| Douglas Martin’s Dirty Shoes: The Dirty 30 of 2015 | December 16, 2015 |
Douglas Martin: the only one you can trust with this.
| The Wytches Burn Out the Bruise | July 25, 2014 |
Max Bell pulled Stevie Nicks from the set of “American Horror Story” In 2014, garage rock of any denomination is a lot like ‘90s inflected hip-hop of the boom-bap variety. There are far too many reverential, indistinguishable practitioners. For every Alchemist behind the boards, there are hordes of crate-digging Pete Rock disciples locked in the […]
| Douglas Martin’s Dirty Shoes: In Remembrance of Thee Oh Sees | January 15, 2014 |
Douglas Martin is pouring out a little Anchor Steam. I. One summer a few years ago, I went to a show in Portland — a girl I knew really liked the Dodos and wanted me to go with her. There was a man at center stage with a guitar. He was clawing and scratching away […]
Douglas Martin stays trippy. It’s a question that hasn’t been raised with any sort of deep thought, even in the garage-punk circles of Ye Olde Internet. Which of the million bands John Dwyer has been in is the greatest? It’s because everybody knows the answer: Thee Oh Sees would stand to win that vote by […]
| Ty Segall, From the Slaughterhouse to the Sleeper Hold | August 23, 2013 |
Duncan Boyd once beat a man insensible with a strawberry. It’s been roughly eight months, which means it’s time for another Ty Segall album. Fresh for 2013, it’s Sleeper, an album that again brings a striking change of pace to the SoCal rocker’s ever-expanding catalogue. Written during an unsettling period, it might be Segall’s most […]
| The Crystal Antlers of California | August 13, 2013 |
Aaron Frank is also a fan of the Ol’ Dirty Bastard original. While they’re not as prolific as reigning garage rock king Ty Segall, Long Beach’s Crystal Antlers have made an equally significant impact on the SoCal indie scene over the past few years. Mixing psych, garage and glam and evoking influences as diverse as […]
| Video: Hanni El Khatib – “Pay No Mind” | July 23, 2013 |
You say no to ratchet cheerleaders, Hanni El Khatib can’t. If Miley Cyrus can twerk, Hanni El Khatib has full license, nay endorsement, to wrangle a squad of video vixens. The director Simon Cahn said he wanted to go for the “opposite of rock and roll imagery.” I don’t know if I agree. The obverse […]
Douglas Martin’s church ain’t got enough room for all the tombs. King Tuff was already dead and reborn before most people even heard of him. By the time he released his pretty widely-acclaimed self-titled record, Kyle Thomas had already been in a million bands, including the one he formed while the ink was still drying […]
| You Deserve Some Weed | May 22, 2013 |
No amount of weed could make B Michael Payne find Waterboy jokes funny. The other day I was sitting at my desk wondering if maybe I weren’t missing out on a basic human experience by abstaining from weed. (Yeah, that sounds like the thought process of someone who needs to smoke weed, right?) Synchronicity being […]
| The Raw Retro-Futurism of Huntronik | March 5, 2013 |
B Michael Payne wrote this in a hovercraft-converted Edsel. The debut album by Brooklyn trio Huntronix starts off in a retrograde fashion. A wash of synths with a retro-futuristic posture and echo-heavy live drums carry its first lines in like the surf at the end of Planet of the Apes: “We’re gonna tell you how […]
