Latest Posts

Difficult Night

Difficult Night sits at the intersection of a handful of disparate influences. There’s the Malkmus vibe in the lyrics, the vocals and the music, but not quite so wacky. It’s a bit more conversational, if you you imagine you’re having a conversation with a hyperliterate neurotic. It noodles, it jams, it bobs your head. Sometimes it may even rock a bit. But guitarist/vocalist Shane Meyer is so out front the entire time crooning that he kinda reminds me of Van Morrison. Instead of singing about caravans and eyeballs and whatnot, though, he’s making puns, telling stories and twisting his words around. The music itself is understated and effective, complementing the vocals and building a space for Meyers to talk. In that sense, it certainly feels like an intimate singer-songwriter project, but without all the overwrought emotions and emotional whispers that label often implies. Check out Difficult Night and a few[...]

Five Year Rewind: Staff Picks – Part 1

Since the blog debuted on March 28th, 2010, with a truly horrible post about a Passion Pit show (sorry Bill), our ever revolving staff of writers and contributors have spun hundreds of albums and songs, and attended more shows in and out of Buffalo than I dare to count. To commemorate our upcoming five year anniversary this Saturday night. we have assembled a cast blog writers from past and present, each discussing their favorite albums, songs, shows, and even some memories since the blog’s inception. Today is Part 1. – Mac McGuire Steven Gordon (Staff Writer) Favorite Album: Thee Oh Sees – Castlemania (2011) There are so many good things about Thee Oh Sees: an insane rate of musical output, notorious live performances, profoundly debauched aesthetics, and a propensity for gradual innovation despite inherent stylistic simplicity. The group started a decade or two ago as the artistic vehicle for guitarist/vocalist/flutist John Dwyer.[...]

Newish Star – How Soon We Forget

There’s a certain word that comes to mind when I think about the genre of pop-punk: “bratty.” In this context, it’s a compliment, or at least not an insult. Good pop-punk tends to come with a sneer and a stuck-out tongue, the objects of its quasi-ironic, sometimes petty derision usually the self, and then everybody else. That’s not a huge emotional range, and really good pop-punk often cleverly plays with those limits. It’s those kind of moments that make Newish Star’s new tape, How Soon We Forget, especially interesting. Musically, it’s in the same ballpark as their past releases, but past the power chords, the slightly-off vocals, and the driving drums is a level of nuance that serves as evidence of growth. The very first moments of the tape serve as a pretty good metaphor for where the band’s at. It’s a recording of the trio between songs at a[...]

Tonight: Newish Star & Space Wolves

Space Wolves and Newish Star are both putting out new cassettes; They’re playing a release show today at the Glitterbox with Alpha Hopper and Space is Haunted; There are, reportedly, free beverages, cookies, clothing, and balloons; You’ll also be able to pick up the new Feral Kid Records mix tape, which features Mallwalkers, Plates, Resist Control, White Whale, Utah Jazz, and more; There’s a mixtape exchange going on, if you’ve got any to spare; It’s all free, bay bee. What god smiled on us to make this show happen? Pick one to believe in, at least for today, because this will be grand. Below: good songs from both bands releasing tapes. Facebook event here.

Tonight: Poison Arrows

Dreamland’s putting on a showcase tonight of what the Facebook event calls “experimentalpostpunkdeathfolk.” Sounds about right. Poison Arrows, Hot Tip, and Scott Valkwitch are all playing, and I’d say all three have a penchant for darkness and noise. Bill Nehill’s Poison Arrows fill out the “deathfolk” part of the equation. Hot Tip will provide the “postpunk,” and Scott Valkwitch and his walls of guitar-generated noise are probably the “experimental.” Then again, all three probably experiment with death, punk and post in lesser and greater amounts, so don’t sweat: your demons will be represented across the board. Show starts at 8pm. Facebook event here. Hot Tip jams below.

Hot Tip Releases “DNA” Video, Produced by Flatsitter

Hot Tip’s new video for “DNA,” produced by Flatsitter, is what your TV does when you’re sleeping. And what your TV does when you’re sleeping is give everyone who’s still awake seizures. It’s a dance party, and someone faceless brought a body suit and a color pallette straight out of a 90’s neon wet dream. Definitely fits the song’s frayed, frenetic vibe. Check it out below. “DNA” by Hot Tip (2015) from FLATSITTER on Vimeo.

Alpha Hopper Release “85315,” Tease Upcoming LP

Alpha Hopper’s new single “85315” (pronounce it “Eight Five Three Fifteen,” I think) draws on much of what made their last album, Let Heaven and Nature Sing, so great. Here, like there, the band locks in and stampedes like a single minded beast, drawing power from a driving beat and singer Irene Rekhviashvilli’s forceful shouts. But it’s different, too: the jagged aesthetic has been augmented by vaguely Eastern melodies and rhythms and Rekhviashvilli’s vocals are a bit more out front, more chants than yells. The band sounds like they know what they’re good at and they’re experimenting with different ways to use it, which makes the prospect of their upcoming LP (set to be released this summer)  even more exciting. Check out “85315” below.

Facility Men Release Futility Men

Technically, much of Facility Men’s new cassette, Futility Men, has been available for months. So forgive me if you’ve heard this one before: Facility Men trace their lineage back to Plates, who called it quits a few years ago. They recorded most of these songs and released them earlier this year, which caught the attention of Black Dots. The result: a remixed, remastered and expanded cassette of garage punky bangers. Facility Men can chug along with the best of them, but the most exciting moments of the cassette come when the guitars start rising and screaming and everything feels like it might crash wildly, like the cresting of the wave. It’ll keep you on your toes. Check out Black Dots’ Bandcamp, where you can buy the digital album or snag the cassette. Check out a sample below.

