It may be hard to believe, but Green Day’s Mike Dirnt turns forty years old today. In honor of the iconic bassist hitting the big 4-0 I decided to construct a “ladder” connecting Mr. Dirnt to 1920′s blues powerhouse Bessie Smith. I mean hey, why not have some fun to celebrate a milestone in the life of a member of [...]
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New Gaslight Anthem: “45″
The Jersey punks are back with the first single from the upcoming fourth record, Handwritten. The band tells Rolling Stone that they “wished to return to the driving punk rock that ignited” their early work. True to their word, the song’s a little heavier (relatively speaking, of course) than anything on 2010′s American Slang. I’d [...]
Ted Nugent meeting with Secret Service because….well, The Nuge is a moron
So Ted Nugent, everyone’s favorite right-wing has-been musician, said something stupid. Doesn’t seem that newsworthy. Or something that the Secret Service would look into. Mostly, that’s the case. The man could reasonable be called mentally unstable. So it shouldn’t really be a shock that he said something the SS interpreted as potentially threatening to President [...]
Sticks and Stones
This is a guest post by Robert Greenberg, author of “How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart” WE were told as children, “sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you.” Wrong. In truth, words have the power to inflict tremendous hurt: spiritual, emotional, and [...]
Haley Reinhart- “Free”
This is probably one of the most outlandish things I’ll say for a very long time: I like an American Idol alum, plain and simple. In fact, I just may like her a lot. For those who didn’t tune in to the tenth season of the show, which features perennially unoriginal talent (but talent nonetheless), [...]
New Song: Cashier No.9
Belfast’s Cashier No.9 first caught our eye at last year’s Truck Festival. Treating the bleary eyed mid-Sunday afternoon festival goers with some truly psychedelic, upbeat indie-pop. The band’s debut, To The Death Of Fun, was released last year to an even spread of congratulatory applause. Praised for it’s lush arrangements, shimmering production quality and – [...]
New Beach House – “Lazuli” and “Myth”
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I didn’t love Beach House. There are surely scores of people out there who can’t stand them. They must be a frustrating band to hate because, well, all their songs take such a uniformly dramatic, florid tone that likely makes detractors want to barf simply because [...]
Truffle Shuffle #3: Secret Rivals
Welcome to the third installment of our Truffle Shuffle series where we meet up with an Oxford band, sit them down, crack out the iPod and hit “shuffle” in order to sample a tiny, potentially misrepresented, morsel of their musical world. We discuss the importance (or perhaps insignificance) of the first six tracks which appear [...]