Planes Mistaken for Stars Up In Them Guts No Idea Records For fans of: Rites of Spring, Jawbreaker, the Replacements Grade: A Final Word: So good that it’s hard to listen to. Download This Song: “A Six-Inch Valley” The latest release from Denver, CO’s Planes Mistaken for Stars is the sound of distilled schizophrenic madness in rock & roll form.
Many musical purists these days have found a way to immediately dismiss any vaguely punk-related music with some emotional content in its lyrics by labeling it with the scarlet letter E-E for emo. From the acoustic sounds of Dashboard Confessional to the pop-hardcore stylings of Taking Back Sunday and Thursday, emo is a catchall category for music that older, supposedly wiser music fans are just not supposed to like.
Head Automatica Decadence Warner Bros. Records For fans of: Gorillaz, !!!, the Faint Grade: B- Final Word: A little too Automatica Download This Song: “I Shot William H. Macy” Head Automatica is the side-project of post-hardcore band Glassjaw’s lead vocalist Daryl Palumbo and Dan the Automator, the producer behind some of the best underground hip-hop of the past decade, as well as one of the members of the semi-popular cartoon band Gorillaz (his collaboration with Damon Albarn of Blur).
As someone obsessed with music, one of the first questions I always used to ask people was what kind of music they liked to listen to. After a while, I realized that was an awful question, because for most people there isn’t a simple answer-I myself listen to lots of different types of music and would have trouble answering my own question.
Tiger Army, a punkish rockabilly trio from Southern California, have come into their own on their third release, “III: Ghost Tigers Rise.” Mixing a retro sound, lovely song craft, and a mystical lyrical melancholy, the tunes on the album paint a picture of darkness and pain, all to a driving backbeat.
The debut album from Chicago’s Challenger is the best indie rock album of the year thus far. Taking the best elements from ’80s underground rock and infusing them with a keen pop sense and a healthy amount of righteous political anger, these three guys and one girl have made an album that came out of nowhere and threatens to make anyone’s favorite band sound weak by comparison.
Growing out of a punk rock background in high school, the attitude I generally had toward any mainstream music was that if it was bland enough for the masses, it was too boring for me. It was a time-the mid-to-late ’90s-in which mainstream music was particularly bad, with teen pop, out-of-date gangsta rap, and Dave Matthews vying for control of particularly constricted airwaves.
Pine, or matsu, is one of the longest-lived plants in the world of flora, and a symbol of the enduring culture of Japan. Keeping its green leaves even through the coldest of winters, the gnarled pine silhouetted against the sky embodies the unchanging resilience of Japan and its people. That is why the pine is the theme of this year’s Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, held this Labor Day weekend.
Shame Club Vol. Self-released For fans of: The Who, Thin Lizzy, Van Morrison Grade: A- Final Word: Local boys make good Download this song: “Black Moon” The second self-released album from local rockers Shame Club, “Vol.”, is a slight departure from the first.
David Rees’ “Get Your War On II” is the second collection of his series of politically satirical cartoons. A hodgepodge of simple clip-art images and profane, enraged dialogue balloons, the comics-which appear in each issue of Rolling Stone Magazine-are some of the most ballsy, angry and flat out funny critiques of United States foreign policy in circulation today.
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