Latest Posts

Planet Three

August 18, 2015

Planet Three is a band best described by drummer Nathan Zak in a craftily worded Facebook message to us: “From a farm laden land known as Marilla, three musicians lived less than a mile from each other for nearly a decade until they formed the lizard rock outfit dubbed Planet Three. With guidance from their local witch doctors, the three were able to conjure up a potion of tasty riffs, proggy changes, and a shoegaze atmosphere. Their ever-expanding sound along with their stage show is a theatrical, over-the-top glam party hosted by the ghost of Marc Bolan. Although their future is unclear to them, presently they are searching for more genres to work into their own formula.” We shot this edition of buffaBLOG sessions in Nate’s basement out in Marilla. Thanks to Shauna Presto, Andrea LoPiccolo, Jason Paton, Charles Tyrie, and Joe Cardina for working on this one. Special thanks[...]

Frame and Mantle

August 4, 2015

We have a new project for you, and it’s called buffaBLOG Sessions. The aim of this project is to take up-and-coming artists, whether they’re Buffalo born and raised or just passing through the area, and feature them in intimate locations around the city. Each bi-weekly session will feature one of these bands performing two songs, with a more-than-casual interview cut into the middle. Our first band is Frame and Mantle. They’re out of Erie, PA and recorded with us right before their show last month at Mohawk Place, a show that kicked off their first tour (10 stops all over the Northeast). We recorded it upstairs in a warehouse on Rhode Island Street (special thanks to Joe Cardina SR. for the location). Check out tunes from Frame and Mantle here and watch their buffaBLOG Sessions clip below.

The Huckleberry Fins – Pipe Dreams

July 27, 2015

Surf rock. It’s becoming harder and harder to avoid the corny blues based riffs and clean reverberating guitars of the brand. So it’s no surprise that our album of the week is a pure surf rock band out of Rochester. The Huckleberry Fins had a release party this past Friday for their debut LP, Pipe Dreams (Dadstache Records), and all I can say about it is this: Pure. Surf. Rock. That’s it. There’s your review. Another hard day of work here at the buffaBLOG office! But seriously. If you don’t have a soft spot for surf rock, you have no idea what is cool, and you probably don’t like to have fun. This album is not for you if that’s the case. It’s almost completely made up of instrumentals. It’s the soundtrack to any cool guy’s life, whether he be driving his hot rod with a hot babe in the passenger[...]

Cake at Canalside (7/25/15)

July 27, 2015

In a summer that’s been made certifiably awesome by a whole bunch of shows from obscure bands in intimate locations like Mohawk, it was crazy refreshing to be able to sing the f***ing SHIT out of a bunch of songs that have weathered through my ever-changing tastes in music, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one with this train of thought. First of all, the intro. Who else but Cake has the gall to pre-construct a five minute, constantly building and never climaxing introduction to precursor their show with? It’s great, and I can’t find a Youtube clip, so you’ll just have to bear with me and probably go see Cake for yourself if you haven’t witnessed this gimmick yet. Then, the band walks out to the Kerfuffle crowd and with the first chord I easily recognize as “Sheep Go to Heaven,” the song that got me into[...]

Pitbull – Dale

July 22, 2015

You hear those three ascending piano notes. You stop what you’re doing and turn your full attention to the wondrous arpeggiation that just tongued your earholes. You hear the same three notes, descend back to where they came from. You start to see spots. You start to sweat. You’re not sure if you’ve just defecated yourself. But you don’t care either way. “Mr. Worldwide” is the first phrase you hear– and then you’re there. You’ve hit nirvana. Then your internet connection cuts out. You spew the following spell of words that garners a small crowd outside of your apartment window– “What the fuck! I just had my moment of inner-most peace and YOU ruined it, Time Warner. YOU are responsible for this sham of a wifi connection that just stopped me from streaming the last three minutes and forty-four seconds of ‘Piensas (Dile la Verdad)’ feat. Gente De Zona, which[...]

