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Film Review: Bong Joon-ho – “Parasite”
Parasite ultimately expresses the faceted characteristics in ourselves as a healthy balance, the possibilities and pendulum swings from one emotion and style of thinking to another defining us as complex individuals; Bong Joon-ho shows us the balance which can be created within the house of ourselves. Then in his typical unique way shows what happens when our own carelessness allows the balance to be thrown off. At which point the entire films dissolves before us as though it is the opening moment of a demolition derby when the gas pedals are floored, the rear tires are spinning with slow grabbing muddy traction, until finally the mounting expectations crash in on…
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Oddball Vintage Photo Set: Youth, Tenderness, and Skipping Class in the 90’s
Oddball Vintage began with the intention of showing what skipping class in the 90's might have looked like in a way which would encompass youth and tenderness in the process, how perfect these turned out could not have been anticipated.
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Album Review: Thelma and the Sleaze – Fuck. Marry. Kill
It takes time to get where we are going, things evolve, our foot may ease the pedal off the floor a bit but in its place you get to feel that suspension tapping out the quarter mile rhythm on a back road burn sesh without a cop in site and sunlight still left to freeze a few frames eternal with each glancing off at the horizon; long story short Thelma and the Sleaze just traded in their ninety-one Mustang for a seventy-four Coup De Ville and they are riding around in it like the album sales already paid the damn thing off.
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Drunk Mums: US Tour | New Songs | World Domination
Having gone hard for five solid years now, spoon feeding Drunk Mums to every poor bastard I rub shoulders with, now less than a week until these Australian gods finally (FINALLLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) smell up Hotel Vegas, I daydream of the halo hazed optimism, the restored faith in a very alive still kicking spirit of rock n roll coming off these dudes as they climb out of the van to feel this over-hyped city for themselves.
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Film Review: Peeping Tom
When film grabs you, it never really lets you go.
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Film Review: Alita: Battle Angel (NO SPOILERS)
We as an audience find ourselves intrigued by her mystery; drawn to the shadow, squinting into the abyss with excitement of the potential sensed boiling beneath the surface. Alita is a martial arts film disguised as a heroes journey and that is what makes it great.
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Mixtape Monday: Politics as Usual (An Open Letter to America)
The only thing holding this one together is the ethos.
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Fanclub: All The Same EP and Instagram Takeover!
Fanclub: All The Same EP and Instagram Takeover! By Jay Armstrong I meant every word I said back in August gushing over Fanclub. What I did not know then, even in the light of such positive feelings, is how much getting their latest six songs would hit when playing it. This All The Same EP is a great step for the band. For the strength of their first two singles hearing their songs blend forming who they are and what shape they are proving to be is powerful beyond expectations. “Stranger” comes in like a John Hughes film; all four/four time and catch-me-if-you-can wanton synths, guitar lingering in the…
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Missing Pages: Long Way Down and a Love Letter To Stephen Svacina
There was though a spirit crying out to us from the wilderness of our small nowhere nothing nobody towns which tempted us to risk the comfort of the familiar to land in a foreign place of culture shock and suffocating all alone and to know even on the darkest defeated nights that if we kept looking we would find IT. And we did. The worth was and will always be enough for five lifetimes.
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Mixtape Monday: Grab Bag
Mixtape Monday: Grab Bag
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Mixtape Monday: Disappear Here
Anon Magazine Mixtape Monday: Disappear Here
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The Reputations: Loving Them Is Easy
The Reputations radiate in what would best be called the Stevie Nicks effect. Loving them is easy.
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Willy Vanilla – “American Neck”
Willy Vanilla – “American Neck” By Jay Armstrong Willy Vanilla’s American Neck is lighthearted as hell. If only talent were allowed to speak in a space devoid of ego-maniacal ambitions more often. Every song has its own spine, its own strut. These guys aren’t trying to force an angle or end result. They don’t fall in the boring Black Angels rut of being one-sided or even yaaawwwwnnn worse psychedelic. There’s no concern of protecting their pretension, there’s no wall being built song by song to define their cool. Precisely this is what makes the album great. The time other bands spend selling you something, these dudes spend splitting beers and…
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New Attractions – “Hole In My Heart”
New Attractions – “Hole In My Heart” By Jay Armstrong It is no secret that my love for The Rich Hands goes deep. Not a week passes without throwing on one of their records, especially Take Care, so hearing the New Attractions first release “Hole In My Heart” obviously hit with a blind force of hell yeah. Sure this is a band which includes members of Crocodile Tears and Trouble Boys but as long as Cody Mauser is fronting it there will be no escape from referencing how it sounds along The Rich Hands spectrum. This new project steps back in the direction of their Out of My Head…
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New Crush: Fanclub
New Crush: Fan Club by Jay Armstrong After all these years hanging in the back refusing to acknowledge beyond waning disinterest the failed synth attempts to sell pop for popularity one could easily grow weary and suspect of all things falling in that direction. Never though will that be the case, I sit candle lit in late night hours window waiting for something affecting, honest, simple to calm it all in suspended moments. Long has it been since someone has done it right in Austin. Could The Golden Ghetto have been the last? Maybe one of Mark Tonucci’s projects has come along since which is slipping my mind, certainly nothing…
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Bustin’ Loose – Trouble Boys Video Premiere and Tour Kickoff
