New Release: Wounded Lion

Today sees the release of the self-titled debut album by Wounded Lion on the reliably superb In The Red label. I was on the fence on whether or not to feature this album as a new release. While it's more than worthy of a recommendation, I was struggling for anything insightful to say about these dozen tracks of affable garage pop. In preparation for this review, I wound up filling two pages of my handy reporter's notebook with solipsistic nonsense. I'll spare you the details. (Who says there's no editorial standards in blogging?)

Back to matter at hand, as I debated reviewing Wounded Lion I wound up listening to it quite a bit. With each listen, it grew on me considerably and I ultimately decided that my probable lack of worthwhile exegesis should not stand in the way of alerting you, dear reader, to this fine collection of songs.

Wounded Lion are not dissimilar to fellow Californians Nodzzz in their mix of rough simplicity and unrelenting catchiness. Actually, the band(s) I was reminded of most when listening to this platter were Big Dipper and the Embarrassment. Songs like "Hunan Province" and "Belt of Orion" seem to have inherited their sense of melody directly from Bill Goffrier's old bands, sources that are both fertile and infrequently replicated. This is not to suggest that Wounded Lion are merely derivative. Rather, they simply have fine apparent taste in influences. (Others according to their Facebook and MySpace pages: The Equals, Ivor Culter, The Eyes, The Sweet and Can. No qualms there.) And I would hope that readers of this page would know that any comparison to Big Dipper or the Embos should be considered a huge compliment. One can do a lot worse than blister pop for the 21st century.

Give this one listen. You may well wind up giving it several dozen more before you grow tired of it. Also be sure to check out their highly-entertaining, shoestring-budget video for "Pony People" below. Feel free to share it with your friends. It's just as meme-worthy as Lady Gaga's latest and doesn't feature any ironic-but-compensated-for product placement.

Do I Sound Like This?

(Video from the Village Voice. Link courtesy of Ben Johnson.)

Eh... maybe not. My speaking voice is much more lovely.

Update: First of all, I'd like to apologize for the fact that this video plays without prompting as soon as the page loads. I'm aware this is the reason we all left MySpace for Facebook. If it didn't think it was important (or at least pertinent) viewing for most of you, I'd consider removing this post entirely.

Secondly, I wanted to add some of my thoughts regarding Chris Weingarten's opinions of online music journalism and criticism. I would have liked to have done so when I first posted the video a few days ago but outside (read: real world) forces prevented this from happening. I went ahead and posted it anyway sans any of my commentary because a) I found it exceptionally compelling and wanted to share it as quickly as possible and b) I'm very much aware of the culture of "firsties" and I had the mild fear that within a few days this video would be exhausted and irrelevant.

In any case, Weingarten (who I confess, I've never read) makes many points that I myself have made in this space on more than one occasion. It's heartening to hear someone else call bullshit on the "hive mind" blog culture, especially when done as in depth and and colorfully as Weingarten does it: "It doesn't matter what someone writes next to the MP3" and "It's not how you best illustrate a keyword, it's how many times a day you can mention a keyword." Right fucking on.

While I largely agree with most of what Weingarten is saying here, I do have a major point of contention. He seems to claim that pre-internet music magazines were inherently superior to blogs. I won't deny that editorial standards were certainly higher ("some" as opposed to "non-existent") but Weingarten is making what more or less amounts to an argument for elitism and cultural hegemony.

Frankly, major music publications aren't and have never been better at exposing their readers to worthy music than blogs currently are. Take Weingarten's employers at Rolling Stone, who their former writer Richard Meltzer claimed "INVENTED the rock 'n' roll puff piece:"

Rolling Stone in the '70s was, as it remains today, a TRADE PAPER, a record industry HYPE SHEET, a promulgator of mass compliance in the Consumer Sector, a principal factor in the dumbing, maiming, and calming down of the public's taste for a rock-roll beast that had once indeed been not only wild & crazy but GENUINELY ANARCHIC.

