Listen up! or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. The opening piano peal sends us back to the ’60s (Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200!) to the Summer of Love, with which the song shares its spirit. Like my favorite paean to forbearance […]
Chris Parker
Bio: After a fond stint in the Triangle, Chris Parker lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he writes about music and politics for a variety of newspapers and magazines. He has written about music for INDY Week since 2002.
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Jessica Lea Mayfield talks her song “For Today” and her cynicism
Listen up! or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Jessica Lea Mayfield’s “For Today” begins with a wistful remembrance that hints at what might have been. Far from a melancholy love song, though, it’s a kiss-off. There’s a dark mournful lope to the music and […]
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Los Campesinos!’s “Miserablilia”
Listen up! or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. If you’re going to write a downcast song, why limit yourself to bereft material like Michael “Bluer than Blue” Johnson? Instead, turn up the dark, bitter, self-abnegating wit. “Miserabilia” focuses on those destructive moments in a […]
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Tokyo Rosenthal’s Love Won Out
Tokyo Rosenthal’s languid blend of roots, blues and jazz has its charms, and many of them will be quite well worn for some and quite irksome for others. Where you land on the jazzy bossa nova of “Little Poetry Girl” and the smoldering blues-funk of “Random Noises,” for instance, undoubtedly reflects your own musical biases […]
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Murder by Death’s “Spring Break 1899”
Listen up! or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Perhaps the canny title conveys a note of regret at a life too long spent in frivolous pursuit. But the idea of a new day fuels the track itself, opening with frontman Adam Turla suggesting he […]
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Two bands playing Lost Weekend set the record straight … or crooked
We talked to two of the bands playing this week’s damned-if-it-ain’t-debauched Blackbeard’s Lost Weekend at The Cave. We picked their thoughts on their style and their stories. See it all go down Friday and Saturday, Oct. 17 and 18. Tune talk with Pinche Gringo “I Got a Right,” Deniz Tek (Radio Birdman) and Scott Morgan […]
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Raw Dog’s Rabid
Like a guy with a three-day beard and beer gut wearing a stained wifebeater in line outside a ritzy dance club, it’s hard to know what to make of Raw Dog, but there’s a strong smell, anyway: Veering wildly as though Vince Neil were behind the wheel, Raw Dog explores ambient electronica, spoken-word moments, noisy […]
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The Wedding Present’s “Palisades”
Listen up! or stream it below. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. It’s a slinky, slow-fuse cut that nods to The Wedding Present’s early ’90s heyday, when the band left the huggable C-86 jangle behind for a better-edged sound. While the melody shimmers, the guitar tone is steely […]
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Transportation
“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner famously wrote. “It’s not even past.” So it is with Transportation’s long-awaited Daydreams. It sounds like something you pulled from your dad’s record collection, from the relics among the worn-cornered copies of Seals and Crofts, Bread and Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat. There’s an American Graffiti vibe, […]
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The Physics of Meaning’s Snake Charmer and Destiny at the Stroke of Midnight
Listen up! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Back in the old days, when an album cover and a name were enough for a chance purchase, this is the album you’d bring home to hear from a band called something like The Physics of Meaning. With silhouettes of […]
