Music Features 67
Dilly Dally – Sore
It was pretty hard to choose just one album/band to cover this month. There’s so much happening right now in music, it’s kind of hard to keep me listening to one thing. My nostalgia went into overdrive when I heard that Blues Traveler came out with a new album in the spring. Then the internet […]
Earth – Primitive and Deadly
While Black Sabbath may have left the name Earth in the dust, Olympia Washington’s Dylan Carlson dug it up and erected something totally new out of it. Though near-constant lineup changes, drug problems, jail time and long hiatuses plagued the band, Earth is still going strong after 26 years. Starting in the late ’80s, Earth […]
Threading – You Are Never Enough
Where do I begin? This is one of my favorite bands. I’ve been jamming their music ever since my band played a show with them near their hometown of Kalamazoo, MI. I didn’t know them at all at the time so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But when I saw them setting up the […]
Chelsea Wolfe – Abyss
Synth-heavy bass chords, each ending abruptly and eerily, open Chelsea Wolfe’s 2015 album Abyss. You’d almost think you were listening to some resurfaced soundtrack for 1997’s cult sci-fi epic Event Horizon if it weren’t for the eventual build-up of industrial doom metal and Wolfe’s haunting voice crooning like some kind of space siren. Maybe this […]
Uncle Acid & the deadbeats – The Night Creeper
If creepiness is a virtue, then English band Uncle Acid & the deadbeats possesses it in spades. For an album that opens with the lines, “There’s a man who’s just been waiting here all night long/As he watches you he’s smiling there all alone,” the band’s fourth full-length, The Night Creeper, sets an eerie tone […]
Alt-J – An Awesome Wave
As my bio and previous posts suggest, I tend to gravitate toward bands and albums of the heavy variety (e.g. Machinist! and Fero Lux), so it is not often nor without a heavy heart that I stray from my niche, let alone find something that will hardly leave my CD player for months at a time. An Awesome […]
Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance – One for the Road
For me, there are certain albums that are tied to certain vistas and experiences. Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the America’s largest railway museum in Union, Illinois. Nostalgic for a time when you could travel the world at a pace more conducive to reflection, I set my sights. For half the journey, […]
Chicago Acoustic Underground Celebrates a Decade of Supporting Original Musicians
Michael Teach listens intently as singer-songwriter Sarah Eide and her band knock out a set of original tunes in the living room of his Chicago apartment. “I love that!” he proclaims into his Neumann TLM-103 microphone as the group wraps up their first number. “What a cool song!” Your average 70-year-old doesn’t get quite this […]
Khruangbin – “History of Flight”
I was pretty shocked to discover that Khruangbin is just a little band from Texas. I first discovered their track “A Calf Born in Winter” on Bonobo’s Late Night Tales compilation and was hooked by their gorgeous reverb-sapped guitar tones. When I dug a bit deeper into the band’s catalog and heard their more Daptone-influenced […]