That might be a little harsh or considered sour grapes but even a cursory look at RS's history will tell you that they were much more interested in James Taylors and John Cougar Mellencamps than Stooges or Minutemen. And it's not exactly like their non-music pop culture coverage is a recent phenomenon.

My problem with most music blogs is not that they are "lowest common denominator" as opposed to "legitimate" music coverage, but that they follow the trade paper/hype sheet format. It's a sad betrayal of the potential of 21st century communication.

I suppose the utopian ideal is something like thousands of digital fanzines, each reflecting the unique taste and ideas of their respective authors, created with ease and accessible to literally anyone in the world. In other words, individual expression instead of algorithmic-derived groupthink. It's an unfortunate fact that most major music blogs are utterly informed by music biz publicists. Thus, the prospect of free, unfettered exchange of ideas has been co-opted by the mechanisms of industry. Perhaps the internet did cause the death the mainstream but really the major differences are that niche taste (including Weingarten's unkillable indie rock) is much more susceptible to the above process and no one's getting paid.

One has to wonder if Weingarten finds irony in the fact that his video deriding art as meme may well become a meme itself. I suspect he'll find it just as ironic as I do every time I use my music blog to express my disgust with music blogs.

Update #2: Hype Machine responds.

I wrote that I had never read Weingarten but it turns out this isn't true. He is the creator of Hipster Puppies. So he already knows exactly what it's like to be a meme.

New Release: The Endtables

Someone at Drag City has apparently decided that they are going to be the keepers of the punk rock archives. Last year, the label released arguably the most revelatory reissue of the year: Death's For the Whole World to See. This year, they may have doubled that feat with today's release of a collection from Louisville, KY's Endtables.

Like Death, the Endtables released a lone seven-inch during their lifetime, in their case a 4-song EP. And like Death, it's unlikely that anyone beyond those close to the band heard it until one of its cuts was included on the compilation of rare punk singles Bloodstains Across the Midwest. (The legally dubious Bloodstains series numbers in the dozens and covers many regions but that's a story for another time.)

However, unlike Death, who reveled in Stooges/MC5/Blue Oyster Cult-derived hard rock, the Endtables were not classicists. Their guitar sound, courtesy of band founder Alex Durig, was tinny and jagged, not thick, heavy metal-style. His noisy leads and solos recall the controlled cacophony of early Greg Ginn. Vocalist Steve Rigot was an appealing non-singer, intoning in a manner that can only be described as "yelp-y." Occasional effects take his vocals even further from the realm of rock 'n' roll convention. His performing highlight has to be a "Shout"-styled "Hey-ey-ey-ey" during the song "Trick or Treat" that sounds like equal parts unenthused mental patient and injured animal.

Even the band's name gave notice they were not interested in being punk-by-the-numbers, whether you take it as acceptance of the everyday as opposed to clichéd rebellion or as a Duchamp-esque readymade. Or maybe it's just the thing you stub your toe on when you're not looking. The Endtables were one of the early figures of Louisville's nascent indie/punk scene. (See the compilation Bold Beginnings for a thorough overview.) Without too much difficulty, one could trace a line of inspiration backwards from later Louisville bands like Antietam, Squirrel Bait and Slint to the Endtables' atypical approach.

The Drag City self-titled collection complies the band's EP, a pair of studio cuts from the same sessions and half a dozen live tracks. It's not dissimilar from the artsy-but-not-too-fartsy punk of Dangerhouse-era Los Angeles. Ideas flowing in from New York, Cleveland and the UK galvanized many into picking up instruments and doing their own thing, resulting in some of the most exciting rock music ever made. The Endtables were as fine an example of any of this thrilling moment in music history, just before hardcore orthodoxy set in. The tape fuck-up, we've-already-started-thanks-for-joining-us intro to "Process of Elimination" might be the best beginning to a punk song ever and has long been a favorite in my household. Now it, along with the rest of the Endtables output, can be in yours as well.

