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”
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”
When you're being recommended an album titled Floating Harmonies by an Icelandic singer-songwriter making music under the name 'Júníus Meyvant', your first instinct, like mine, may be to expect a record à la Björk or Emilíana Torrini. Something soft, whimsical, introspective, something in line with the Scandinavian aesthetic one may find on the Etsy front… Continue reading A Study in False Advertising – Captain Cool Presents: “Floating Harmonies” by Júníus Meyvant
Thinking of Switzerland I think of mountains, chocolate, cheese fondue, Wilhelm Tell and political neutrality. When no future think of their home country, they think of friendship, the compulsory military service and reggae rock. Wohri Fründschaft (True Friendship), released in 2008, is a left wing reggae rock EP covering political issues as much as celebrations… Continue reading Send in the Swiss – Captain Cool Presents: “Wohri Fründschaft” by no future
Rock songs can often be categorised into specific types: the I've-met-the-girl-of-my-dreams-song, the classic heartbreak song, the upbeat let-me-tell-you-a-story-song, the she's-a-nice-girl-but-will-never-notice-me-song, ... the list goes on and on, usually circling around either the concept of love, lost or found or the urgent desire of telling a story; stories of unbelievable nights or stories of runaways and… Continue reading Getting the Band Back Together – “The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1”
The Dad Anthology 