Fifty words on Andre Costello and The Cool Minors new one-song shot. Minus those, wise guy. Catchy indie pop, out Oct. 2, with all the right strut and inflection. Some of these bridges will knock you off your feet. “I/ know the way to your light.” Great textures, rousing yet contained close. Costello’s voice is…
Review: Horehound – “Weight” EP
Fifty words on Weight. Well, not counting those. Pittsburgh champions of dirgy doom-metal follow 2018’s Holocene with a two-song gem. (Sorry, vinyl’s sold out.) Slow and entropic, with serious shout-outs to early Sabbath. The chorus of “Unbind,” the “A side,” could melt Maynard’s face. B-side, with some icy vocals from Shy Kennedy, flirts with Kyuss-style…
Review: DANA – “Glowing Auras & Black Money”
The cover for Glowing Auras & Black Money, the sophomore outing from Ohio art-punk/mostly punk outfit DANA, is all wrong. The image, which features a glossy illustration of a woman’s hand puppeteering the planet Earth, is all too prim and proper and its message is plain and clear as day – which is nothing like…
Concert Review: Thom Yorke (2019)
There’s something, I don’t know, almost phosphorescent about Thom Yorke, the iconic Radiohead frontman who brought his new solo tour right to the doorstep of a sold-out Pittsburgh crowd Sunday night. That sense of light with the absence of flame is not something organic, that’s for sure. Yorke, sporting simple, dark clothing Sunday, his hair…
Review: Tender Mercy – “War Within”
Under the moniker Tender Mercy, musician Mark Kramer creates eerie and unnerving skeletons of songs out of little more than a few carefully plucked notes on guitar, some semi-whispered vocals and valleys upon tender valleys of reverb. He has a new record, title: War Within, out this month on Louisville label Obsolete Staircases and it…
Profile: Buzz Osborne (2019)
When Buzz Osborne visits Pittsburgh Saturday, Oct. 5 for punk-metal veterans Melvins’ concert at Rex Theater in South Side, he won’t hit the haunts most tourists frequent. There will be no baseball game at PNC Park, no visit to the fountain at The Point. No photos from the Mt. Washington overlook. No sammich at Primanti’s….
Profile: Chariot Fade (2019)
When Chariot Fade formed earlier this year, it was contained mostly to three musicians and two rooms of home-recording equipment. Listening to the pristine and ethereal psych-pop of its two-song sampler on Bandcamp, self-released in September, you’d never know the trio’s story was so home-spun. “For the last eight months, it’s been us, locked away,…
Review: Bonnie “Prince” Billy – “BPB Mix Tape Vol. 5”
Any musician who’s released 25 studio LPs (did I count that right?) must bear a treasure trove of outtakes and demos, amirite? But Will Oldham always has been more than just prolific, just a man who has, y’know, a lot of songs. Since 1993 – the year he released the epic, Slint-assisted Depression blues of…
Profile: Descendants of Crom III (2019)
Shy Kennedy’s Pittsburgh-bred metal band Horehound is releasing a new EP this month. But you shouldn’t expect to catch a preview of that material live at the much-anticipated Descendants of Crom festival, which Kennedy lovingly curates. Horehound, you see, played at the festival in 2018. “I have a rule: no band gets to play two…
Review: Mudhoney – “Morning In America” EP
The Mudhoney of Digital Garbage, a ferocious and oddly chiseled kind of beast, returns on a new odds-and-ends EP that reflects on the narratives of the band’s previous work. The aptly titled Morning In America EP might reference Reagan, but this seven-track outing, available via Sub Pop this Friday, is firmly rooted in Trump’s America,…