The Unblinking Ear Podcast: The Customer Is Always Indifferent

As some of you may know, this podcast is available via subscription from the iTunes store:



Terrific. Except I couldn't help but notice two things:



Let me blow those up for you. There's this:



And this:



Seriously, folks. I don't ask for much.


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Used Bin Ubiquitous Bargains: Tommy Keene

Once a upon a time I would regularly run a feature in this digital pages called "Paleontology For Dullards," wherein I rated LPs I found in used bins with a percentage of what I paid for them. In other words, an esoteric title for a impenetrable concept.

In an effort to make this blog more user-friendly (and user-used), I've ditched this concept and it's place would like to introduce Used Bin Ubiquitous Bargains.

These are the LPs I frequently see fallowing in the used bins of record shops despite their quality and reliably low sticker price. They are the albums you can find easily, will only set you back 5 beans or less and are probably better than the whatever the hype machine is praising this week. All in all, they are ultimately both a wiser and more prudent purchase and better way to support your local vinyl vendor than most of the collector-bait that will be released on Record Store Day. MP3s from these albums will be posted as well, because I've learned that people like free songs more than reading.

For our inaugural UBUB (please pronounce this "you-bee you-bee" not "uhb uhb"), I cannot think of a more deserving candidate than Mr. Tommy Keene.

Keene was something of a critics darling back in the 80s. His pair of 1984 EPs, Back Again (Try) and Places That Are Gone, received glowing notices from big time R'n'R institutions Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. It's easy to hear why. Keene is an ace pop songwriter. A lot of what gets classified as power pop is too much pop and too little power, its practitioners favoring the slight and saccharine. That's not a problem for Keene. His melodies are seductive, never sticky-sweet. Even his most dulcet songs have the hint of a much fiercer, more primal animal. I've always imagined that when Westerberg fired Bob Stinson and tried to mold the Replacements into a less shambling, more professional unit, it was Keene's sound he was emulating. Indeed, Keene's records from this period sound like everything the post-Tim Mats should have been.

Keene's notoriety with critics led to a deal with Geffen Records where he debuted with 1986's Songs From The Film. Despite some now dated production (how high can we mix that gated snare?), the album remains one of the decade's best. Songs From The Film received a somewhat successful promotional push from Geffen, enough to get it to #148 in the Billboard charts. More importantly, it ensured that promo copies of the record have become a used bin staple for the past 20-plus years. Keene subsequently released an EP (Run Now) and another full length (Based On Happy Times) for Geffen before returning to the land of the independents, where he has happily remained since.

All of the records above can obtained without difficulty and on the cheap, with Songs From The Film being both the easiest to find and most highly recommended. Below is a sample of some of Keene's work: a song each from Back Again (Try), Places That Are Gone, Run Now and Based On Happy Times and two from Songs From The Film. Give them a listen and know that the next time you see a slab of vinyl with Keene's name on it in ye olde rekkid shoppe, you shouldn't hesitate.

We Love Malcolm

...cause no one else does.

(Video via Jon Solomon.)

There's a lot of things you could call Malcolm McClaren: swindler, charlatan, opportunist, scam artist, provocateur, culture vulture, art school wanker, unrepentant exploiter, borderline child pornographer, shameless idea thief, narcissist. I'm sure McLaren wouldn't object to any of those being part of his epitaph.

Coincidentally, I just rewatched The Filth and the Fury a few days ago. The film certainly downplayed McLaren's contribution to his most famous association, the Sex Pistols. This was in some ways a refutation of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (ironically, also directed by Julien Temple), where McLaren positioned himself as a Machiavellian mastermind assaulting culture and the Pistols themselves as mere puppets. The truth somewhere in between. There's little doubt that McLaren's concepts shaped the Sex Pistols to some degree. At the very least, he deserves full credit for dressing them.

