL somehow caught on and at the same time I took on some responsibilities that require 700-1000 pages of reading a week. I click over and open a few videos and hit play, then click back and keep reading. I do this for hours. Pretty much every weekend.  This particular round of R&L ("read & listen") had me deleting emails from all over the fucking world, and reading dozens of pages top to bottom, and skimming hundreds more. I must've deleted fifty submission emails before finding something I could listen to all the way through. But when...

I specifically remember writing about the song "Apollo" from the group Flight Facilities a few years ago. I still listen to that song all the fucking time, but I actually remember writing about it, that's how epically important that fucking song is to me. I can remember sitting at my kitchen table, almost perched up on my fucking toes I was so into describing how that fucking song made me feel.  Cathartic, therapeutic, erotic, whatthefuckever it was, hearing that, and then writing that, it's a fucking memory of a time in my life when a song touched a nerve and I had the opportunity to spurt my inspiration all over my stomach. Sure, nobody probably read it, just like no one will probably read this, but that isn't why we lose money to host a website where we only jack off the music we want...