July 2025

• Shake Chain: Mike
  You’ll be hard-pressed to find another vocalist who’s leaving it all on the field in quite the same way Shake Chain’s Kate Mahony is. Her anguished yowling is sometimes unnerving, often hilarious, and always admirably obnoxious.
• Morphine: Claire
  The first Morphine album feels like you’ve stumbled upon an unassuming trio playing to no one under a street light on a desolate corner in the middle of the night, like you’re living in… See more →

The late, great Faraquet scheduled a handful of reunion gigs across a weekend (presumably so no one in the band would have to take time off work) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their lone full-length album, The View From This Tower, which has long been high on the list of my favorite underground records. I felt a rare bit of hometown pride when the Philly show sold out fast enough for them to add… See more →

• Taraf de Haïdouks: Turceasca
  Every few years or so, I fall down a rabbit hole into one or another corner of eastern European folk music, and it’s the Romani gypsy traditions I seem to come back to most often. This song is an absolute barnburner, exemplifying one of the genre hallmarks I find most appealing: a manic energy that often feels like the players are all racing to see who can get to the finish… See more →

Filling a couple conspicuous holes in my collection. RIP Ozzy.

• Black Sabbath: Supernaut
  One riff to rule them all. Surges out of the gate exultant and invincible and never lets up, not even when there’s a little drum circle break for the hippies. And its fade-out ending, unlike most fade-outs, isn’t a cop-out; it sends its Supernaut marching off into the horizon, forging new frontiers and radiating wisdom and splendor to all in his path. (In my cursory research, it seems that Sabbath songs are… See more →

I’m not sure I’ve seen quite this ratio of smart presentation to stupid content before.

• Low: Surfer Girl
  Alan and Mimi from Low used to sing their daughter to sleep with this before they started playing it live, and it’s such a perfect lullaby. Mimi’s been gone almost three years and her voice still puts a lump in my throat.
• Devo: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
  I dunno, “I can’t get no girl reaction” (or “girly action” in the Devo version) just seems more believable coming from the bespectacled guy… See more →

A simple, clever, and stressful game that rewards quick typing skills.

After a long day, as I made my dejected drift toward Suburban Station’s 18th Street exit, I saw a mural cheerfully proclaiming, “My art gives me a voice,” to which I was startled to find myself reflexively responding aloud, “Oh, that’s cool. Mine slowly fucking kills me.”

• Jesu: Stanlow
  When Jesu first popped up, a decade early to the shoegaze revival, I was surprised to learn the band was formed by Justin Broadrick, who made his name in the ’90s underground with the harsh industrial metal band Godflesh. While both bands share his leaden guitar tone, Jesu is a notable departure from its forebear in its indulgence of melody and sometimes even major keys, as heard here. For me, this song evokes… See more →

• Marie Davidson: Fun Times
  I didn’t think there was much modern EDM that really did it for me, but stumbling upon Marie Davidson this year is making me think again. It’s true that a lot of what I find appealing here reminds me of club styles (EBM, electro) from decades gone by, but rather than being a rehash, it feels like a fresh update of those sounds, with plenty of new ideas sprinkled in.
• Ghost:… See more →

• Can: I Want More
  I’m not an authority on Can, but this might be the closest they ever came to an anthem? The whole thing is great: the underlying tremolo, the hushed vocal chants, those unassuming organ stabs in the verses, and that simple melody in the wordless chorus.
• Parliament: Do That Stuff
  Forever doomed to live in the shadow of “Give Up the Funk,” Parliament’s biggest hit, which was also released in 1976, I… See more →

A solid bill of oddities tonight.

Ecology: Homestones is a purveyor of harsh noise that probably wouldn’t hold my attention if it weren’t performed by a towering ghoul with a shrunken head, accompanied by a limbless torso writhing along to the cacophony on a hook behind a velvet rope. Apparently there’s a whole mythology that goes with this, and incredibly, it’s attracted more than a half million social media followers in just a few short… See more →

• The Comet Is Coming: Space Carnival
  I’ve scarcely seen a more apt song title. If Sun Ra had directed Star Wars, maybe the cantina band would have sounded like this.
• Amyl and The Sniffers: Hertz
  Amy Taylor’s furious joie de vivre is among my favorite punk rock paradoxes. My favorite Aussies are the real-life Mad Max freaks.

I assumed this would be trashy and dumb, and it was, but I didn’t expect it to be such a hoot! It’s dialed to just the right level of self-aware camp and its surplus of plot twists are as hilarious as they are absurd.