Beyond even that band's considerable influence, McLaren's fingerprints are all over popular culture. Consider Bow Wow Wow's Annabella Lwin then consider the early career of Britney Spears. Consider his "solo" recording "Buffalo Gals" then consider Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot." McLaren was obviously more an ideas man than musician but his ideas have informed music culture for the past 30-plus years. Anyone who has enjoyed a bit of post-Situationist subversion mixed in with their pop product probably has McLaren to thank.

The Unblinking Ear Podcast: The List (So Far)

(I promise this will be marginally more fun than filling out your census form.)

Hello, fans of my podcast, tolerators of my podcast, and tolerators of my person.

Because I have far too much time on my hands, I've assembled a list of every artist I've played on the Unblinking Ear Podcast.

Why? Well, it's sort of been my unofficial policy to never play the same artist twice. This is, of course, unless the artist has a new release, which I'm always happy to feature. I just don't like redundancy. Rather than play the same favorites over and over again, I'd much rather find and air things less appreciated, even if I'm just digging through the corners of my own record collection.

I've been doing the podcast for nearly two years and with list I will no longer have to check the tags of each post to see whom I've already played. The list features 308 different artists.

Now here's the part where you come in.

Who HAVEN'T I played?

Is there any band conspicuous by their absence? Is there someone of whom you know I'm a big fan, but isn't featured? Is there a band that you think it just so damn good you just can't believe I have played them?

Please let me know. All your responses will be considered (and possibly mocked). All kidding aside, I'm looking for your help to stimulate some dead links in my brain and make me go "Oh, man! I forgot all about them."

So get to it, folks. At the very least, I hope this will make for some lively discussion.

Oh, and if you mention your own band, I'm going to smack you in the mouth.

