In contradiction to my attempts to maintain high standards, I have a predeliction (fetish?) for some things Perfectly Broken, or, more succinctly put in rock critic lingo, the DIY aesthetic. It’s how the Fall and Pere Ubu get away with being pretentious. They’re ‘garage bands,’ in that they do what they do without arena-filling, like […]

Today with the Ipud on shuffle I lucked into the Shins’ “Caring is Creepy” for the first time in a while; it’s one of two truly worthwhile songs on their debut, but it reminded me that I need to sell my copy of Chutes and Ladders, their sophomore dud; if you thought the Shins had […]

Total work paralysis today. So I surf, and reluctantly come across reviews like this, a gross overestimation of Television’s Marquee Moon. Sure, it’s a good record, maybe even a landmark of sorts, but there’s also some tedious guitar-noodle wankery on there, along with ‘poetic’ lyrics, which are always a bad thing in rock and roll. […]

“”We’ve been a remarkably stable administration, and I think that’s good for the country,” he [Bush] said.” — today’s NY Times. I know this blog is meant to studiously avoid politics, but I can’t let this quote pass. Is this a lie, or is he just stupid? As usual, it’s both, and there’s nothing worse […]

Nikki Sudden died Sunday at age 49. If you don’t know him, Bitchfork has a nice little obit here. No mention on how he died, but for one thing, his family could use an uplifting next ten years — Sudden’s brother, Epic Soundtracks, hanged himself in 1997. Together they formed Swell Maps in the seventies, […]

March Madness for music geeks! There’s only one other month for us that counts, and that’s Rocktober, when the x-mas push has labels dropping oodles of product. This March/April seems more plentiful than most, although some of those highly prized releases will undoubtedly suck. Richard Hawley is sold out at Sin-e tonight. His song “Born […]

The fact checkers at The New Yorker fucked up – ha ha- again. Last time I sent them a letter, which they pubbed, correcting David Denby on the Dogma ’95 agreement by Danish filmmakers. This time I can just blog it — in their Goings on About Town’s ‘Recordings’ section, a review of the Little […]

Ahhh, there’s no other morning music like Jandek. Beats the desolation of Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, if played at 11 am, anytime anywhere. Why? Because it’s only Tuesday and I’m having one of those ‘everything falls apart’ weeks already. At least nothing personal is unraveling, but the job is going all wrong (as it will), […]

David Chase’s telegraphing of his symbolist intentions, in Sopranos episode one (Burroughs/Laswell song in opening sequence, prevalence of water imagery&sounds, eating sushi, etc), now comes clear with episode two: Tony will endure a spiritual ordeal while floating through an induced coma, bound to a purgatory where he’s slapped by Buddhist monks etc. And although I’m […]

I know a guy named Craig Matthews, haven’t seen him in a while, but he was a damn good artist who always had some sort of band together playing spastic odes to Xanax or some such bizzare-edry; in any case, I heard a year or two ago that he was meaning to start a new […]