"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. " -- Groucho Marx.
We all have them, songs that seem to touch a secret place in your soul – sometimes secret even from you. They can grow and occasionally fester like an open wound, or they can fill you up, inspire you and occasionally even heal you. Sometimes they don't even reflect your musical tastes. […]
I was going to be driving across Scotland on my way to Ullapool to visit a sick friend; I figured that, the four and a half hour drive was as good a time as any to listen to a few CDs that had been submitted to me for review. I ripped them all and put […]
The Bittersweets are the Nashville based band formed around vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Chris Meyers, vocalist Hannah Prater, and former Counting Crows drummer Steve Bowman. Together they have created a roots rock/ alt country sound that isn’t too country and not too rock and roll. Think Rilo Kiley without the twang or Shawn […]
Girl In A Coma (GIAC) is a modern, ultra-hip mixture of 50s retro, modern punk, lilting Irish folk rock and alt rock with a tough girl attitude. Think Indigo Girls, Siouxsie Sioux and Shirley Manson in a dark alley kicking the shit out of the Pixies.
GIAC look like the Suicide Girls, and […]
When you name your band after a song by a very famous, nearly legendary band like The Smiths, you’re bound to suffer from endless comparisons. If I were going to make comparisons between Girl In A Coma (GIAC) and The Smiths it would probably be something along the lines of, smooth sounds, passionate, ironic […]
Growing up in the late 70s and 80s there was a serious lack of female role models – particularly in Utah. Oh sure if you wanted to be a timid, naïve, gullible Mormon housewife my sheltered, religious world was awash with that type of flower-print-dress-wearing woman. But that never felt right to me, […]
2007 was a very difficult year for me personally, which coincided with a very bad year musically for everyone else; making this a difficult year for choosing a list of best albums. So few truly fabulous albums were released and my mental state for the mid-part of 2007 prevented me from really enjoying many […]
We all have them, songs that seem to touch a secret place in your soul – sometimes secret even from you. They can grow and occasionally fester like an open wound, or they can fill you up, inspire you, and occasionally even heal you. Sometimes they don't even reflect your musical tastes. […]
U2 are one of those bands. The world class, best-of-the-best, influenced millions (either directly or indirectly), legend bands, and this didn’t happen overnight. U2’s progress up the mega-superstar, giving-your-hat-to-the-pope ladder began in 1980 with the release of their impressive debut album Boy.
It seemed clear right from the off that U2 were […]
Slow Runner is what happens when Star Wars or AV geeks grow up and form a band. The retro-swish sound of their first album, No Disassemble — released in 2003, then re-released in 2006 by Sony — with its funky late '50's/early '60's beat poet with a bit of Johnny Number Five thrown in, […]