Review: Hotel Books – Run Wild, Young Beauty
I’ll be honest, I’ve been waiting for the new Dance Gavin Dance album for a long time now. Acceptance Speech was one of my highlights of 2013, and their follow up has been marked to top my album of the year list since it was announced. And of course, they released it for streaming last night. That’s the same night that I was supposed to review the new Hotel Books album, Run Wild, Young Beauty. I honestly wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do that. I wasn’t sure how I was going to stay focused long enough to not jump back to DGD. It’s not that I’m not a fan of Hotel Books, but the build up to the DGD album had proved to be a bit too much for me to handle, apparently. I could not have possibly been more wrong. Midway through the opening track I was eating my words. If I had no integrity in my journalistic presence, I would have simply just published my notes, but seeing as they are mostly comprised of the word “wow”, I figured I take a crack at writing something of some substance.
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Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress
Written by: Mike Hogan
Writing a review of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a tricky thing, honestly. They’re such a monumental figure in the post-rock scene; anybody who could possibly be reading this review is already well aware of what they’re getting into. And then of course, there isn’t really anyone quite like GY!BE. The post-rock sound can get pretty unique and eclectic, but there truly is no band quite like these guys. The only benchmark is themselves, but that is a rather lofty benchmark, indeed.
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Tipper Stays Active, Releases Deliciously Downtempo “Fathoms” EP
–Written by Kevin Madert
Shortly after the release of Broken Soul Jamboree in 2008, downtempo virtuoso and glitch pioneer Dave Tipper began experiencing various health issues. The issues continued for nearly five years, limiting his production and touring output to a few EPs and a handful of dates during that time. In the summer of 2013, his health grew dire enough to necessitate open heart surgery, news that had many concerned for the future of both Dave and his music.
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For Their Tour Finale, The Glitch Mob Pulls Out All The Stops (Show Review)
–Reviewed by Michael Hogan
My biggest failing as a human being is how cranky I become when I’m tired; I become the most unpleasant person in the world. I’ve been working on it recently, and I’m starting to realize when I need to be put to bed, but I still make stupid choices every now and then. My most recent objectively poor choice was going out right after spending the better part of a week working a festival, not sleeping and overworking myself in near freezing conditions.
Mere hours after my return to DC from Nightmare Festival I was headed Echostage to see The Glitch Mob. I had grabbed a bite to eat, but I hadn’t yet gone home; I was still wearing my mud covered jeans from the rain-soaked final night of Nightmare. This, I reasoned, was one of those situations that begged me to suspend any logic and reason – not to mention the impending crankiness that my friends and unsuspecting strangers would be forced to bear the brunt of.
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Review: Gerard Way’s “Hesitant Alien”
–Written by Kevin Madert
In high school, Gerard Way got me. I was a totally normal kid with totally normal issues, but of course at the time I was the only person who’d ever felt confused, the sole target of all the world’s ire, and the first guy to ever like a girl who didn’t like him back. The singular constant in my whirling dervish of pubescent emotion was music, and Way’s band My Chemical Romance became one of my most frequented therapists. I’d slam my bedroom door, grab my first generation iPod Nano, and let Way’s tortured tones echo atop the distorted crunch of those quintessential mid-2000s emocore riffs, washing my latest crisis away.
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DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist Give Silver Spring a History Lesson (Show Review)
Written by Michael Hogan
It’s easy to become jaded as a music journalist. You’ve been to so many shows and seen so many artists that they all blend together after awhile. You get into it because you love it, because every single show is something special; while music may still be a wonderful thing, most shows have just become a little less special. I know it’s a rather bleak way to look at things, and some of you are surely cursing at me through your keyboards – something about how I’m an ungrateful little shit and I’m taking it all for granted – and you’re probably right. But if I’ve gained one skill in life it’s the ability to recognize when a show is momentousness; a once in a life time experience that has some sort of echoing effect in the history of music, regardless of the scale.
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