Trouble Boys – Bustin’ Loose By Jay Armstrong Video Premiere and Tour Dates Last month when we said “Trouble Boys make the best goddamn rock and roll Austin has felt this side of The Skunks,” you can believe we meant it. As they head out on tour this week here is your chance to see for yourself why our word is worth its weight in gold. This video shot by Andy Ray Lemon should be enough to get those pants just tight enough to fire ya up to catch them in the wild. They kick things off tomorrow night at Hotel Vegas alongside America’s favorite sleazy good time The…
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Trouble Boys: Bigger Than The Both Of Us
Trouble Boys Bigger Than the Both of Us By Jay Armstrong In my own living room, as I’m hitting stride on some puffed chest ego stroking story about kicking dust with Cheetah Chrome and Bobby Liebling on some otherwise forgettable night of recent past, a friend interrupts asking “who are they? Should I know them?” With such a harsh truth about reality in mind one is left with only one valid question; what kind of chance do the Trouble Boys (or any other band we give a shit about for that matter) have at all? In the end all of this amounts to nothing, all of it. On a long…
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Welcome To Our Hearts Haze County
Welcome To Our Hearts Haze County by Jay Armstrong I am in love with Haze County. These first songs are a selfish organic release of compounded layered expression yet speak to the ALL our individual spirits gravitate towards. Haze County breathes through frantic frenzied technique blurred beneath a rare sensitivity towards the bigger cohesive whole. Certainly this is yet another band on the path of Bryan Leslie Roberts creativity yet the stand alone, above, beyond, nature of this project’s first few songs overshadow all which he had his hands in before. What is the point in reflecting on each band and step leading Roberts here when such reflection would take…
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Crypt Trip Get Back To Their Roots
Crypt Trip Get Back To Their Roots By: Jay Armstrong Sure I’ve written warmly about them before, sure seeing them on a bill raises the quality standard of an excuse I need to stay under a blanket reading for the night, yet there has always been an underlying intangible which kept me from fully subscribing to Crypt Trip. There were sporadic notable flashes certainly but where were they truly at in all of it? Where was their voice and what the hell did it have to say? Their latest album Rootstock does well to make sense of the rift previously unbridgeable between respect and fandom. We now see a…
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Film Review: Call Me By Your Name
It is no simple task to express the alive and the confusion of touching the all in those fading days of youth when the near violent sweep within us from weeping sadness and blind burning excitement shifts in a single breath leaving us lost as our knowledge fails us beneath the screaming of our hearts swaying in the now. How hard it is to put into a thousand words by the most skilled writers such a complex period of life and yet Guadagnino has done just that. Call Me By Your Name reads more than is watched, it is an impressive timeless film to say the least, no compliment would…
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SASS
SASS By Jay Armstrong In a world of sham and plastic, where the view of the future optimistic finds itself walled by new condos and business park skyscrapers, knowing we can’t go back, what we have now and what we choose to do with it is detrimental. The importance lies in counting our allies, valuing the real, holding tight to that which is valid, which reflects back upon us the truth expected in youth to find eternal yet found not. Passion! What else matters now? And where does one look to tell it from the paint by numbers invalid sheep in wolf’s clothing all? It’s not who you are.…
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Friday the 13th: Nostalgia, Films, and a Celebration of Fictional Occult Terror
Nostalgia, Films, and a Celebration of Fictional Occult Terror By Jay Armstrong Take some advice from a dude sitting in his boxers eating three day old cold pizza; find something you geek about and celebrate it. Ask those around you to celebrate it with you. Make it a THING. Maybe you are a huge Neil Diamond fan, throw a birthday party for him, The Virgin Sacrifice is your favorite short film, set up your apartment with a giant pentagram on the floor and spray fake blood on all of your naked bodies as you dance around some creepy dude in a chair, whatever, come up with an external…
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IT: A Film Above the Criticism
IT A Film Above the Criticism By Jay Armstrong As nostalgic exploitation and cultural appropriation choke the soul out of the last vestiges of creativity, we look back on the golden age of cult fanaticism through the lens of IT, our cold shallow like/not-like hearts boldly warmed to life once more through what we are shown. On the surface IT has everything scoffers need to ooze their vile acidic condescension upon; a reboot, reimagined in the late 80’s, curtailing the success of Stranger Things in the ultimate case of a carbon copy of art being carbon copied yet again. Such criticism, albeit true, misses the mark of director Andy Muschietti’s…
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Rock N Roll, Politics, & Seattle: An Interview with Dopers
Rock N Roll, Politics, & Seattle: An Interview with Dopers By Jay Armstrong There are times when sitting down to write about a band feels impossibly hollow, working more to void the attraction of the songs they create. Qualifiers and labels by nature are divisive, this becomes less an issue once we have held hands with a band for a while, walked around the block a few times in late night conversation becoming truly familiar. New bands get scapegoated at the feet of needing to explain where a band should be compartmentalized without being given the breadth of space and time to grow into themselves. I can’t sit through another…
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Jon Chamberlain: Representing the Void
Jon Chamberlain: Representing the Void By Jay Armstrong “Capturing people when they let their guard down is what makes a portrait special to me.” – Jon Chamberlain While the art is familiarized and internally grasped by so many, photographers find themselves shadowed by our swipe-swipe-swipe indulgences in this digital age, no longer do we see the collective work to hear their whispered hearts spoken through the capturing lens. The power of the photograph tainted through cross-format compression only furthers the damage done by our prioriti of being pacified– laziness leading down the path of least resistance where the importance of being entertained dulls us all the more. Choosing to…
