Shiny and Oh So Bright
The Smashing Pumpkins 2018 Shiny and Oh So Bright tour features a three-hour marathon retrospective of the first ten years of the band's recorded output from Gish (1991) to Machina/The Machine of Gods (2000). The show was inspired by the return of James Iha, the...
Rook (mostly) Solo and Why It Matters
Here’s an example of what’s inherently good about the Internet. Ten years ago I heard a new album from a band that I had grown fond of in the years prior. The band was (and still is) called Shearwater. When I first heard Winged Life (2004), the band was a side project...
New Gently Beautiful Songs from Mazzy Star
There’s something really remarkable about the impact of Mazzy Star’s music despite a very thin catalog with a vast majority (three full length studio albums) being released between 1991 and 1996. Threads of the band’s signature sound have been woven into the output of...
Tattooed Mom
A few weeks ago I went to Philly to catch Chuck van Zyl at The Gatherings Concert Series (which was awesome, by the way). Josh, an old friend who I hadn't seen for a while lives on South Street, so I pinged him to see if he'd have dinner with me before the show. He...
A Sea Without Memory
I was first turned on to David Helpling through some kind of if you like this, you might like that feature on an Internet-based music listening service. It’s hard to remember how all of the dots connected over the past decade or so. The two albums he made with...
Loma Has Arrived
I’ve been a Shearwater fan for over a decade starting with the album Winged Life (2004). At the time Shearwater was still a side project for quieter collaborations between band leader Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff, Meiburg’s bandmate in Okkervil River. Meiburg...