We describe art that was groundbreaking and hip in the day as the “punk rock” of its time – e.g. Stravinski’s “The Rite of Spring” was the “punk rock” of 1913 – under the assumption that now it’s…well…corny. “The Rite of Spring” caused a riot when it debuted, but soundtracked Fantasia 27 years later. Disney […]
“It’s twelve songs. About 53 minutes.” This is Nic, last week, discussing our forthcoming album Touch Grass with a fellow musician at a local show. I know 53 minutes is too long. There’s a sweet spot for an LP’s length. You want to give listeners enough music to feel like it was worth […]
Last week, HBO released Yacht Rock: a DOCKumentary (their capitalization) that both celebrates and snickers at the smooth, sophisticated pop music that was big in the late 70s and early 80s. After a 2005 mockumentary web series, titled Yacht Rock, this Grammy-winning but critically disliked music has become ironically (and non-ironically) appreciated, and its creators […]
This column comes by request from Nic. He called Bilmuri’s American Motor Sports “country metal” and “the first country album where [he] listened to the whole thing.” I have thoughts. Thanks for the request, Nic. If you have a suggestion for a Heck Record, hit us up on socials, by email, or in the comments. […]
You can hear the hands on the strings – pick scrapes, little bends out of tune, blobs of distortion from a mis-struck notes. It’s the sound of pieces of wood and wire being manhandled. Yank Crimes is one the 1990’s great guitar albums. The corrosive interplay between lead guitarist John Reis and rhythm/vocalist Rick […]
In 2009, during the first of what have become periodic reunions, I saw My Bloody Valentine play the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver. On stage, MBV personify the musical genre whose name they helped inspire, shoegaze. They seemed lost in a world that only existed between their guitars and pedalboards. They didn’t say so much as […]
Cindy Lee’s mastermind Patrick Flegel released what’ll certainly go down as one of the best reviewed albums of 2024 (Pitchfork already named it the fourth best of the DECADE so far), their double album Diamond Jubilee*. Diamond Jubilee is a 32-track monster of hazy pop and psychedelic rock, like a Nuggets compilation from a […]
Around the same time Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks released Real Emotional Trash, critics were deriding fellow ‘90 wunderkind Wes Anderson for straying too far from making the kind of emotional work like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums that made him famous to go up own ass making impeccable dioramas for the lukewarmly received pastiches […]
Spoon are one of the first ballot Hall of Fame indie rock bands. They’ve an unimpeachable catalog – ten albums in 25 years – with barely a bad song in the batch. They write economical indie pop with deceptively complex rhythmic parts and gee-whiz sound effects that somehow never seem gimmicky. Every instrument in a […]
Last night, my younger sister hipped me to Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go!” in which the 26-year-old Missourian spells out the song’s title as a come-on to a would-be suitor, offering up herself like a bag of takeout. And I was dumbstruck by how simple, effective, and catchy the line was. It’s the type of […]