Somebody Likes It

As I write this, I am currently consuming the Jim Jarmusch documentary about the Stooges, "Gimme Danger." This means nothing, other than the fact that it turns out the Stooges hung out with Nico, and that ridiculously beautiful German model had a hold (artistically!) with two massively influential bands. She is most known, of course, for collaborating with the Velvet Underground on their...

What do you say about Axel Rose? Where do you start? Tiny bike shorts? His interest in guitar players with interesting head gear choices (black top hat with silver conch shells/an upside down KFC bucket)? His Noel Gallagheresqe inability to properly use words when describing things (Noel-"SLOWLY walking down the hall, FASTER than a cannonball"/Axel-"wait for the thunder and the rain...

You'll never accuse Archy Marshall (better known as King Krule) of waxing trite: Marshall, the artist by way of producer, has always been as versatile and fearless as he has been precocious. He forged a bumpy, art-indulged childhood into unpredictable, relentless artistic visions as a young adult, and it seems to be taking him places: with The Ooz, his latest release, he's constructed a potentiall...

We figured out somewhere along the way that our Holiday Mixtape show wasn't an annual tradition, actually. Mostly because we skipped doing it last year altogether. In retrospect, it's probably better this way: Christmas songs tend to feel like abrupt departures from the norm, with a set of rules all their own, and a certain ascribed timelessness that may ensure a somewhat Stepford Wives sameness b...

Going to college—in and of itself, sans context—isn't entirely remarkable. Literally thousands of people do it. But when you're the lead singer of a coffee-infused punk band in the early 1980s, and your down time en route to picking up your Ph. D in Biochemistry is spent at the intersection of extended adolescence and minute-long thrash-centric "nerdcore" people tend to notice. And that'...

It's kind of a trick question: when your band sounds a little gloomy to begin with, how can your audience tell when you're despondent? Maybe that's not fair. Maybe it's possible that Bloodflowers, The Cure's 2000 LP and, per Robert Smith, the end of a trilogy that began with Pornography and continued with Disintegration, is less a swan song and more of the meandering treatise you find when your pr...

Start by forgetting all you think you know. Every day is Christmas when you're an LA Garage scene musician, and the songs are presents you can't unwrap quickly enough: they tear through them with reckless abandon, and like musical easter eggs, there always seem to be more in waiting, right around the corner. That same fertile musical playground encouraged the inception of Cory Hanson, who cut his...

Hi-- Let's get into the Dream Syndicate (or perhaps not, as they didn't get into much of anything from the years 1989-2012). Here in 2017, they're back with new work, How Did i Get Here? Spirited discussions ensue as to whether they have moved on from their previous incarnation (ca.1989), from the "Paisley Underground," a scene in Los Angeles that I'm pretty sure I would have been all ov...

Wolf Alice...Wolf Alice? It's one of those band names like 10,000 Maniacs that reminds you that band names are less about musical content and more about whats funny when you are having beers after band practice... Metallica=Metal+Vodka (not making this up) Was gonna show some more examples, but do I really need to? SO...podcast overlord Chris Cox hates it when I do this, but he's the MAN so fuck i...

Are anthems nature or nurture? Maybe that seems a question easily answered, but think again: whereas so many of today's musical tentpoles are crafted to be cranked up to Eleven at your local stadium du jour, Tom Petty's highlighted catalog seemed birthed without the grandiosity later afforded to it by its audience. Petty tracks weren't anthems because they loomed large, they became anthems as they...

By now, we're familiar with the Blackalicious mojo: Gift of Gab throwing obsessive, complicated rhymes over the steady propulsive backbeat dropped by one Chief Xcel, a formula that's earned the pair accolades. But all rocket ships launch from somewhere, and it's clear word spread about the duo during production...how else might we factor the parade of guest turns on their first full-length from Cu...

Join us this week, as we discuss Band of Horses' 2006 (turns out, debut LP, after an EP), "Everything All the Time." If you love $29,000 refrigerators, majestic arpeggios, bizarre Gene Simmons infomercials, and mid-aughts sweet-sounding (if not-quite profound) proper debut for Ben Bridwell's personal majesty, you should definitely tune in. Shane believes that this band deserves a greates...

