In addition to Defend Music Night , the event taking place across ten venues on Friday, organized to raise awareness about The Cleveland Music Club Coalition's ongoing negotiations with the city to alter their 8% admissions tax, there are two big release shows also happening this weekend. On Friday night, Cleveland singer-songwriter, and legend to many in the scene, Bill Fox will be playing selections from his latest CD, One Thought Revealed at The Happy Dog . Herzog will headline. And on Saturday, Cleveland's finest indie pop collective, Bears , will be doing [...]
While Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson has shown little willingness to eliminate the 8% admissions tax on small music venues, progress has been made. There is more awareness of the issue in city hall and amongst the public and there's a feeling in both the government and the clubs that middle ground can be found. Recent articles in the Plain Dealer and The Scene Magazine drive this point home. Speaking to the Plain Dealer's Thomas Ott , Councilman Joe Cimperman describes negotiations where neither side is taking a hard line. Beachland owner Cindy Barber, whose club has taken [...]
Mark Lanegan Band Blues Funeral 4AD/Beggars Group US Recently, I marveled at Mark Lanegan's voice, that deep and leathery, wavering and seductive voice, and noted how I would not only listen to Lanegan reinterpreting the catalog of pop songstress, Katy Perry, but I would buy that collection, too . That's the power of having the voice of Rock 'N' Roll. Blues Funeral, Lanegan's first solo collection since 20042s Bubblegum, presents the listener with a scenario tantalizingly close to my own dream/nightmare. Squeezed in the middle of [...]
It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with soft rock indie rock. It's just that there's so much of it and so much of it gets such grand praise when it's all really, kinda boring. That's all. That's why soft rock has been my mortal enemy for my listening lifetime. Consequently, one may expect me to pan the new solo music from Fleet Foxes' one time drummer, J Tillman, and his new outfit Father John Misty. And as much as I'd love to slag a Fleet Fox, I can't do it as his first [...]
Pop. 1280 The Horror Sacred Bones The Horror is dirty, no filthy, no filthy as fuck. The Horror is a brutal, bulldozing, skronky, scuzzy, and screechy, dystopian cyber-punk rock record steeped in the tradition of The Jesus Lizard, SST Records, and John Carpenter soundtracks where "Two dogs fucking" is both the opening line and perhaps the most comforting line on its two sides. And yet, for all the choice adjectives and all the ace references, something is missing from Pop.12802s first full length for Sacred Bones Records, [...]
Tuesday, January 31st : Purling Hiss, Puffy Areolas @ The Happy Dog . Friday, February 3rd : Amen Dunes, Mountains, Imaginary Softwoods, Wild Orphans @ The Happy Dog. Waterloo Alley Cat Fundraiser @ The Beachland Tavern with The Very Knees, Shitbox Jimmy, Volcano Fortress. Saturday, February 4th : Swindlella, Mole People, Butch Raid, Library Time @ The Happy Dog. Tuesday, February 7th : Boddie Records Night @ The Happy Dog - Tom Welsh, Associate Director of Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art will be [...]
Even as the term indie rock has lost much of its meaning in the 21st century, some of its ethos remain. Number one is be real. Number two, if you want to gain admission to our exclusive club, you better be real and wear our clothes, speak our lingo, and work our shitty jobs. Number three, if you're not going to be real, you better be really fucking good, like Animal Collective meats Radiohead produced by Outkast with cameos from Kanye and Kelly Clarkson good. The problem with Lana Del Rey, is not that she is a [...]
I'm not going to lie. Mark Lanegan could release an album of Katy Perry covers and I'd not only listen to it, but I'd probably put down cash money for it, too. Now, that's not to say quality doesn't matter when it comes to the output of the one time Screaming Trees frontman. Rather, his voice is so captivating - Deep, smoky, lonesome, and in the case of "Gravedigger's Song," from his soon to be released album, Blues Funeral, down right scary - He can be paired with the twee voice of Isobel Campbell, the boozy and [...]
The fuzz pop of San Francisco's Terry Malts is equally indebted to the flapping, mop tops and punk rock of The Ramones and the disaffected stares of UK shoegazers. Yet, if one were to choose, pogo or pout, shout or sulk, songs like "Nauseous," should make the choice easy - Make yourself a pit, do the pizza man dance and the gorilla dance, too. There will be time enough for introspection once the music's done. MP3: Terry Malts - Nauseous Look for Terry Malt's debut full length, Killing Time, February [...]
Cloud Nothings Attack on Memory Carpark To hear Cloud Nothings' Dylan Baldi tell it, the title of the band's third album, Attack on Memory, is meant to be an attack on the memory of what people thought his band was." Of course, with a title that vague, this attack on memory could be attached to any manner of things we'd rather forget. For example, it could be an attack on your memory of all those shitty emo bands that claimed to be influenced by Fugazi, Sunny Day Real [...]
The Heartless Bastards' Erika Wennestrom has always had a voice, a wonderfully deep and robust voice, bluesy, billowing and full of nuance, one that has often earned comparisons to some Rock 'N' Roll's greatest leading ladies like Grace Slick and Janis Joplin. It wasn't until the band's 2009 release, The Mountain, however, that the songwriting and musicianship began to provide the proper compliment. This new potency can be heard on "Parted Ways," the first single from their forthcoming album, Arrows. Wennestrom wows, as always, along side a mid-tempo, country flavored jam, similar to something from Wilco's early [...]
