Here are Blue Derkin’s favorite music-related things of 2014. You can check out all our Best of 2014 lists here. 4) Best Named Musical Act, Mope Rock Category: The Twilight Sad. Never have dirges sounded so uplifting as when these Scottish rockers come slinking across your airwaves. A perfect name with a sound to match, these […]
Some Fridays just call for a little bit of magic. And, on this particular Friday, LA-based Mystery Skulls are more than happy to provide the requisite supernatural flavor, in the form of a shimmering, slamming, disco-heavy track appropriately entitled “Magic.” Seemingly sprung from the 1970s but actually the brainchild of Luis Dubuc, the track features […]
If you grew up more than fifty miles from the US-Canada border, there’s a better than average chance you don’t even know who Sloan is. And that, friends, is a goddamned shame, because that means more than half the US populace is missing out on some of the best rock of the past twenty years; […]
Whether you mean the band or the mighty bodies of water, I’m pretty partial to Great Lakes. And, if you listen to the brand-new track “Into the Fold” by the band that shares the name of our “inland oceans,” you’ll find a few similarities between the two. Both are implacable while inexorably moving, and both […]
From downtempo drone to reverb-soaked classic shoegaze, the Majestic Theatre in Detroit offered everything a gracefully-aging concertgoer could want on a chilly autumn night. Minimalist mavens Low and feedback fiends Slowdive combined to offer a night to remember, lining up a night of the world’s slowest but still-inevitable one-two punch – easy to see coming […]
Line & Circle pretty much has it all for a guy like me. First off, like me, they’re from Ohio. Secondly, they relocated to Los Angeles, just like I did, and settled in Echo Park, where I lived for nearly three years. And finally, their sound evokes a “Fables of the Reconstruction”-era REM – and, […]
The new single from Spires is a study in influence-soaked contrasts. On the one hand, “Sleepy Eyes” is a shaggy, shuffling blissfest with dreamy vocals that gets even slower as the track progresses. On the other hand, it’s got a bassline that moves around enough to get you moving, even if it is at half-speed, […]
What generation of shoegaze are we on now anyway? I suppose it depends when you start counting, but for me, the venerated-yet-oft-derided genre begins in The Year of Our Lord Jesus and Mary Chain 1985, with the release of “Psychocandy” – and I won’t hear any argument from you Gnostic Cocteau Twins fans out there. […]
Far removed from the irony-soaked (though extremely satisfying) stylings of his erstwhile band The Walkmen, Peter Matthew Bauer‘s debut solo effort seems to be all about the earnestness. And, different though it may be, it’s no less satisfying. Take, for instance, the single “You Are the Chapel” – it’s nothing short of a revival meeting […]
Is there anything more satisfying than a broken heart story as told via the anguished yowl of a rock song? If you’re on the fence, Hundred Visions will have you saying “no” in approximately three minutes and 35 seconds. That’s how long it takes to listen to the Austin outfit’s second single off “Spite,” their […]