The first thing you need to know is this: my sleep habits for most of the year 2000 were atrocious. There was a point where I thought four hours, or four and a half, could sustain me. And so I’d be up late, sitting online and messaging with friends into and past the small hours, hoping I wouldn’t see the first traces of dawn lighting up the sky before I fell into sleep, before my alarms rung me awake […]
Cy Dune is the most recent incarnation of guitarist/songwriter Seth Olinsky of Akron/Family. I use the word “incarnation” because Cy Dune is more than just a project, it’s an identity, a platform through which Olinsky can not only explore new sounds and styles but also put his ideas about the transcendent power of rock ’n’ roll into practice. For Olinsky, rock ’n’ roll can be more than danceable, sexy fun. It can danceable, sexy and fun to the point of […]
I’ve had No Other‘s “Option C” stuck in my head for about a week now. It’s the a-side of a new seven inch that they released as part of the Negative Fun Singles Club, and it’s a fantastic song in numerous ways: dynamically, lyrically, rhythmically. I’ve known singer-guitarist Maria T Sciarrino since 2005, and I reached out to her and bassist Laura Chance to discuss their new single, their magnificently-titled debut EP I Believe in Werner Herzog, Scrawl, Gene Clark, and the ways […]
This week, I made it out to see a lot of live music. Most of it was for the CMJ Festival; I’m also going to throw in Dark Blue’s in-store at Rough Trade (pictured above) from yesterday into the mix, as I’d been in the space for a CMJ show not twelve hours earlier. As I did with my look at Basilica Soundscape, here are five things that stuck with me in particular.
It probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that somebody in a band named after L. P. Hartley’s most famous novel amassed a pretty impressive book collection before his death in 2006. But what should be done with Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens paperbacks and hardcovers? The 30+ boxes had been sitting around in storage since his untimely death, and nobody could figure out where they should go to.
Peter Bebergal’s Season of the Witch is the latest book that utilizes fonts, colors, and images that look like they could be on a cover of Creem magazine or a concert at the Filmore East (think Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl and The Second Sex by Michael Robbins) to come out this year, and probably the most appropriate considering the book is about the occult’s relationship with rock music.
The evening’s hush had been invaded by a screaming maniac, and no one knew what to do. It was January 1998, and a last farewell concert had gathered at a stuffy venue in Cambridge for Lou Barlow, who was defecting later that week to LA. What was likely a bittersweet moment for those who cared to attend, filled with whatever conflicted sense of loss and well-wishing a fan’s allowed in regard to personal space, was immediately shattered by this—this maniac, […]
The first time I heard music made by John Sharkey III came via his old band, the abrasive, irreverent Clockcleaner. Since Clockcleaner came to an end a few years ago, Sharkey has continued to make music that reaches the listener on both a visceral and an intellectual level–first with Puerto Rico Flowers, and now with Dark Blue. This year has seen three releases from the band: two seven inches, Subterranean Man and Just Another Night With the Boys, and a full length, Pure Reality. All of […]