I’ve always been a fan of working to instrumental music or music with spotty or otherwise absent vocals. I’m an even bigger fan of stuff that you can literally tune out, like background noise to break up the silence, but not distract you from the task at hand. That’s why it should be no surprise that Sunn O))) is usually playing over my speakers when I’m writing.
Hard Art in the Capital City: Vol. 1 and Akashic Celebrate DC Punk on June 19th
We’re big fans of D.C. punk. From hosting Ian Svenonius, talking books with J. Robbins, or discussing growing up punk in the nation’s capitol with Nathan Larson, we’re unsure if any one place in America (or elsewhere…) created a scene quite like the one that came out of Washington D.C. starting in the late 1970s, and still resonating today. What makes D.C. punk even more unique is that it doesn’t just extend to the bands, because the city also helped kick […]
Hate the Hater?
Through deep reversion therapy I can recall about a two-week window back in my first year of college where I cared about Michelle Shocked’s music. That “Alaska” song was pretty cool. But really, a long-irrelevant musician representing a micro-fad of the last century so easily parodied that from this distance it’s hard to discern between her, Phranc and their Saturday Night Live impersonators, spews some vile, completely dismissible hate rant that demonstrates just how down in the deep end she […]
Amanda Palmer Tries to Bring National Poetry Month to a Screeching Halt
On January 22nd, Alexandra Petri (who, according to her Twitter is a “Daily topical humor blogger”) claimed that “There are about six people who buy new poetry,” in her Washington Post piece, “Is Poetry Dead?” a day Richard Blanco read his poem, “One Today,” at the presidential inauguration. While Petri was supposedly trying to be funny, the 408 comments, and 5.7 thousand Facebook “Likes,” however, showed us people still have a good deal to say about poetry, and that calling the form dead was unfunny and unfounded.
Dead Moon Wisdom: It’s OK
The last real mixtape I ever received was titled “It’s O.K.” I say real, because people don’t make actual mixtapes anymore; they make Spotify playlists or send their friends bundles of MP3s, and might name the folder ‘Mixtape’ for sentimental or ironic reasons. The cassette, for the most part, is a dead format, but the mix lives on in a less personal way than it did when we were faced with listening to the songs we wanted on the tape […]
Cinematic Notes on Baltimore Punks Double Dagger: A Review of “If We Shout Loud Enough”
I never saw Double Dagger. If I didn’t regret that before, I certainly do now. I’ve just seen Gabriel Deloach and Zach Keifer’s documentary If We Shout Loud Enough, which focuses on the final tour of this Baltimore punk trio. If We Shout Loud Enough, which is being packaged with the group‘s final record 333 for Record Store Day, uses the group’s final string of shows to deliver an intimate portrait of the Baltimore punk scene — and to document the evolution of […]
Band Booking: Colleen Green on Pop Harmonies, Stephen King, and the Hardcore Aesthetic
Colleen Green makes buzzsaw pop: fuzzed-out guitars atop minimal rhythms, with her melodic vocals atop it all. Her new album keeps a certain blissed-out pop-punk sensibility, but also delves into more complex structures, recalling — among others — Velocity Girl. On the eve of her departure on tour, we talked about said new album (titled Sock It To Me), unorthodox beverages as sonic inspiration, and more.
Michael Azzerad is the Editor-in-Chief: Talking About The Talkhouse
Earlier this year, a website called The Talkhouse made its debut. Its pedigree is impressive: the editor-in-chief is Michael Azzerad, who’s about as unfuckwithable as one can get in terms of music writers covering punk and its aftermath. And the concept, at least on the surface, is simple: it’s a collection of musicians writing about other musicians’ albums. It’s been around for over a month now; with that in mind, it seemed time to get a sense of where The Talkhouse is […]