Let's be honest: Hug Of Thunder, for all of its good intentions, kind of sounds like something made by Hasbro: perhaps a giant, fluffy, crime-fighting machine—the likes of which, for all we know, could actually be one of the members of Broken Social Scene, the Toronto-based and terribly talented music collective that burst on the scene with an iconoclastic by way of shamelessly celebratory catalog...

Whatever you think of Cracker -- they've been the subject of chart busting platitudes and some indie derision alike -- it's hard to understate the importance of David Lowery's contribution to popular music. That's a fact. Beyond his role in crafting earworms that burrowed their way into car stereos in the 90s, his determination to alter the landscape of musical compensation is fundamentally alteri...

SON! Pioneer of "trucker country," Jerry Reed, turns out, falls in my sweet spot. The man was rapping (albeit with a country twang) before that was a thing, could finger-pick his way out of a wet burlap sack, and was pretty damn funny while doing so. I generally don't care for my music and humor intertwined (see:Tenacious D), but apparently if the songs deliver, caution to the wind. He i...

I can sum up the way a lot of people feel about The Everly Brothers by telling you the props Ryan brought in to our show when we discussed It's Everly Time by (wait for it) The Everly Brothers . Ryan shows up carrying a paper bag from which he subsequently removed a loaf of Wonder Bread and a bottle of Cream Soda. And I get it. That's how a lot of people feel when they think about the Everly Broth...

In this case, buzz begat buzz when Oakland's Melina Duterte drunkenly uploaded a batch of hastily recorded tracks to Bandcamp, and launched a sensation. Better known as Jay Som, her pop-up indie darling status seems only cemented since its home baked inception, an arrival marked by her legit label debut, Everybody Works. Duterte's ascent, begged by some clear experimentation and sleeve-worn influe...

Somehow I've managed to find myself concurrently watching the second installment of The Decline of Western Civilization (The Metal Years) whilst writing this up, which is pretty much apropos of nothing, other than if you haven't seen this brilliant documentary, you definitely should. Another work worth investigating is Uncle Tupelo's debut record, No Depression . Few bands can claim to have at lea...

What a fucking tragedy. I'm not talking about when they took Surge soda off the market, or the final season of the A-Team, or even how all the eagles died because of all the DDT and shit. No, I am referring to Billie Holiday's life. Essentially birth to death it was non-stop sadness. For no reason other than she was a proud, independent, other-worldly talented woman of color, with a heroin and alc...

We've been spending lots of time in the 70s, it seems, almost to the point of pricing shag carpeting. Oddly, Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, their undisputed US breakthrough record and the peak of their notoriety, takes me back...to 2009, when 'Jailbreak' became my antidote to (or respite from) the endless cycle of Michael Jackson tracks on jukeboxes immediately following his passing. "Jailbreak&quot...

Hi. Are you ready to be confused? Yes? Good, because I sure am. On this week's Somebody Likes It, we cover The Yardbirds' 1966 LP "Roger the Engineer." Also known as "Over Under Sideways Down." Oh, and also known as "The Yardbirds." If that weren't confusing enough, about half of this record is sixties ground-breaking psychedelia, and the rest is Chicago-style mid-twe...

Lot's of people go through a hippie phase. Usually in High School, or maybe Freshman year of college. Maybe you decide to drop out of college for a year, buy some kind of old van, and follow String Cheese Incident around the country selling burritos in the parking lots of their shows. I'm saying it happens. Now, imagine going throw your hippie phase in the ACTUAL 60's. Yeah, that's some deep ass s...

If you peer into the festival hero shot of Michael D’Addario leaping through the roof of The Lemon Twigs' SXSW showcase, you'll note the giant X on his hand: despite the fawning praise, D'Addario, brother Brian and company might be primed to break big this year (they won SXSW's Grulke Prize for Best New Act) -- but they're still not old enough to drink. The D'Addarios, 17 and 19 at the time of the...

For as prolific and talented an artist as he was, this was an inscrutable man. We find him here, at the top of his talent (arguably, see also Jackson 5), and nailing it on every track. Also, this is super disco, which can play out however your mind leads you, given your leanings. Brilliant record, and let's all give a "hee hee" and "sh'mon" in his memory. If you aren't one of t...

At this point, it can be difficult to separate the legend of Joy Division from an honest account of either of their (intentional) releases, but here is what we know: on the eve of their first American tour with The Buzzcocks, frontman Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen. Technically, that's where Joy Division ends. The rest of the band, in the intervening years since, have gone on to great fame...