1. AC Newman
2. The Action
3. The Adverts
4. AK-47
5. Alan Milman Sect
6. Alternative TV
7. American Music Club
8. Angry Samoans
9. Animals and Men
10. Article 58
11. Barbara Manning
12. Bartlebees
13. Bassholes
14. The Bats
15. Beach Boys
16. The Beat
17. Better Beatles
18. Bevis Frond
19. Beyond the Implode
20. Big Star
21. Bird Nest Roys
22. The Birthday Party
23. The Bizarros
24. Blue Orchids
25. Bobby Soxx
26. Bottomless Pit
27. Box Elders
28. The Boys
29. Brain Eno
30. Busted Statues
31. Cabaret Voltaire
32. Carolee
33. Cause Co-Motion
34. Chain Gang
35. Cheap Trick
36. Cheveu
37. Chills
38. Chris Carpenter
39. Christmas
40. Chrome
41. The Chosen Few
42. Circle X
43. Classic Ruins
44. The Clean
45. Colin Newman
46. Coral
47. Coloured Balls
48. The Cramps
49. The Creation
50. The Creepers
51. The Crescendos
52. Crime
53. Cyclops
54. Daniel Francis Doyle
55. David Bazan
56. Dead Boys
57. Dead C
58. Death
59. Desperate Bicycles
60. Destroyer
61. The Dicks
62. The Dictators
63. Died Pretty
64. Dieter Meier
65. The Dils
66. Dirt Shit
67. Dirtbombs
68. Disappears
69. Distractions
70. The Dogs
71. The Dream Syndicate
72. Drunks With Guns
73. Eat Skull
74. Eddy Current Suppression Ring
75. Electric Eels
76. The Embarrassment
77. Embrace
78. Endtables
79. Eppu Normaali
80. The Ex
81. The Fall
82. Fang
83. The Feelies
84. FIlth
85. Flamin Groovies
86. Fleetwood Mac
87. Flesh Eaters
88. Flipper
89. The Fresh and Onlys
90. Fucked Up
91. Futureheads
92. Gaunt
93. Gem
94. Gene Clark
95. The Germs
96. Girls
97. The Girls
98. Girls At Our Best
99. Go-Betweens
100. Golden Error
101. Gordons
102. Grass Widow
103. Great Plains
104. Grifters
105. Guided By Voices
106. The Gun Club
107. Gun Outfit
108. Guv'ner
109. Halo of Flies
110. Hank IV
111. The Haskels
112. Thee Headcoats
113. Helmettes
114. Henry's Dress
115. Herman's Hermits
116. Home Blitz
117. Homosexuals
118. Hot Snakes
119. The Hunches
120. Hüsker Dü
121. The In Out
122. Inferno
123. Jay Reatard
124. Jean-Paul Sartre Experience
125. Joel RL Phelps and the Downer Trio
126. John Cale
127. John Felice
128. Johnny Moped
129. Johnny Thunders
130. Kevin Ayers
131. The Kids
132. The Kinks
133. Kriminella Gitarrer
134. Kurt Vile
135. La Peste
136. The Laureates
137. The Leftovers
138. The Lewd
139. Liket Lever
140. Liliput
141. Lilys
142. The Lines
143. Little Claw
144. Lollipop Shoppe
145. Long Blondes
146. Lou Reed
147. Loudon Wainwright III
148. Love
149. Love of Diagrams
150. Magick Heads
151. Magik Markers
152. Marked Men
153. The Mayfair Set
154. Mayyors
155. Mecca Normal
156. Mekons
157. Meth Teeth
158. Mick Farren
159. Micronotz
160. Minutemen
161. Mission of Burma
162. The Misunderstood
163. The Monorchid
164. Motorhead
165. Moving Sidewalks
166. Moving Targets
167. The Mystic Tide
168. Nasal Boys
169. The Nazz
170. Negative Approach
171. Negative Trend
172. Neil Young
173. The Nerves
174. Neu
175. New Bomb Turks
176. Nitwitz
177. Nocturnal Projections
178. Nodzzz
179. Nothing Painted Blue
180. Nothing People
181. Nubs
182. The Obits
183. The Only Ones
184. Opus
185. The Oranges Band
186. Oxford Collapse
187. The Pagans
188. Pere Ubu
189. Phil Ochs
190. Photobooth
191. The Pin Group
192. Pissed Jeans
193. Polvo
194. Ponys
195. The Pop Group
196. Prisonshake
197. Psychic Ills
198. Public Image Ltd
199. Pylon
200. Randoms
201. Real Kids
202. Red Krayola
203. Red Transistor
204. Reigning Sound
205. Richard Hell
206. Richard Thompson
207. The Rich Kids
208. Rip Offs
209. Robert Wyatt
210. Roger Miller
211. Roky Erickson
212. Ron House
213. Ronnie Mayor
214. Rose Tattoo
215. Rot Shit
216. Roy Wood
217. Rude Kids
218. The Ruts
219. Sado-Nation
220. The Saints
221. Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves
222. Satan's Rats
223. Screaming Urge
224. Sebadoh
225. Severe
226. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
227. Shop Assistants
228. Sic Alps
229. Silkworm
230. Silver Apples
231. Simply Saucer
232. Singles
233. Skrewdriver
234. Slant 6
235. Sleater Kinney
236. The Sleepers
237. Snuky Tate
238. Soft Boys
239. Sonic Youth
240. Sonic's Rendezvous Band
241. Spider Bags
242. Spoon
243. Spring
244. The Squad
245. Stiffs Inc
246. The Stooges
247. The Stranglers
248. Strapping Fieldhands
249. Stuart Murdoch
250. Styrenes
251. Sugar
252. Suicide Commandos
253. Superchunk
254. Swamp Rats
255. Tall Dwarfs
256. Tampax
257. Tapeworm
258. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
259. Teenage Fanclub
260. Terrorways
261. Thee Oh Sees
262. Thermals
263. This Poison!
264. Third Bardo
265. Thomas Function
266. Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments
267. Thought Criminals
268. Tights
269. Times New Viking
270. Tommy Keene
271. Tre Orsi
272. Troggs
273. Twink
274. Twinkeys
275. Ty Segall
276. Tyvek
277. Unrest
278. Urinals
279. Uzi
280. V-3
281. Vaselines
282. Vast Majority
283. Vee Dee
284. Versus
285. Vicious Visions
286. The Victims
287. Victor Dimisich Band
288. Vivian Girls
289. Vomit Launch
290. Vomit Pigs
291. Volcano Suns
292. Vulgar Boatmen
293. Wanda Jackson
294. Wavves
295. The Wedding Present
296. Weirdos
297. The What's New
298. The Wipers
299. Wire
300. Wounded Lion
301. Wooden Shjips
302. X
303. XYX
304. Yo
305. Yo La Tengo
306. Young Marble Giants
307. The 3Ds
308. 45 Grave