Dadstache Releases House Majority EP

July 20, 2015

It’s easy to play off garage rock as “easy.” Just get a couple of guitars, some loud shitty amps, your friend the drummer, and a buddy’s basement, and boom, you have a band. However it’s not that easy — try and tell that to John Dwyer or Ty Segall. Today, we have a release from House Majority out of Rochester. You see, they’d probably also be offended if you told them that, as their a pretty killer garage rock EP was just released in the physical form via Dadstache Records. House Majority rings true to classic garage rock. All four songs are high energy pieces with no frills. Just straight rock ‘n’ roll, reminiscent of the Stooges. Garage rock is facing a mild revival in some circles with guys like Ty Segall and Parquet Courts seeing the light of day. With songs like “And I Say” (the fourth song off[...]

Tame Impala – Currents

July 13, 2015

Thanks to a Facebook post from my friend Matt, it has come to my attention that “Tame Impala is the Instagram of rock bands.” This comes as a part of a multiple-hundreds of words rant from this album review of Currents. First of all, if you read it, Will Neibergall writes a solid review of the CD, and he makes a point that can be argued for or against. It’s short and to the point, and it sparked a good ol’ Facebook discussion that I’m sure my friend Matt’s going to be notified of for the next couple days. And it definitely has been getting it’s click throughs and complaints. However I’m here to deconstruct it. “Tame Impala is the Instagram of rock bands.” It irks me to hear this bouncing around in my head. There are tidbits of the review and Mr. Neibergall’s analogy that ring true: “Instagram used to[...]

Tonight: Frame and Mantle

July 9, 2015

Tonight kicks off a mini-tour for our ambient indie-rock friends from Erie, Frame and Mantle. In the first of nine tour dates that take the band from Buffalo to as far south as Wilmington, North Carolina, Frame and Mantle will be setting up camp at Mohawk Place with Elemantra and Sea of Teeth. Frame and Mantle have an EP out right now, which is available for free download over at its bandcamp. While Our Fields Lie Fallow has 5 songs, and shifts back and forth from loud, intense busts to American Football-esque ambient rock. It’s the kind of stuff you’d love to see in an intimate location, such as a basement show. Or Mohawk Place. So, as the day grows longer and this rain clears up, go download the EP, memorize all the lyrics, and sing right back at the band tonight at Mohawk. It’s $5 at the door and well[...]

Sonny Baker Premieres First Single from Upcoming Full Band EP

July 7, 2015

Today we have a release from Steak and Cake that is certainly worth noting. Sonny Baker, member of a bazillion other bands (Lazlo Hollyfeld, Wooden Waves, A Hotel Nourshing, etc.), has released the first single from his new project that’s bound to rock your face off. The song is called “You’re a Disaster/I’m a Disaster,” and will be featured on his upcoming, full band EP, Flesh It Out. It’s very reminiscent of old Japandroids: loud, simple, lo-fi, and just plain fun. The single opens up loud and throws dynamics out of the window. Immediately, we have the framework for the song  — a droning rhythm guitar with a short repetitive riff floating on top of it. The first verse comes in hot with slightly distorted vocals. There are a couple of different time changes in the song giving it a tiny bit of a math-y feel, but overall this is[...]

Wavves X Cloud Nothings – No Life For Me

June 30, 2015

If you were up on Sunday night around midnight, you may have been pleasantly surprised by something on the internet. No, it wasn’t an admission from one of your facebook buddies that he was in fact, totally in the wrong about having a confederate flag vanity plate on his Silverado. It was, however, the “surprise” release of the collab album No Life For Me from Cloud Nothings and Wavves. If you were paying attention a while ago, you did know that this project was going to happen. However, the release date was kept a mystery until Sunday night when it appeared on bandcamp (and on iTunes). It won’t have a true physical release, but if you really want a hard copy of it, it will be available on vinyl. Who collects CDs anymore anyways? The album takes a somewhat surprising step back into the lo-fi roots of the two bands.[...]

