This Country

Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer is Swedish, and I’m curious as to what, besides the cold, is so wrong with Sweden that it makes Dreijer say “this country makes it hard to fuck”. From where I’m sitting here in Texas, Sweden sounds like an egalitarian wonderland …

Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution

Father John Misty is not the first to make the observation that life after the fall of civilization will be a gauntlet of inconveniences. This we know already. We know that eventually we’ll have to sacrifice our Dairy Queens and 7-Elevens. But the knowledge grows …

There Should Be Unicorns

The Flaming Lips have had times when their conceptuality overrode their musicality. Meaning that they’re prone to come up with a bizarre gimmick – a 24-hour long song that streams continuously, an three-disc album designed to be played simultaneously, a thumb drive embedded in a …

Them Changes

If you saw a copy of Thundercat’s 2017 album Drunk, you would mistake it for some obscure gem from the 70’s, and you would obviously buy it. Then you would listen to it and ask yourself “What member of P-Funk is this and why have …

Talk About Bones

Here to remind you about one of my favorite obscure albums by one of my favorite obscure bands. Sol: A Self-Banishment Ritual by Seeming. If that sounds highfalutin, based on the title alone, yes it is – the mind behind Seeming, Alex Reed (formerly of …

Tachycardia

Hello and welcome to the new year. It’s going to be, by my best guess, a bleak one. Just know, going in, that there’s nothing to look forward to except more of the same, and that’s if we’re lucky. So, of course, in due preparation, …

Tabula Rasa

A tabula rasa is a clean slate, both literally and philosophically. So it is apropos for the beginning of a new year, which is unknown and easy to project our resolutions onto. Hypothetically, we could do anything we wanted to. Realistically, we almost never do. …

Systemagic

Everyone magic neo-disco today owes a nod to Goldfrapp. For the past two decades Alison Goldfrapp has been making four-to-the-floor dance music that chugs like a well-oiled machine. Regardless of what trends the studio wizards were selling, or what countertrends bubbled up from the outside, …

The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness

Less espresso, more depresso, please! This is The National’s idea of an uptempo tune, and as always, it makes you want to leap into an abyss. For those of us who live for this kind of mournful introspection, the abyss can’t come fast enough. When …

Sweet Dreams

I think Angel Olsen might be some kind of a minor patron saint for girls who write dream journals and cut their own bangs. That’s the highest of compliments. I certainly can relate to her whole brainy loser aesthetic, and especially her overall sense of …