Album Review: Meat Belt – Into the Settling Sun
Album Review Meat Belt – Into The Settling Sun By Jay Armstrong “A strange, inexplicable malaise is spreading throughout Earthsea. Magic is losing its power; songs are being forgotten; people and animals are sickening or going mad.” – The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin Into the Settling Sun opens textural, layered, danceable. “Gimme...
Rmblr: New Album | New Video | Let’s Party!
Rmblr's songs aren't crumbs for us to lick up, they are goddamn gutter glitter of the finest degree lifting us for a moment to ride on as though we live beside them.......Catching our favorite bands at our favorite spots now feels like we are bright-eyed alive in a way that can only be compared to...
Artist Spotlight: Sean Sczepanik
Fun horror inspired by rock n roll; kindred art of the purest form; sums up all of what strikes us as notably memorable about the work of Sean Sczepanik. We love it.
New Video: Baxu – “X-Rated”
You can feel cultivated inspiration seeping out the first moment you hear Baxu. A confident intelligence tows their line. They are bigger than what they offer—and what they offer is pretty damn fine. Michael Regino and Mike Garrido create music vibing with the feeling of carrying a guitar case through the front door of a...
Video Premier: The Stacks – “Chicon”
"Chicon" from The Stacks is a beautiful eloquent reflection of this malaise. Did they have to go and break our hearts so sweetly with this video though? It is almost too much. Beautifully shot and edited, we get a heaping dose of nostalgic letting go soundtracked in perfection.
Hot and Bothered: Smooch give us a wet dream sort of first kiss
If you put on your scratchiest ill-fitting black t-shirt and close your eyes with Smooch's "Pucker Up" playing, you can actually smell the late eighties.
Premier: Sweetfeed – “Highway of Hearts”
"Highway of Hearts" continues the can't-get-the-volume-high-enough excitement. These songs hype themselves. There is a rhythmically layered catchiness as each line dances on its own as though an entire chorus plays out with every five words that pass.
NEW MUSIC PREMIERE: Christine Renner – “Drown”
Christine Renner's bold in broken places sentimental pop warmly spins the experience in the omnipresent naivety of youth while maintaining integrity worthy of introspective appreciation. Renner is an idealist shaping inflected lyrics into rich ambiguous lingering dream monuments to greater truths and devastating defeats, no truer is this statement than with her new single "Drown."...
NEW MUSIC PREMIERE: The Dead Coats – “Forsake My Name”
Big things are on the way for The Dead Coats. This album will be as valid to where they are headed as all the wild shows and two great releases which came before it. No more and no less. After three years of digging this band, we are excited to bring you the first track...
New Video: Sleaford Mods ft. Amy Taylor – “Nudge It”
There are precisely two things we cannot get enough of lately; Amy Taylor (Amyl and the Sniffers) and pointed criticism aimed at socialite parasites destroying all we have found significant and substantial by their vein tourism. With "Nudge It" Sleaford Mods combine both with cutting perfection.
New Video: Casey Seymour – “Installations”
No one should be surprised by the well-deserved hype going Casey Seymour's way as the tickled ear smile crosses those first listening through his Hidden Hills EP. All that nice-guys-finish-last propaganda is simply not true; good people surface slowly with namasteic wholesome warmth so as to be less dramatic in how they get there is...
New Video: Attic Ted – “I Need A Holiday 2020”
Most years it is a fifty/fifty split between storm clouds and optimistic light breaking around the edges; there is time to laugh; we can band together to keep each other sane and lifted. This year has made jaded cynics of us all. Turns out when you have enough free time on your hands to watch...
New Music – Blue Jean Queen Explodes Our Hearts With “Wild Wild Woman”
Between Stevie Nicks on "Edge of Seventeen" and Deana Carter with "Strawberry Wine," now there is an equal which somehow manages to draw comparisons to both at the same time. "Wild Wild Woman" is powerful, perfect, and rises into the realm of greatness by transcending forever beyond the person who created it to represent a...
Album Review – Half Dream – Monsters of Needing
Monsters of Needing comes in voicing an introspective grasping of one's own anchored soul by the weighted center of life whose ever-presence has always been known but never embraced and, at best, vaguely named.
New Video(s): Lord Friday the 13th – “Bigots Beware”
Marking the first single from their Irrational Anthem EP, Lord Friday the 13th are celebrating with the release of THREE(!) videos for "Bigots Beware." Hey, with this extra time on our collective hands, at least they are putting it to good use. All we have been doing is refusing to put on pants while watching...
