By - Kristi Houk Recommended if you like: Portishead, PJ Harvey, Lamb, Jessica Pratt Beth Gibbons has always been here. Let me explain: she has one of those voices that once you hear it, you always recognize. A singular, yearning sometimes howl  - it can be both comforting and uncomfortable simultaneously. Think Billie Holiday and Nina Simone combined with British folk singers like Sandy Denny and early Marianne Faithful. The […]

By - Kristi Houk Recommended if You Like: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Kills, The Black Angels The Dandy’s are back and Courtney Taylor-Taylor, lead vocalist for Portland’s party band, is paranoid. About a lot of things but mainly life as we know it and our complacency with it all.   Pretty sure this is why his band The Dandy Warhols have made one of the hardest hitting records I’ve heard […]

By - Kristi Houk Recommended if you Like: 700 Bliss, Kae Tempest, Elucid, Billy Woods, Late Miles Davis This is not easy listening, It will make you uncomfortable particularly if you are white. It is past time that we ( as white people) feel discomfort. It is time to shut up and listen. All good art should make the viewer/listener squirm.  Philadelphia based songwriter and poet, Camae Ayewa known by […]

By - Kristi Houk Recommended if you like Thin Lizzy, Mannequin Pussy, Hop Along It’s a new era for Philly based rock band, Sheer Mag. The band recently signed to Third Man Records (started by Jack White in Nashville) and have released Playing Favorites a killer album of 70’s rock mixed with theatrics and funk. On title track, “Playing Favorites” it’s clear that the band fronted by bombshell, punk icon, […]

By - Kristi Houk Recommended if you like: Wild Flag, Kristin Harsh, Margaret Glassy, Liz Phair “You really can’t love without letting go…”  -Mary Timony Ain’t it the truth? There are many of these “truths” circling Timony’s latest release, Untame the Tiger, her first solo album in 15 years.  Not that she hasn’t been making kick ass music since then - she definitely has - see Wild Flag, Ex Hex, […]

By - Kristi Houk Recommended if you like: Pylon, REM, Suburban Lawns, Swell Maps Pylon (noun) a: A usually massive gateway There would be no REM without seminal, post-punk, Athens, GA art students turned band, Pylon. Period. Former REM drummer Bill Berry famously said when declining Rolling Stone’s claim that REM was “America’s Best” saying that it was Pylon instead. Pylon’s influence on post-punk /alternative/indie - whatever descriptor is used […]

By - Kristi Houk This day in music history brought to you by "There's NO cool releases this week" Recommended if you like: You will like it, okay?? I encourage you to look up the grainy video clip of St. Paul Minnesota’s best band (yeah, I said it) Husker Du performing “Could You Be the One?” the first and only single off the pioneering punk trio’s last studio album - […]

By - Kristi Houk   Trigger Warning References to rape culture and sexual assault; You know, what women and those who identify as women have been dealing with since the dawn of time. Will this shit ever get better?  Prepared to be pissed off and ready to burn down the patriarchy after listening to M(h)aol’s (pronounced “male”) debut release, Attachment Styles.  It’s no surprise that the band is Irish, I […]

By - Kristi Houk In which I revisit Pavement’s debut album, Slanted and Enchanted, originally released in April, 1992. I’ve dismissed Pavement since I first heard them in the early 90’s. Not without trying, mind you. I bought Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain when it came out in 1994 solely for the track, “Range Life.” I listened to the record—mainly that one track if I’m being honest—a handful of times and […]