The name of the song is “A Piano In The Basement” and, though it closes the 13-track record, it’s the best point where you can enter Disco, the new LP from German trio Le Petite Mort (Little Death) now out on digital devices and vinyl via Cold Press. The song starts with glassy, post-rock guitars…
Profile: Astrology Now (2020)
Pittsburgh psych-rock band Astrology Now will celebrate its new Knife EP by playing an acid-tinged set at 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10, with Outsideinside, Silver Car Crash and DJ Miss Mungo at Spirit in Lawrenceville. That’s oddly appropriate because the group’s story started in Lawrenceville. A decade ago, Greg Mastrean – who was en route to being…
Review: House & Hawk – “Pure Emotion” EP
I still harbor conflicted emotions about Mick Jagger Solo Album, the A-for-effort 2016 LP of synthetic pop from House & Hawk. At times inventive and at times oddly polished, the disc kind of wobbled somewhere between interesting and really good, and its larger experiments were worth taking in, yes, but not always worth revisiting. So,…
Review: Rob Ford Explorer – “Buh Bye”
The reference points behind Rob Ford Explorer’s name ain’t aging that well. Yes yes, Ford in its capitalist wisdom has released a 2020 Explorer – the large print giveth and the small print taketh away, natch – but former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford died almost four years ago now and has largely faded from the…
Profile: Adam Fitz (2019)
Four out of every five shows singer-songwriter Adam Fitz played this year centered around cover sets in Westmoreland County bars and juke joints. Coming up as a musician in Chicago, he sneered at such gigs. Not so in 2019. “The songs that came out of me this year, those songs came out easier because I…
Review: Adam Fitz – “Can’t Pardon Me”
There might be no better way to end 2019, this dog-eared novella of a year, and start the wondrous new Twenties than with ruminations on regret, redemption and hope. So, let us all join Pittsburgh-area singer-songwriter Adam Fitz when he starts 2020 bright and early Jan. 1 by self-releasing a two-song EP online that’s ripe…
MusicTAP Record of the Year (2019)
It’s an ugly, vicious thing for an ugly, vicious year. And, yeah, there might be bigger chart-toppers from 2019 or “better” market-researched deep-cuts out there polished to within an inch of their life, but I’m tipping my hat and giving my Hall of Fame vote this year to a series of explosions from Pittsburgh. 2019’s…
Review: Paranoid Void – “02”
Wow! Just wow. The new Paranoid Void EP – which hides behind the dubiously simple title of 02, out online this week – will knock you right off your feet and out of yr winter blues. This is, without rival, the best math-rock of 2019; in a year where Ian Williams and BATTLES released a…
Review: The Glad Husbands – “Safe Places”
Everything that’s muddy-minded about Safe Places – the new LP from Italian mathcore trio The Glad Husbands, out four days ago on CD and digital via Vollmer Industries – is encapsulated in the record’s sixth song, “Midas.” The song runs about five and a half minutes, and there’s a bridge seemingly for every time the…
Feature: Pittsburgh Record of the Year (2019)
Drumroll. Drumroll, please. I submit for your consideration, dear reader, my selections for Pittsburgh record of the year – two brilliant debut offerings on opposite ends of the volume spectrum. Both are available on Bandcamp, nudge, nudge. LOUD: TRVSS – Absence. Visceral noise-rock that blisters the skin. The band’s 10-song debut lashed at the senses…