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Children By The Million...

...sing for Alex Chilton.

I'm quite certain there's no chance of me writing a better tribute to Mr. Chilton than the one Westerberg did many years ago. So I'll just note that the three albums he made with Big Star are indeed every bit as brilliant as everyone says they are and worthy of their legendary status. In fact, they cast such a long shadow that many seemed to resent Chilton for not remaking them in his (admittedly scattershot) solo career. At the very least, you have to hand it to Chilton for being a muse-follower rather than a crowd pleaser. Songs like "Walking Dead" and "My Rival" are among the most fucked-up rock n roll recordings you'll ever hear from a major artist, released well before that sort of willful deconstruction had any aesthetic cachet. (The collection Stuff, is as good an introduction as any to his solo work.)

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any performance footage of pre-reunion Big Star available, nor any of his prior band, the Box Tops, where they aren't miming. (Though this one pairs footage of the recording of their first album with a song from their third.) So here's LX, in the mid-80s, promoting his Feudalist Tarts EP by playing a few songs and giving a brief interview.

New Release: Eddy Current Suppression Ring

Let's write a little speculative fiction, shall we? Let's say that John William Cummings was born with no hands, thus could not innovate the blitzkrieg downstroke. And let's say that Malcolm McLaren decided that he had an even better idea of how to sell clothes than putting together a rock band. If these things happened, does punk rock, as we know it, still happen?

Maybe it does in Australia. First wave Aussie-punk archetypes the Saints and Radio Birdman were performing as early as 1974, concurrent with the earliest CBGBs bands. They released their respective debuts back in 1976, both pre-dating vinyl from any UK punk group.

However, it's arguable that what the Saints, Birdman and their children were doing wasn't especially different from what was already going on in the rock scene down under. Bands like Coloured Balls and AC/DC weren't the bloated, in-need-of-shunting dinosaurs that Pink Floyd and Led Zep were. They were making some of the most vital, alive rock music of the mid-70s. Unlike in the UK and US, this new generation of Aussie rockers were more or less continuing in a straight line from their forebears rather than starting a revolution. Before "punk" existed, they had already figured out hardcore rock n roll in the land of Oz: keep it simple and dirty, attack with brute force and don't forget to swing. Ugly Things' Johan Kugelberg calls it "grillfat rock." I'm not sure exactly what this implies other than it probably goes best with lager.

Melbourne's Eddy Current Suppression Ring are firmly in the above tradition. Their third album Rush To Relax comes out today in US through the reliably fantastic Goner label. Needless to say it's a more than worthy purchase for anyone who likes their rock music stripped down and nasty.

In my post on 2008's best records, I wrote of ECSR's prior album, Primary Colours:

Sometimes it's hard to explain exactly why a band stands above the pack. Eddy Current Suppression Ring plays garage punk, plain and simple and lean and mean. There's no angle. No bells and whistles. Nothing to make blogger/critic/hype machine-types to perk up their ears and say "Oh, isn't that interesting!" So what makes ECSR better than the rest? It's that's indefinable quality called... I don't know... talent?

I'm perhaps a bit closer to figuring what it is that makes ECSR so much better than most of their garage punk brethren. I have some theories, at least. Maybe it's because they're equally adept at the slow burn and the stomper. Maybe it's because they know how to ride a groove. Maybe it's the fact that their guitars are a treble-y clang rather than a wall of fuzz, which allows the other instruments room to breathe. Maybe it's their keen sense of melody.

