347. Guadalcanal Diary, 2×4 (1987) Guadalcanal Diary evidently sought to recapture something they felt they lost when they recorded their third album, 2 x 4. After an excursion with other collaborators, the band from Marietta, Georgia returned to the producer … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #347 to #345
‘Whoa, this is crazy’: L.A. teen punks the Linda Lindas on going viral (just before finals) by August Brown Playing at the L.A. Public Library is the new South by Southwest, it seems. The live set by youthful punk act … Continue reading Outside Reading — We Rebuild What You Destroy edition
Some weeks are longer than others. Sometimes the only solution is to dance away whatever woes have accumulated. Luckily, there’s a fresh slice of gleaming Norwegian pop for those who might have received the diagnosis and prescription where a spinning … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Sigrid, “Mirror”
The town of Marfa was established in Southwest Texas, in the late eighteen-hundreds, because steam-engine locomotives needed a place to stop in their journey and replenish their water supply. A century and half later, the community endures. With a population … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — The Marfa Tapes
350. The House of Love, The House of Love (1988) Signed to Creation Records not long after their formation, the House of Love released a couple successful singles and seemed quickly, comfortably on their way to their debut full-length album, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #350 to #348
Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently by Amanda Hess This fantastic profile of Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor, who also goes by the name Shuhada Sadaqat, offers a definitive, paper-of-record pardon of the artist’s notorious rending of a religious figure’s photograph. Better … Continue reading Outside Reading — Very Much an Irish Woman edition
Sometimes nothing hits my ears, and my heart, more sweetly than a new track that reminds me of the chiming, charming college rock when I regularly roamed the poster-covered walls of my beloved radio alma mater. “A Fake Idea,” the … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Hurry, “A Fake Idea”
The new album from the Danish band Iceage finds them on a sonic journey that used to be fairly commonplace. Among the titans of college rock who ruled the left end of the dial through the nineteen-eighties, there are a … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Seek Shelter
353. Meat Puppets, Mirage (1987) Meat Puppets spent the first chunk of the nineteen-eighties making music almost relentlessly. They churned out recordings with speed and aplomb, then followed those with lengthy tours. About the only think that could slow their … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #353 to #351
Count me among those who thought Sleater-Kinney’s 2019 album, The Center Won’t Hold, was utterly fantastic. I know the churlish consensus is that the beloved band misstepped in adopting some of the ideas proffered by their famous producer, or perhaps … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Sleater-Kinney, “Worry With You”