Album Review: Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters…
Once everyone has settled into a spot around the backyard, toss out a square to everyone and get the jawing out of the way waiting for those eyelids to get a bit heavy, those feet to get even heavier. Vibe.
Singled Out: ISS – “Too Punk For Heavy Metal”
Singled Out ISS – “Too Punk For Heavy Metal” by Jay Armstrong There are maybe four bands giving me feels beyond pacified as of late. ISS are one of them. Working on the review for the new Spits album, this forty-five Total Punk Records put out in June is what I find myself playing on...
New Video: Dena Hope – “Stay”
Mentally synth. Viscerally glam. Dena Hope's video for "Stay" is one hundred percent pop in as comfortable and relaxed sense possible. It is all looks and lighting on this Samara Simpson directed experience.
Happy Birthday Seth Gibbs: A Tribute Album
If what we create in life were to be more than a whispered glimpse of our true selves, we would rejoice in contentment looking back at our lives having done even a third of what Seth Gibbs did. Boldly broken with the absolute honesty of one working through the darkness in search of their better...
New Video: Flower Graves – “Ociin”
I see Sheila Vand in that scene of perfection; all stylized and rhythmic, imagining had A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night been made six years later. She places the record on to fill the silence and space, love is precarious after all, possibly this could have been the song washing over the uncertainty between...
New Music: Blue Jean Queen
Is anyone else over completely the perpetual reminders that Rockyanne Bullwinkle is perfect?
Artist Spotlight: Virginia (Vajaja) Meza
Meza's paintings are centered on familiarity while bathing the viewer in invoked emotion. One piece can be heavy, another whimsically optimistic; all are alive and memorable in a naturalistic expression of the best kind.
Album Review: Sailor Poon – Sailor Poon’s First Album
Immediate, upfront, hitting perfectly the notes of reminder the band everyone fell in love still retains the perfect balance from when their gang first took over these streets; facetious cynicism crafted with acute skill.
New Music: Kay Odyssey – “No Birds Sing”
So maybe you were thinking this mood to put on some Mazzy Star in your search for self-motivation while floating across the sea of emotional confusion called for something more of the moment; escapist memories made attached to something of your own. Kay Odyssey cries out from the wilderness for you to do just that—near...
New Music Video: The Sour Notes – “Peak”
The Sour Notes continue earning believers with their heads down and hearts full. Their latest single"Peak" has a warmly fitting video directed by everyone's favorite familiar face Matzoh Ball to go with it, sending home completely the Slanted and Enchanted post-Go-Betweens aesthetic they have embodied since moment one. For all those thirsty for the beautifully...
Album Review: Andrew Cashen – Guava Jazz
This album is about as jazzy as Morrisey's personality is tolerable but on the scale of listenable it leans decidedly more towards "highly" than it does "Jethro Tull." We recommend putting it on repeat while going toes up in some sunshine for a few hours, it was meant for being stuck at home looking for...
Punk Rock Aerobics by Hilken Mancini
Strap on your ankle sweatband, run that cassette adapter between your audio output and that boombox, and let's get sweating to something your mom's zoom instructor would never have the spine to do.
New Video: Dry Guy – “Something To Do”
Disaffected. Restless. Malcontent. If the collective unconscious had a talent beyond stoking the coals beneath our neurosis and honing in on the malaise of our be-here-now reality—learning bass perhaps, possibly figuring out how to structure a few minutes of noise—then no doubt in this foul-year-of-our-lord-Lemmy, "Something To Do," the quarantine inspired video from Dry Guy,...
New Music: Billy King and the Bad Bad Bad – “Tiger’s Den”
Billy King and the Bad Bad Bad are not a band solely hyping us on where they are, nor is it the unexpected notable progress we feel from them at every show played, it is where they are going getting us excited to be in proximity of what they are doing.
New Music: Country Legend Roky Moon – “Choo Choo”
It seemed impossible to love Roky Moon any more than we already did. We were wrong.
New Music Video: Holy Wave – “I’m Not Living in the Past Anymore”
...nails their simplistic aesthetic in craft while still feeling orgiastic in creativity. Basically, business as usual for this band who have been around just long enough to start being grandfathered in as the torchbearers of the Austin ideology.
