Yuppies may be extinct. Living and working in the Midwest, the closest you often get to a sighting seems to be bros from A&M-type schools wearing stripey polos and Madras shorts. These preptastic beer-guzzlers are a subdivision of the Yuppie kingdom, destined to become power players at some investment firm shortly after crushing the rest of their cohort en route to an MBA, but the banker’s collars and tennis outfits are largely gone. Blue blazers are now fastened with as few as one button instead of a 3 X 2 arrangement of brass monstrosities. Anyone draping a knit pullover over their shoulders is doing so ironically. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Waste Not, Want Not: 8/23/2013
And now for part two of two of this week’s honorable mentions. This one is more than a little diverse. Continue reading
Waste Not, Want Not: 8/22/2013
Folks, I’ve been slacking. To make up for it, here’s the first of two installments of the best of what’s been hitting my uncleaned inbox for the last week of so. Five today, five tomorrow: Continue reading
The Starfolk – “The Great Unknown”
Today, I’ve got a great new premiere for you that sounds like it comes out of the best college rock of the 90s — which makes sense. The Starfolk are a new band coming out of Minneapolis, built by the members of the Hang Ups, who I personally have no recollection of in spite of their status as “90s indie pop darlings” according to Pure Volume, who premiered the track. No matter, because the track is great, Hang Ups or no Hang Ups.
Waste Not, Want Not: 8/13/2013
I know this is a day later than it should be, but I absolutely had to put a link up to stream Ty Segall’s new album. If you weren’t aware, Sleeper is a slower, lighter affair that doesn’t dispense with guitar charm.
Anyway, here’s what I missed over the last week:
Ty Segall: Sleeper
Ty news is good news, though this good news seems a bit bittersweet. Ty Segall is finally out with another new album. (When I say “finally,” I mean it relatively speaking — 2012 saw the release of three full-lengths and the last one was almost a year ago.) Sleeper, however, is a quiet affair, touching on introspection even moreso than 2011’s Goodbye Bread and featuring sparse, mostly acoustic arrangements and even a handful of strings. Continue reading
Jef Barbara – “I Know I’m Late”
Didn’t I just write something about acts from Montreal having some form of strange, unnameable character? As if to confirm my thoughts, Jef Barbara debuted a new video for “I Know I’m Late,” a single from upcoming sophomore album Soft To The Touch, and it is FABULOUS. Continue reading
Tape Deck Mountain – “Always Lie”
“More shoegaze. MORE SHOEGAZE. MOAR!” is what my inner editorial consultant tends to say. I’m OK with this.
Tape Deck Mountain is one of those acts whose choice in name is way too questionable (or not ironic enough?) for how seriously good the material is. You can tell that principle member Travis Trevisan knows his stuff. This, of course, is the problem with so many nouveau shoegaze artists, though — they put My Bloody Valentine and Loveless on such a high pedestal that all the output sounds dull and derivative, like a copy of a copy of a copy. But TDM seems to have a grasp on the demure moodiness that made the early 90s movement so alluring: it’s like he set up a playdate with a tremolo pedal and a whammy bar in a zero gravity chamber. Continue reading
Waste Not, Want Not: 8/5/2013
So I’ve been falling behind on my daily slew of email press releases. Every weekday there are at least a dozen new bands, tracks and album that get announced and shared, but I tend to limit myself to a maximum of one thing per day, and even then I don’t always have the time or energy to put something up every day. I do, after all, wish to hold on to whatever shred of sanity I have left.
As a result, a lot of stuff gets left behind — a lot of stuff that is actually fantastic and worth sharing — so every now and then, I’m going to put together some of the best of my backed-up inbox. Here’s what you might have missed over the last few days: Continue reading
Pop. 1280 – “Human Probe” & album stream
Filled with noise but never hiding behind it, Pop. 1280 is a band that channels their sound through the weirdo aesthetics of other Sacred Bones acts but roots it through the punchy tones befitting old Wax Trax releases. There are a plethora of words and phrases I use to describe the band’s sound, including, but not limited to: “death shuffle”, “garbage stomp” and “unholy soapbox gospel”. Continue reading