Visual Coercion

Destroyer 3/18/11 The Crocodile, Seattle, WA Ted Leo, Henry Art Gallery Seattle, WA John Darnielle of Mountain Goats One more of David Bazan at Bowery Ballroom 10/18/09 The War on Drugs 3/18/11 The Crocodile, Seattle, WA Eddie Argos

Bear Claw – No Band Can Be this Good

During the chilliest years of the Cold War a secret project was undertaken here in the United States of A. to develop the most obviously superior rock music ever conceived for export to countries whose youths were sustained with with inferior rock knockoffs and black market Finnish socks.  It was hoped that this would so [...]

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Get Haunted

Listen to this record.  You can read all the same reviews everywhere, so you don’t need me to rehash them.  As that is what it is, as the rich hues of meaning have already been drained from pale words careening from the walls of the surfeit of reviews out there that quote just-learned (and just [...]

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Trans Am at Knitting Factory BK, and What Might be an Image of the Same

I had the happy accident on Saturday to walk past the Knitting Factory and notice the placard advertising Trans Am were playing the following night.  So, Sunday night, to cap off an anodyne afternoon of walking across the Williamsburg Bridge to see The Runaways (it was good), I was back at the Knitting Factory filling [...]

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In Which the Author Digs Luke Sutherland’s ’90s and Some of the Oughts

Luke Sutherland was frontman to two bands that touched on post rock, trip hop, drum and bass, and spoken word throughout the musical and cultural tumult of the ’90s, that temporary reprieve from the degeneration of all things cultural at the end of the ’80s.  He’s also, I’m just learning tonight, a thrice-published novelist. My [...]

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