Well, whatever it is, the conclusion is that this is one of the finer rock music outfits around right now. If you're looking elsewhere for THE album to pick up this week, you're a real chump.

New Release: Ted Leo and the Phramacists

As a rule, writers who cover pop music tend to overvalue artists whose work is in touch with the zeitgeist. A cursory look at the essays of any Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll bear this out. It's simply not enough for critics to say what their favorite records of the year are. They need to explain why those records are important to the grander scheme of here and now. However, topical relevance and sociological implications are usually inessential to enjoying music, even if it makes for good (and, frankly, easier to write) copy. Plus, when heard many years later, it can sound incredibly dated. Have you listened to Lou Reed's New York album lately?

Still, it's impossible to listen to music outside of the context of one's existence. And even the most hermitic of us is surely shaped by the current state of the world. When an artist comments on the present, it can affect as us though they're expressing our own new and inexplicable feelings, perhaps in a way we never thought to before. Does this necessarily make for a better record? It can and often does add a vitality to the music, but only if the music's vital in the first place.

Such was the case with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' Hearts of Oak, which perfectly encapsulated the emotions of post-9/11 America: The anger, the fear, the confusion and the subtle hope for a better, more peaceful world. Leo managed this without resorting to ponderousness or pretension, focusing his (and our) complex feelings of uncertainty and conflict into something relatable yet poetic. The album was a powerful statement and gave notice that Leo was a major artist. He's released a pair a full-lengths since, both of which had wonderful moments though neither quite managed to replicate the grandeur of Hearts of Oak.

That is, until now. With today's release of The Brutalist Bricks, Leo and co. give us what may well be their best effort yet. Like Hearts of Oak before it, The Brutalist Bricks captures its moment beautifully. Since the 2008 election, the reactionary response of the right has led many us to feel real change may not be possible. Hope has faded in cynicism. Leo shares our frustration but refuses to be beaten by it. His conviction makes us believe that there's glory in simply fighting the good fight whether or not we always get the outcome we want. Unfortunately, promos didn't come with a lyric sheet, so I've got nothing to quote but, believe me, the message comes through loud and clear.

This is all well and good but would mean little if the music wasn't as captivating as the lyrics. It is. The Brutalist Bricks is not any kind of departure from Leo's trademark sound. Rather, it distills his greatest strengths and offers some strongest melodies of his career. And it sounds fantastic, sporting crisp production with each element clearly pronounced in the mix. Listing highlights from an album this strong feels a bit arbitrary and redundant. However, I will note that the soaring "Ativan Eyes," the vibrant, pounding "Gimme the Wire" and the insanely catchy "Bottled in Cork" are the songs I'm most looking forward to hearing the next time I see the Pharmacists at one their justly lauded live shows.

The album is streaming in full on MySpace, if you want to give it a listen. And you really should. It's an early contender for album of the year.

53 Years Ago Today...

...Mark Edward Smith was begat into this existence, making the word a much more colorful and rewarding place/





Despite the evidence in the right hand corner of the above that it has happened, it's worth nothing that I've never seen a Fall video on 120 Minutes on VH1 Classic. Not that I watch 120 Minutes on VH1 Classic all that often. Though "not all that often" is still more often than I'd like to admit.

The Unblinking Ear Podcast: Punk Springs Eternal

It's nearly springtime. What better way to enjoy the new season than to listen to 4th in our series of podcasts featuring nothing but vintage late 70s and early 80s punk rock?

It will provide the perfect soundtrack to to strapping on your Converse^® sneakers, which you can now wear without fear of stepping in a pile of slush and freezing your foot as it soaks through the canvas. Converse^®: bringing you great sneakers for certain kinds of weather and the concept of anarchy^®.

Earlier installments of our series are available here, here and here.


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