Album Reviews

I first heard Cesl during what now seems like ancient history. The Lemondrop Kid. He was a brash, artistic and adorable member of the Futurelics. Think Log Cabin Crew only more Silver Lakey before Silver Lakey meant Silver Lakey. The year was 2001, maybe. I bought the tape from the old homie, Dave. The venues were dark and graffiti’ed and beautiful. The times were the best. And the worst.  Flash forward to a couple of years ago. Cesl was now Stephen Buchanan and, at his behest, I went to see him perform with The Vault Theater Co. in an anti-gentrification play in downtown LA. He was less Lemondrop Kid and more Music Man. It felt great to see his evolution. That us rap fucks could transcend the backpack and sing songs, and dance. I was inspired. I’m mostly writing this because Cesl fucking...

This album by Whitney is just a little weird...not too weird. Just covered in a thin film of weird. The sound is a little lo-fi, but only to the point where it sounds retro. The singer's voice is a little strange but distinct enough to be refreshing. Yet, all these songs have amazing hooks and are surprisingly easy to listen to. They just make you feel happy. To a lesser degree Whitney reminds me of Ariel Pink in the sense that they could probably hire a high-priced producer to crispin' up the songs into radio friendly hits. Of course, that'd strip the songs of everything I love, but it's a testament to how well they are written. They are like fucking putty....adaptable enough to be re-worked into a pop song, or an R&B song, or maybe even a country song. You could even weird them up...

I'm going to skip the suspenseful foreplay and tell you in the first sentence: THIS album is the best and most beautiful album you will hear this year.  I'm talking painful, blissful and emotional beauty.  All of the above and at the same time.  I'm talking erect pimples on your epidermis. I'm talking about the type of music that makes you content to listen in an uncomfortable chair as you stair into nothingness.  I'm talking an album so amazing that it's fucking up my listening habits. Normally I keep a playlist of new music for review, but I only want to listen to Gregory Alan Isaov (GAI). If I try to listen to new music, I quickly get annoyed and go straight back to GAI. I've already moved past shaming myself for re-starting the album immediately after a full time through and have...

I met Luis J. Rodriguez over the weekend. He’s the poet laureate of Los Angeles, author, and Chicano activist. In addition to calling for expansive politics of community, I listened to him speak about redemption, about coming back from monstrous acts, to find his true self, his peace, his path, his contributions to making his family and his city better. I reflected on my own path. I recommitted to my own journey from filling holes with liquor and smoke and random girls to my career as an educator and advocate for the most innocent among us, to my role as a father and role model, to my responsibility as an artist with a voice to affect change.  Homeboy Sandman’s newest record, Kindness for Weakness, might find the mid-30s rapper on a similar path. With the exception of “Talking (...

Sykoya sound like you have your faux fur hood up. You're about to step off a train in some far off Eastern European country. It's snowing sideways. You're the only person walking the direction you're walking. Everyone else is a dirty piece of shit.  Seriously, if the movie Frozen was a real thing, this would be its soundtrack.  Sykoya sound like that lilty, I'm wearing a skirt in windstorm feel of the first Sarah McLachlan album, sung by Amy Lee from Evanescence, but paired with the what could have been of the band Violet Hours. It's sultry and introspective and almost depressing, but sexy as FUCK.  Sort of a modern play on the definition of electro, Strange Night feels exactly how you'd expect: desolate and lonely, but the people brushing up against you on the subway platform of...

Since maybe 2012, I have one specific hang up when potentially writing about Aesop Rock. See, a mutual friend hooked me up with a Hail Mary Mallon interview, which meant I got to email interview two of my favorite throats in all of hip hopdom (Rob Sonic & Aesop Rock). I spent three fucking days coming up with the most specifically and ridiculously SYFFAL of interview questions for these two dudes. Assuming their personalities were on par with their writing and rapping styles, I figured I would be best served by going as far left of center as humanly possible. I had three or four friends read my interview questions and critique them and before editing them a half dozen more times, I finally sent them over to the two Mallon members. One day turned into one week. Three weeks turned into...

I didn't know I was an Astronautalis fanboy until yesterday. I was on my fourth listen of Cut The Body Loose. I had just gotten home from work and was quickly folding some laundry before my wife and kids picked me up to head out to dinner.  I had just started the song "Forest Fire" over for the third time in a row because I kept thinking I was missing something. Something in the song was fucking with me. Something familiar, but indescribable, like when you put yourself in the shoes of the girl in the book The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. You're lost, but something is pulling at your zipper, leading you out of the woods.  Something.  Then, while folding a baby blue bath towel it hit me. "A forest fire has a smell to it, a certain sweetness that misleads us to...

I'm really not trying to sound like an old fuck who complains about millennials, because fuck those old fucks. Technology changes different generations and we shouldn't hold these advancements against them. The same hypocritical assholes complaining about participation trophies would proudly don a ribbon advertising that they had it harder than the youngin's.  BOO fucking HOO.  They complain about mundane shit like: "We couldn't simply skip songs with a touch of the button back in my day. We had to fast forward a fucking cassette tape, stop and listen, fast forward a little more, stop and listen, rewind a little, stop and listen, decide to give up and just listen to the end of the song that proceeded the song we wanted to skip to in the first place.  And if we fast-forward it too many...

Since I write about music it's a given that I listen to a lot of music. This doesn't make my opinion any more or less valid than yours, but I can confidently say that Kyle Craft's new album Dolls of Highland doesn't sound like ANYTHING out there today. At least not anything that I've come across.  It's uniqueness comes two fold..... First fold is Kyle Craft's voice. As soon as I heard his voice at almost 30 seconds into the first song it sounded familiar. Like it was tattoo'd on my brain from long ago, yet I couldn't place it. BUT I was certain I've head this motherfucker before because nobody sounds like him PERIOD. It's like when a song comes on the radio you've never heard before, but know it's Don Henley because nobody else sounds like fucking Don Henley. Or Chris Cornell....

Over the last two weeks Factoria has sat in a playlist. Alone.  Everything else I dumped onto the manpod that one fateful day has already been deleted and forgotten about. Yet there Factoria sits. It isn't that I don't care for the album, it just hadn't hit me yet. Having experienced and loved Factor Chandelier's production before, I wasn't sure if maybe I wasn't in the right place, or that, unfortunately, the album was shit. Hey, even tall svelte Canadian denim models can make shitty music once in awhile bro, don't get snippy.  The last two weeks were supposed to have been the month of April, but resembled rather the mid-February span of buttshits with sideways sleet and snow, high winds, and everyone acting like fucking bitches.  Then last Thursday the clouds seemed to...