Of all Eric Paul’s bands (Arab on Radar, Doomsday Student, etc) The Chinese Stars are the catchiest, sanest, and most likely to win fans and influence weirdos. Which isn’t to say TCS is sane or catchy or influential in any traditional sense. This band (which also includes drummer Craig Kureck, guitarist Paul Vieira, and bassist/keyboardist MORE…
Ground Unicorn Horn gave us two songs before stepping back behind the veil, and for a lot of bands that wouldn’t amount to much–a drip of piss in the infinite toilet that is the music industry; a whisper in the hurricane that is the collected voice of humanity’s grand achievement. Thing is, this band and MORE…
Agnes once told me that in high school her acne got so bad it felt as if she were wearing a red, pebbled mask. She kept her hair in her face as much as she could. Wore a sweatshirt with the hood up. A hat pulled low. But nothing helped. Her classmates saw, and when MORE…
INUS (aka The Institute for Navigating the Universal Self) is a pre-post apocalyptic, post-honky-tonk-prog-skronk, space Tropicalia, math-lounge powerviolence trio from San Diego, California. Poking fun at the failed for-profit universities of yesteryear, the band’s live performance interweaves blistering, calculated bursts of noise with educational slideshows that riff on subversive political commentary, dada-surrealist sci-fi, scathing social MORE…
Side one of Leg Lifters’ Radical Humiliation 7″ (which came out seven years ago today) is a piano ballad done Three One G style, which of course means it sounds nothing like any other piano ballad in history. It’s slow and there’s some sort of piano, but there’s also Justin Pearson’s abrasive, grating vocals, a MORE…
Hot Nerds’ Strategically Placed Bananas LP, released six years ago today, is a brutish pummel of shrieking noise. It sounds like Eric Paul (Doomsday Student, Chinese Stars) doing a one-man stage adaptation of Eraserhead as a tribute to PiL. (All of that meant in the best possible way.) If this record were a person it MORE…
“Silent is a Mexicali-based outfit that cooks up a sonic stew that includes the darkness and tension of goth rock and the driving attack of punk. Jung Sing’s (Maniqui Lazer, All Leather) baritone vocals have drawn comparisons to Nick Cave—and rightfully so—but his delivery is channeled through with an aggression that is clearly coming from MORE…
Visiting home I spend my time driving familiar streets, tracing routes I once took, staring at the rows of houses as I pass, palm trees lining the sidewalk, pawn shops on corners, the yellow-painted Mexican restaurants… I drive and I leave the radio off and I try to remember. This is all a trick or MORE…
As explained on METZ’s Subpop artist bio, “‘Change is inevitable if you’re lucky,’ says guitarist/vocalist Alex Edkins while talking about Atlas Vending, the fourth full-length album by Toronto’s METZ. ‘Our goal is to remain in flux, to grow in a natural and gradual way. We’ve always been wary to not overthink or intellectualize the music MORE…
I sit on the curb reading the new issue of CityBEAT while Joey Carr smokes crystal in the back of Kurt’s van. The sun is setting over Downtown, and from the Broadway hill it’s a wide, sweeping, panoramic view of the harbor and the airport, the silver gray office buildings with the light of dusk MORE…