Tonight: CAGES

“Vivipary” is the name of both CAGES‘ new album and a biological condition. Vivipary, because I am sure you wondering, means “development of the embryo inside the body of the mother, eventually leading to live birth.” Thanks, Wikipedia. I could clumsily try to walk you through how that process is mirrored on CAGES’ Vivipary, but I’d rather just ask you to sit with the image: the embryo growing inside the body, morphing from a distended hunk of cells into a semi-translucent thing with eyes into a fetus as alien as it is human which is finally, agonizingly brought into into a cruel and arbitrary world, a crying hunk of flesh covered in the primal slime and detritus of birth (and that’s if the embryo is lucky!). To me, that’s not a bad analogy for CAGES’ music. It’s beautiful and powerful in the terrifying, inhuman way that nature is. It pertains[...]

Jacob Peter Releases Wind Song

Still catching up from the holiday lull, personally. Takes a lot out of you to get through another year and there’s some stuff that got lost in the mix. Jacob Peter’s Wind Song, for instance. He sent this over a while back and I’m just now getting to write it up. Jacob plays guitar with Humble Braggers, but his solo EP is a different beast. Much folkier, for instance, and much moodier. There are some very catchy pop songs on here (like the opener, “Stella”) but it’s definitely at its most interesting in its broodier, more Jeff Buckley-esque moments  (for example, “The Line Between Us and Being”). Check out the rest of the EP here. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/177561709″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Tonight: Rabbit Rabbit

There are so many different kinds of ghosts. You’ve got your vengeful spirits, your floating sheets, your ancestral phantoms, your Caspers. So when I describe Rabbit Rabbit‘s music as kind of spectral, I should clarify that I am thinking of a playful poltergeist. Doesn’t mean you any harm, but probably doesn’t bear any good will, either: just spooking you for the sake of entertainment. Check out “Holyoke” below to see what I mean. The vocals range from whispers to haunting wails while the song bounces around of its own accord. Wanna see it all for yourself? Rabbit Rabbit’s playing tonight at Black Dots with Grout and Jamie & The Debt. Doors at 7, show at 8. Six bucks. Facebook event here.

Newish Star

Every time I see Newish Star, I’m sort of entranced. This is mostly because of the way they careen through their set, packing 15 songs into half an hour with minimal bullshitting. You might get a “Double Super Jackpot” out of Jordan Nittoli before the band launches into the song of the same name, but for the most part, they just kind of barrel through and rip. You come out of the set in kind of a daze, but a good one. And if you’re smart, you pick up their tape, Look Both Ways. And when you actually sit down with it, you realize how good all those songs you just got pummeled with actually are. They’re clever, they’re catchy, they’re simple but superbly written. There are hyper-complex songs out there in the Buffalo scene, there are very interesting songs, but there aren’t many that flow as well as tracks[...]

Wooden Waves – Wilder Dreams

It’s a cliché to say that a band’s latest release shows “signs of maturation.” On one hand, it usually doesn’t mean anything: you’re just saying they’re older than they were yesterday. On the other hand, it makes an incorrect assumption about progress. It implies that the band was one thing yesterday, is something else today and is working towards becoming some perfected version of itself in the future. This kind of assumption might give us a framework for making sense of things, but it’s not actually how reality works. Seeds grow, fruit ripens, but bands? People? They change, but there’s no perfect end point to work towards that is more valuable than the present. Accepting that realization is closer to maturation than the acquisition of any object or the accomplishment of any goal, and the struggle for that acceptance is at the heart of Wooden Waves’ Wilder Dreams (One Percent Press).[...]

Tonight: Zealot

For some people, Thanksgiving has made this whole week one big weekend. For others, especially folks working in retail, it’s been a few pieces of turkey and a mad dash back to work to sell people happiness. My point: we’re just coming out of that haze. It’s the real weekend now and your familial, occupational and gastronomical responsibilities are hopefully, momentarily behind you. So if you’re so inclined, check this show at Milkie’s. We’ve got The Beggar’s Best bringing some rock on the grunge spectrum that touches on Nirvana and Sonic Youth while still leaving room for poppier moments. And we’ve got Zealot, WNY’s fuzz-rock-shoegaze-college-indie-punk-grunge-noise-rock-lo-fi-princes-or-kings-or-paupers. You’ll be delighted. Kicks off at 9:30 pm. Facebook event here. (photo credit Nick Karp, by the by, check out his photography which is dope)

Harmonica Lewinski

I last saw Harmonica Lewinski at our fourth birthday party, and I was struck by just how good they were at what they do. There’s some apocryphal story about the Clash that’s relevant. I can’t find it for fact-checking, and maybe I dreamed the whole thing, but it went something like this: Joe Strummer, let’s say, gathers the whole crew in their practice space. He says it’s time to get serious about who The Clash is and what they’re trying to do. He draws a line on the ground in chalk, or something. On one side of the line: the members who view themselves as entertainers. On the other: the members who view themselves as musicians. Tense moment, until Paul Simonon sticks his little English tongue out and plants one foot on either side of the line. Probably didn’t happen. And when faced with that kind of decision, most people[...]