Grunge-y noise rocksters (I love that I just make up words), Yuck, stopped by The Social last night to lay down a wall of fuzzy pop distortion. One indicator of a good songwriting is to develop a signature sound while simultaneously creating catchy songs with great hooks that have instantly recognizable melodies on their own. [...]
Yuck caught my ear when I saw them open for the Smith Westerns at BackBooth where they summarily blew SW off the stage. They were a scraggly bunch with the Smashing Pumpkin / Sonic Youth girl bass player configuration. Like those bands they also wielded a crunching avalanche of sound with their embrace of squelching [...]
Hysterical, the new release from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sounds anything but. The album is refined and mature. It is closer to Some Loud Thunder being heavier on more elaborate orchestral-type pop arrangements than the thundering disco beats and clean bass lines adorned with jangly duel guitars that made their debut album remind me [...]
Representatives from Orlando Health and the Arnold Palmer Medical Center along with founders of the new rock music festival, Orlando Calling (including Festival Republic’s CEO Melvin Benn), and the ubiquitous Joey Fatone gathered at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children today to release some great news. The Orlando Calling event donated 10-large to benefit the Music [...]
My current celebrity lady crush, Annie Clark, is back with a new St. Vincent album titled Strange Mercy. I always understood St. Vincent to be a pixie-ish waif with a great voice and tender, graceful pop songs. That is until I saw her on Austin City Limits with her full band just tear the ass [...]
In usual fashion, Billy Corgan is cranking out music and wading through a pile of projects. In addition to getting behind a wrestling promotion venture and very slowly releasing the 44 free online tracks for Teargarden by Kaleidyscope as well as putting the final touches on the album-within-an-album, Oceania (Due out in November), he is [...]
There has been sort of an “Incense and Peppermints” roots revival of 60′s psychedelic guitar rock. Bands like The Brian Jonestown Massacre have been doing it all along but more recently, outfits like Tame Impala, The Love Dimension, and even Smashing Pumpkins are busting out albums characterized by pop melodies drenched in guitar effects and [...]
Finally! A band named after a technology I could totally use! Modest Mouse frontman, Isaac Brock, discovered some serious talent in Portland via Kentucky’s Morning Teleportation and signed them to his new Glacial Pace record label. Brock also took production duties on the band’s debut album Expanding Anyway. Their sound is frantic and eclectic. They [...]
Local punk music is not usually something I get into. I mean, I love the music and the fact that it’s out there; it means people’s heads are in the right place and music isn’t completely losing its balls, but local punk acts are generally too numerous to sift through for the gems. Local punk [...]
I wouldn’t flinch if some governing body deemed My Morning Jacket the best live rock band in music right now – not a bit. The band is tight and rocks the fuck out – capable of cranking out pop rockers, electronica-tinged experimental indie, psychedelic jams, crisp country ballads, and anything in between with ease. They [...]