Reviewing your parents' music collection
How can a white, salt-of-the-earth rock musician from New Jersey, obsessed with the metaphoric potential of car brands, his father's working class heritage and the ideal of rock music as a proletariat/political genre not only have a career spanning 20 albums, but make music that still sounds good to a 20-something arts student living in… Continue reading Chevys, Camaros, and Cadillacs or Meet me at the Lost & Found – Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town”
The music video to Janelle Monáe's 2010 single Cold War presents only a slither of the narrative richness of her debut album The ArchAndroid - and yet, it is a masterpiece that embraces simplicity and emotion to get to the core of this Afrofuturistic, genre-bending concept piece: the road to self-realisation and love is a… Continue reading Dealer’s choice: “The ArchAndroid” by Janelle Monáe
The moog synthesiser is an incredibly interesting instrument: as versatile as the human voice, essential to the rise of prog rock in the 1970s and still a hallmark for synthesiser virtuosity today. What a shame that one of its first popular instrumental compositions has been appropriated by a blue CGI frog that lived only to… Continue reading Music That You Can Moog To – Captain Cool Presents: “28 Big Ones” by Hot Butter
I don't know how to write about Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. I've been staring at my laptop for more than ten minutes, trying to find the words to describe how I feel about this record. Trying to capture when I first listened to it, how it became the most important record in a… Continue reading Sing me a Song of Hope and Despair or Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”
I saw Laish play live during my first year at university. Danny Green, the band's front man, singer and songwriter, was performing solo as the support act for some Icelandic or Norwegian indie band who's name I have since forgotten. I have to admit, I didn't even stay until the end of their act. But… Continue reading Dealer’s choice: “Pendulum Swing” by Laish
The Dad Anthology 