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Showing posts from June, 2009

Review: Classics of Love - "Walking in Shadows"

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Classics of love make a dark day light If you don’t believe the words then just look into their eyes" - Common Rider, 1999 Like a crystal-clear prophecy, self-fulfilled by a resolute thrust of momentum and passion, Jesse Michaels has returned to making music. After five years without a band, Classics of Love has found the former Operation Ivy, Common Rider and Big Rig frontman joining the entire cast of Hard Girls to rip forth a new set of urgently delivered punk, nascent and sprightly, but with 20 years of substantive seasoning underpinning its foundation. As each project Michaels has unveiled throughout the years has sounded considerably different than what preceded it, it should come as no surprise that Classics of Love is no “part two” of any earlier bands. Sure, there are elements of past work in the sound of the present -- the burning exigency of “Don’t Stand Down” smacks slightly of Big Rig while “Slow Car Crash” invokes memories of This is Unity Music outtakes -- but t

Review: The Replacements - "Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash"

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In retrospect, and with their breakup 15 years in the past, it’s much easier to stomach the Replacements’ constant evolution and cycles of stylistic departure. One can only imagine some angsty Midwest teenager finding his new favorite band in 1982’s Stink only to hear a different band entirely upon picking up a copy of Let It Be just two years later. It’s certainly a good thing there weren’t online message boards back then. None of that really matters in this case, though, as Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash is both the Replacements' first album and their best. Sure, albums like Pleased to Meet Me and Tim transcended genres, record labels, and helped birth the fledgling aesthetic of indie rock, but Sorry Ma did more. At a time when “hardcore punk” often meant nothing more than playing as fast and abrasive as possible, the album never sacrificed its pop appeal for throat-searing screams and whiplash speed. While the bulk of the movement was focusing their energy against social

Review: Dos - "Justamente Tres"

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In the expansive stylistic breadth that punk’s attitude and ideology both allows and demands, it’s no surprise that its pioneers are the ones who've seemed to take most advantage and keep pushing its innovation. Whether it be Ian Mackaye’s minimalist baritone approach with the Evens, John Lydon’s foray into musique concrète with Public Image Ltd., or Joe Strummer’s world-music punk with the Mescaleros, it appears the legions that followed the first few waves of punk have been plagued hardest of all with the notion that good music made by punk rockers can somehow be “not punk enough.” Consisting solely of Minutemen bassist Mike Watt and Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler (plus their basses), Dos formed after the death of Minutemen guitarist D. Boon in 1985 as a means for Watt to keep making music and emerge from the depression that ensued upon Boon’s passing. Roessler and Watt married in 1987 and were together until 1994, remaining friends and releasing Justamente Tres in 1996 -- thou