Tonight: Spoon

June 25, 2015

Indie rock legends Spoon stop by Canalside tonight for the fourth week of free music down at the waterfront. In what is bound to be one of the highlights of the series, Britt Daniels and Jim Eno bring their nearly two-decade old band around for the first time in a long time. Spoon will no doubt be playing songs off of their most recent LP, 2014’s fantastic They Want My Soul. Also worth checking out before you head down to the harbor is the band’s cover of The Cramps’ “TV Set” that they recently performed on Conan (see below). July Talk will precede Spoon with Battle of the Jam Bands winner Tomorreaux kicking things off at 6PM. VIP passes are $40 as is the usual for these shows. For the rest of us, it’s free.

Girlpool – Before The World Was Big

June 16, 2015

Girlpool is as punk rock as it gets. Two girls, at 18, release their first LP and gain a moderate following. No drums, just bleeding heart lyrics that are as honest as it gets with a clean guitar and some simple bass lines. A year later, a second, finely tuned LP drops from the duo and the punk rock continues. Of course, this isn’t the type of punk rock that the Beastie Boys pissed off their parents with. This is the new age of lady-punk that has taken over the indie scene ever since genre prophets Sleater Kinney bursted back earlier this year. Before The World Was Big hits you right in the heart when you hear it. I don’t care if you’re an 18 year old girl ready to ship off to college that has a moderate collection of vinyl she’s trying to find a place for in her[...]

Pattern Is Movement at Mohawk Place (6/14/15)

June 15, 2015

If you missed Pattern Is Movement last night, you didn’t miss a show, you missed an opportunity to hang out with a couple of really cool guys. Andrew Thiboldeaux and Chris Ward, the two members of the band, are nearing the end of the project, and made one last stop at Mohawk Place last night that was nothing short of intimate. As the forgetful, muggy, and grey Buffalo summer day drew to an end, and a light crowd slowly filled up the reddish insides of the Mohawk, three drum sets sat at the stage in the back of the venue, which probably broke some sort of drums-per-capita record inside the venue as the only other instruments up there were the two keyboard-synths Thiboldeaux would later sing through. CCDS (Death Squad) ended up being tapped in as the opening for Pattern after a whirlwind of changes to the opening act, and the[...]

Major Lazer – Peace is The Mission

June 8, 2015

There is an appeal to Major Lazer even to those that don’t subscribe to the EDM culture. Guns Don’t Kill People, Lazers Do caught some attention in 2009 with one of the strangest combinations of sound heard at that time: reggae mixed with electronic dance music, smashed together with a sense of humor and a cartoon laser-toting Jamaican renegade soldier. It was fun in 2009, but that’s not the case anymore. Peace Is The Mission removes a good amount of the originality of Major Lazer and brings the project into the top 40. Lazer-founder Diplo seems to be travelling down the path that fellow pop producers Calvin Harris and Pharrell have recently went down: producing pop tracks for years, mostly under the radar, and eventually gaining enough cred in the Illuminati circle to release their own hit albums. While this album is probably going to do great in the sales[...]

Thee Oh Sees – Mutilator Defeated at Last

May 27, 2015

It’s something we’ve heard plenty of times in the last few years: John Dwyer has shit out another Thee Oh Sees album. Shit out is not to say that the product is less than grand, rather Shit out is to say that he is some sort of a lo-fi, tape-mongering, fuzz-fanatic who was crafted by the big god upstairs for the sole purpose of creating garage rock masterpieces Religious speculations aside, Dwyer has bestowed upon us the sixth Oh Sees album in the last five years. This one is titled Mutilator Defeated at Last, and it packs the typical Oh Sees punch we’ve been accustomed to being battered with in recent years, just a little bit more relaxed when compared with the previous release by the band, Floating Coffin. Just as past albums have done, Mutilator takes the listener on a journey,  from creeping along with eerie squeaks of echoey electric guitars and cymbal taps to, without warning[...]