Let's say I didn't spend the past year collecting all of the 123 singles released following Grinderman's 2010 album, Grinderman 2, I'd be all over this upcoming remix collection on Anti- Records featuring collaborations and reinterpretations featuring Robert Fripp, Josh Homme, A Place to Bury Strangers, Cat's Eyes and Factory Floor. Hell, I'll still be all over Grinderman 2 RMX on the strength of the previously unreleased version of "Bellringer Blues," featured above, and wonderfully twisted, tortured, and hacked to shit by Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Yeah, it's that good. [...]
Have you heard Cleveland's Cloud Nothings have a new album out next Tuesday ? It was produced by Steve Albini. You may have heard of him. Maybe you read the interview where the Cloud Nothings' Dylan Baldi dished on Albini's Scrabble playing ways. It's also a rockier and edgier sound for a band who've made their name by playing carefree, lo-fi pop. Maybe you heard the first two tracks ( "Stay Useless" and "No Future/No Past" ) released from the forthcoming Attack on Memory. Or, maybe you've heard the album stream. That's out there, [...]
Bears aren't the only Cleveland band spreading the sound of sunshine pop this winter. The Lighthouse and the Whaler offer similarly bright sounds on "Pioneers." There's bells and brilliantly colored guitars and warm, shimmery keyboards. It would be pop-perfect for an automobile advert featuring carefree thirty-somethings doing those things carefree thirty-somethings do as they showcase their affordable, environmentally sensible, yet stylish new car. This isn't a dig. Rather, "Pioneers," is the type of track that could boost both the band's profile and their bank accounts. MP3: The Lighthouse and the Whaler - Pioneers [...]
On the heels of one very well-received album (20102s Twin-Hand Movement) and one killer 73 for Sub Pop (20112s "Deer Knives"/"Tangiers"), Baltimore's Lower Dens return with a new full length and a heavy theme. The band's forthcoming release, Nootropics, is said center on the ways in which technology could be used to expand human capabilities. Hmm...Well...Ok, I'll bite. Indie rock has a solid history of human/machine concept albums (See Radiohead's OK Computer and Grandaddy's Sophtware Slump) and judging by the first single, "Brains," the inclusion of more electronic music elements, like motorik rhythms, into their custom blend of [...]
Guided by Voices Let's Go Eat the Factory GBV Records From the beginning, the Guided by Voices reunion of the mid-90s lineup was different. It may have read like the familiar script - Cult band tours theaters and the festival circuit, gets their due and gets some dollars, but unlike many of their peers there was a palpable sense that Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennell were actually enjoying themselves the second time around. Bob brought his full array of rock kicks and microphone tricks. Mitchell [...]
Cleveland singer-songwriter Bill Fox is a bit of a legend around these parts. Initially known as the frontman for the power-pop band The Mice in the mid '80s, Fox would later make a name for himself on the strength of his two stripped down, acoustic albums for SpinArt Records (Shelter from the Smoke in '97 and Transit Byzantium in '98). His reputation would only grow when he was the subject of a feature article by Joe Hagen in the June/July 2007 issue of Believer magazine, where Hagen sought to find Fox and find out why he had given [...]
The addition of Steve Shelley to the line-up of Chicago psych-rock/kraut-rock band, Disappears, pays immediate dividends on "Replicate," the lead track from their forthcoming release, Pre Language. Rarely has the outfit come off so forceful and so powerful as with the Sonic Youth drummer behind the kit. It's not just Shelley, however, that makes "Replicate," stand out compared to the rest of the band's output. Everyone else (Brian Case, Jonathan Van Herik, and Damon Carruesco) feeds on Shelley's intensity, too. As a result, Disappears sounds less like the that group on their second release, Guider, the group too often content [...]
In 2010, the California hardcore band Ceremony released Rohnert Park, one of those top 10 quality records that wasn't. The few that heard it (Seriously, if you haven't heard it, here's a link to Spotify ) gushed over the most progressive hardcore band in all the lands not named Fucked Up. Personally, I was tipped to this record in early 2011 and it remained one of my most played records throughout the year. Now on Matador Records for their upcoming release, Zoo, Ceremony shouldn't have that same exposure problem. A high profile indie like Matador all but [...]
Tuesday, January 3rd : Goodmorning Valentine, Light of the Loon, Mike Uva @ Beachland Tavern . Thursday, January 5th : Johnny & The Apple Stompers, Shouting Thomas Torment, Crooked River Blues Band, Wolfboy Slim free show @ Grog Shop . Friday, January 6th : Waterloo Alley Cat Project Kitty Consciousness Kick-Off with Night Sweats and Restless Habs @ Beachland Tavern. Voxcaster, The Swimfan, Beach Stav, John Kalman free show @ Grog Shop. Saturday, January 7th : Ohio Civil War, Non Fiction, All [...]
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On The Cover Of A Magazine
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
Kylie Minogue receives threats on Twitter, alerts police!
The Shins Visit KEXP