New Single: Half Dream – “Strange Lover”
As if experiencing intimacy were not already a heavy confusing mess of emotions, "Strange Lover"—the new single from Half Dream—is a humble crying out to the wilderness of introspection. Where sadness and nostalgia is often reserved solely for the looking back while optimism and positivity come in looking forward, there is that moment which lies...
New Music Video: Lo Country – “Black Cloud”
Lo Country have been keeping their heads down for far too long, this first bite out of their upcoming full-length definitely has us interested. Then again, anyone who has spent ten minutes around Lo Country in the flesh already knows they are about the nicest buncha dropouts you could kick dirt with which should already...
New Single: Cafe Racer – “Faces”
Like digging boxes out of the closet and finding that leather jacket we thought lost all winter, slipping this one on makes for a good walk around the block with the cool comfort of familiarity. One can imagine "Faces" representing the band turning down the sheets for us to climb into bed with them; I...
Album Review: Attic Ted – “Kafka Dreaming”
Kafka Dreaming is a love letter to the possibilities of defining one's own boundaries over succumbing to expectations; even if those expectations are self-imposed. This album is a testament of the distance covered and growth felt on their journey.
Video Premier: Pelican Johnny – “Givin’ Up On You”
Shot straight to tape by Andy Gately, the new video for Pelican Johnny's "Givin' Up On You" is a visceral slice of hot n ready nineties reverence. The single itself is a solid balance between the sounds he often finds himself swaying between making it as good of song as any at allowing those new...
Artist Spotlight: Mel Stringer
Mel Stringer creates a little bit of everything. All of it is the absolute cutest!!!!
Artist Spotlight: Cassandra Ross
Few artists speaking through the dialogue of print manage to grasp the enigmatic magnetism attracting us to the soul of that which we love. Cassandra Ross (aka The Electric Sister Scorpio) does just that, speaking to us personally of her uniqueness in the face of the evergrowing universality of the all yet bringing us together...
Music Video: Moron’s Morons – “Addicted to Homicide”
Without an official release date other than "out soon" from Slovenly Records, let us for the moment breathe once more the air of anticipation from this Michał Mitoraj directed video for "Addicted to Homicide." Things are looking big for scuzzy rock n roll this year; Moron's Morons and Slovenly Records in general look to be...
Album Review: Schwein – Easy Does It
....a John Cale broken boldness sort of journey from open to close all swept over with a thousand hushed mystic ohms weaving the ride along. To break down the album track by track would be an injustice to its cohesive nature. Each song shakes hands with the next, peaks and valleys reflecting the same orgiastic...
Video Premier: Crocodile Tears – “Tuned Out”
Crocodile Tears make date music for the blank generation, cruising music for the down and outs, and are about as safe as good rock n roll can get. If this were 1980 they would rule the world.
Album Review: Warish – Down In Flames
Everything about Warish is off the cuff and hazy; they are equal parts walking through the horror section in the glory days of mom and pop video stores coupled with that experience felt playing the mixtapes your cool uncle or cousin snuck into your hands from time to time to show you a world far...
New Music Video: The Sun Machine – “Cumbia de Lagrimas”
Austin's teen sensation hearthrobs The Sun Machine are out to prove there is more to junior high than homework and sleepovers. They do a damn fine job at doing just that on their latest grindcore/dreampop hit "Cumbia la Lagrimas."
Nick Allison and the Players Lounge – Album Release | Tour Dates
There was a time when this band would have been solid simply by making noise here beside us as a word of mouth, "have you heard them yet," experience. Their hushed confidence was born for it yet now they stand as one of the last buoys of hope, a reminder of what this town is...
Burnouts Burning Out of Denver: Fast Eddy – New Songs | Tour
Somewhere between the New York Dolls and Paul Collins' Beat runs the subconscious thread stitching these burnouts together with a fuel burning manifest destiny pushing Fast Eddy out of Denver as though Seger himself sent his late seventies spirit right across time and space to whisper the word GO into their anxious ears.
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...
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...
Annabelle Chairlegs: New Video | Tour Dates
With the announcement of Annabelle Chairlegs heading out on tour with Black Joe Lewis comes the Vanessa Pla directed video for “Candle Apple Red." This band has been creeping in on world domination for like six years now continually leaving us with the same question as always; where the hell is the new album?!?!?...
Film Review: Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is a fantasy about how movies influence reality, which in turn influence movies, etc. etc. forming a pop culture circle– as we all know no one plumbs the hidden depths of pop culture quite like Tarantino.
