Mixing hip-hop, rock, and punk, Coolzey’s 2014 album Hit Factory has the catchiness of a great summer record, lyrical smarts, and a sense of humor. Having seen him live, his recorded self captures the energy of his performances, while still allowing for additional production.
What did you read over break? Here’s what ended up on my list.
I woke up with the Paul Weller song “From The Floorboards Up” stuck in my head, and it felt like as good a sign as any to talk about his old band in this week’s column.
Though anything overly cliquish, with rules of operation and preconceived notions, makes me squirm, I realized that I had made assumptions of my own about the word “Twee,” and any movement that might be associated with it. So with mixed feelings did I pick up one mouthful of a title: Twee: The Gentle Revolution in […]
Confession: when this movie was advertised where I live, I dismissed it because I thought the posters showed three boys. Meh, just another coming-of-age movie for the lads, I thought. I’ll pass. Silly me. We Are the Best! is charming, funny, and nostalgic in a way that I didn’t expect for a movie set years before I was born.
Heaven forbid a songwriter write about something major happening in her life.
When I won a giveaway from Mom+Pop Records, I’d never heard of Sleigh Bells. Mainly, I’d entered because I wanted to win the “Varsity” 7-inch by Smith Westerns, whom I’d recently stumbled upon. Other goodies from Metric and Neon Indian were also included in the package, and I will get to talking about those records […]
2001 is a hard one for me – not for lack of great music, but more because I was a depressed human making bad decisions during most of that year, and come that September, the national climate took its own downturn. The feels, man. Let’s have them.
Apparently, my tastes and 1998 are nearly all about the block rockin’ beats.
“Sometimes I think nothing is simple, except the feeling of pain.” – Lester Bangs
After a few weeks of jumbo-sized Alphabet Soup columns, somewhat predictably, The Letter X is a short one. We’re a bit punk rock this week.
Back in my early days, I was punk. Now, rumor has it that most punks would ever refuse to identify as punk, and that the word punk is as loose a description as hipster or yuppie, harkening back to something that used to be more solid, more defined, and probably more in the ’70s. While […]
Just last week, three alleged members of the Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot were denied bail when a judge extended their incarceration until June.
It’s a quick column this week, dear readers, as Mr. Brum and I are moving house. Not very far, and I don’t own very much, but the six crates of Doctor Who VHS tapes that Mr. Brum carts around everywhere are rather heavy. We needed an album that was punchy, fast-paced, and kept our spirits up. […]
If you have any interest in punk rock or in music in general, you’ve probably heard about the Ben Weasel incident at South by Southwest (SXSW). If you haven’t, here’s the quick and dirty version: