Douglas Martin salutes you and the Sour Diesel. As good as Eat Skull’s debut was, their sophomore record established them as one of the unsung heroes of America’s basement scene. Wild and Inside was not a tour-de-force, a head-first blitzkrieg like its predecessor, it was a unheralded classic. It was propulsive, it was eerie, it […]

Douglas Martin has listened to enough Tribe Called Quest to know that things work in cycles. Repeat — the debut record from Seattle garage-punk trio Wimps — begins with an occupied bed and an alarm clock that wasn’t set the previous evening. With three blaring chords and Rachel Ratner’s bratty bleat, it doesn’t take much […]

Douglas Martin deletes stress like Motrin. Sometimes being young and perpetually stoned offers an edge on writing about life. Sometimes it’s a lot more fun to be older and perpetually stoned (shout out to George Christopher). Being in your twenties and struggling to carve out a satisfying artistic existence between day jobs and blunts is […]

Douglas Martin is lo-fi power pop personified. Before those of you in the peanut gallery start throwing things in the name of nepotism, I must remind you that we here at Passion of the Weiss aren’t in the business of writing about bad music. Barry Schwartz — he of Disco Vietnam — just happens to […]

Douglas Martin wants all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas. I’ll save you the chore of reading another essay about how good a year for music 2012 was. As Nas once said, “Why shoot the breeze about it when you could be about it?” Since we’ve already given you the fifty best rap […]

The final part of The Top 50 Albums list arrives on Monday. In the interim, allow Douglas Martin to serenade you with the sweet sounds of Ty Segall. I. TY IS NOT A GAME Did you record not one, not even two, but three outstanding full-length LPs this year? Did you still have time to […]

Douglas Martin endorses most pheasants. If you consider the minor technicality of Royal Headache’s stellar self-titled debut actually being a 2011 release (in the band’s native Australia), that makes The Mallard’s Yes on Blood 2012’s Dirty Shoes Album of the Year. One cursory listen should indicate why this was an almost laughably predictable choice: It’s […]

Douglas Martin ghostwrote Dee Dee King’s “Funky Man” It’s appropriate that Dee Dee Dum, head Dum Dum Girl and aesthetic inspiration for introverted, gothy kids the world over, named her 2012 EP End of Daze. There’s the obvious narrative of Kristen Gundred’s mother passing away and the feeling of living in a storm cloud while […]

Douglas Martin also pondered the deeper meaning of “The Birthday Song” yesterday. The great conundrum about You Turn Me On is that we’re still basking in its relevance after twenty years, even though it sounds like it took twenty minutes to record. It’s kind of weird to picture Bret, Heather, and Calvin– the latter being […]

Douglas Martin is to garage rock what water is to rave-ups. Start with the name. Sic Alps. “Sic” could mean “ill” as in “cool.”  But it can also just be improper spelling. Maybe that makes more sense considering they take 60s garage-rock and guitar-pop songs and intentionally disfigure them. Their instruments sounding like poorly functioning […]