After taking some well-earned time off, Twenty One Pilots makes a staggering return on their latest album, Trench, which shows off their growth both as musicians and people.

The band’s previous album, 2015’s Blurryface, launched them to unprecedented success. They became the first artists in history to have every single song on any particular album become certified either gold, platinum, or multi-platinum by the RIAA. For a little band from Columbus, Ohio, it was a big leap.

The dynamic duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun may be relatively new to the world of mainstream pop music but they’re practically seasoned veterans of performing and recording. Beginning as local hometown favorites, the band spent their time recording albums in their basements (fan favorites such as the cheekily-titled Regional At Best) and honing their live show. Notably, in 2011, they self-funded and self-promoted themselves to a sold-out show at Columbus’ own Newport Music Hall. This, alongside the audience’s rapturous reception of their live show, caught the attention of several members of the music business elite, leading to the band being signed to Fueled By Ramen within a few months.

From here, they released their first studio album, Vessel, in 2013. And while the album may not have been a commercial juggernaut, it earned the band a rabid fan base worldwide who would come to be affectionately known as the Clique. Joseph and Dun toured pretty much non-stop after the release of the album, funneling the profits they band was earning back into the budget of the live show to create an ever-expanding live show that grew more elaborate by the month. As the live-show grew bigger, so too did the audiences and venues. Through this relentless touring, the band was steadily cementing their status as pop’s greatest underdogs. After years of buildup, this was all capitalized on by the success of their second studio album, the aforementioned Blurryface, which spawned several multi-platinum singles and allowed the band to turn their live-show into a full-blown arena-filling behemoth.

Once again, touring became the band’s greatest weapon, as Blurryface’s success only grew in the following year. The album stayed on the Billboard charts for over one-hundred consecutive weeks and took the band to unparalleled new heights.

 Which is why the release of their new album, Trench, this past week is such a major event. In the summer of 2017, Joseph and Dun opted to publicly retreat away from everything, from public appearances to social media, in order to lock themselves away and create their next album. In this silence, Trench was born.

Musically, the album takes their music in an entirely new and unexpected direction. Whereas previous records had sometimes been accused of being a bit light on groove, Trench is positively overflowing with it. A newfound emphasis is placed on Joseph’s stellar bass-playing abilities and Dun frequently incorporates off-kilter syncopations into the rhythmic DNA of each track. Even the snare beats of tracks like Morph and Chlorine incorporates a technique frequently employed by legendary producer Quincy Jones, where the beat of the drum and the electronic sound effect that coincides with it are distanced ever so slightly, so as to create what would later be termed as ‘micro-rhythm’ by esteemed musical academic Anne Danielsen.

 All of this culminates in a sound that owes more to funk, soul, and R&B than it does to anything resembling modern pop or alternative music. Twenty One Pilots has always specialized in genre-bending, as even their earliest material contained hints of pop, rock, reggae, folk, and hip-hop. But never before has it all felt so seamlessly woven together. Arguably no other artist in music today could pull off a song like Pet Cheetah, which sees the band going from hard-hitting hip-hop verses into a gentle, emotive, piano-driven chorus. But in Joseph and Dun’s hands, it works perfectly. The entire album is a crash course of ever-changing tempos, genres, and influences, yet Joseph guides the listener through it with the precision of a master craftsman.

In news coverage of the album, much has been made of the fact that Trench is a dystopian concept album that tells the story of the walled city of Dema. And while it is certainly that, what’s far more impressive is the way in which Joseph uses this vast fictional canvas as a means of cutting deeper than he ever has before. While it would have been easy to hide behind his fictional world and litter the album with generalizations or facades in the name of the concept, Joseph openly broaches such topics as depression(Neon Gravestones), his relationship with his wife Jenna(Smithereens), his fear of letting listeners down(The Hype, Pet Cheetah), his grandfather’s death(Legend), and more in brutally honest ways.

This leads to the album having a meta-quality, in which Joseph is constantly offering a commentary to the work present on the album itself. While a great many artists over the course of history have crafted follow-ups to record-breaking albums that are essentially responses to that success, no one has ever done it quite like this. Joseph weaponizes his own writer’s block at the thought of failure, and turns it into one of the album’s most profound themes, as it frequently plays like a stream-of-consciousness tapped directly into Joseph’s own mind.

And while Joseph has never shied away from topics like suicide or depression before, he’s never been more capable of succinctly articulating his point than he is on the jaw-droppingly visceral Neon Gravestones. He’s able to offer up a nuanced and intricate view of the way in which our culture copes in the aftermath of celebrity suicide while also turning that same critical lens inward on himself.

Which means it’s only fair that I follow suit. On March 23, 2013, I took my best friend on our first date to see a band she and I had both recently fallen in love with; Twenty One Pilots. The show was at The State Theater in St. Petersburg, Florida, a small venue that probably only housed an audience of about forty people that night. Midway through the show, Tyler Joseph addressed the audience directly about their just-released debut album’s success or lack thereof. It was a slightly remorseful and unapologetically honest admittance of defeat.  He acknowledged that perhaps not everyone would ‘get’ what they were trying to do with their music and pondered if maybe that was why the album hadn’t been as successful as it could have been. But that he ultimately found solace in the fact that his music seemed to resonate with us and told us all that, regardless of what the future held for them, they would never forget us.

I think about that night a lot and the stories it began. For Twenty One Pilots, it was just the beginning of a practically Campbell-ian hero’s journey that would see them become the most successful band in the world in just a few short years. And for me, it was the beginning of the most incredible journey of my life, one that reaches a major milestone this coming March 23, when I get to marry my best friend.

Since that night, we’ve seen Twenty One Pilots perform live ten times (with an eleventh on the horizon) and each time has grown increasingly spectacular. Songs that we once watched performed in The State Theater to mere dozens of people are now being performed in arenas and stadiums across the world to thousands.

I say all of this to say, I have loved Twenty One Pilots for a wealth of reasons for several years now. Their music, their shows, and the fact that they gave me the greatest gift in the world, even if they didn’t know it. And I can confidently say that Trench sees that band I love on full display throughout the entire album. In self-producing the album with occasional assistance from Mutemath’s Paul Meany, they have crafted the album that has been inside of them all along.

Trench is an astounding accomplishment that showcases the growth and maturity of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun not just as musicians but also as people. They’ve learned that while crashing cymbals and full-throated screaming can certainly get a message across, they can often communicate more with less. As brilliantly demonstrated in Neon Gravestone’s final moments or the entirety of album-closer Leave This City, in which Joseph’s articulations above a sparse piano arrangement deliver the most affecting moments of their entire catalog. 

As Joseph sings the final lines of the album, telling listeners that “they know that it’s almost over”, it’s hard not to feel a sense of culmination. Twenty One Pilots has achieved everything they’ve ever dreamt of and more, yet Trench sees them refusing to take a victory lap or an easy cash-grab, instead creating the most versatile, coherent, and compelling album of their career.

Photo credit: Brian Adams

Marian Call is a singer/songwriter out of Alaska, specializing in geek themed tunes. Her work, inspired by such nerd fare as Jane Austen, medieval architecture and Shark Week, among others, has taken her across North America and Europe. Call will be playing a free show tonight, August 9, 2017, at Watchtower Cafe.

We had a brief conversation with Marian about how she came to a career in music, what inspires her, and what’s coming.

BSR: How did you first get interested in music?

MC: I grew up in a family of working musicians, it was the trade I was raised in. So it never felt glamorous or out of reach, it felt natural and simple. I studied music theory all through high school and college, and I sang and played with every music ensemble that would have me. Today I just want to go everywhere and play and sing, so I’ve toured all 50 states and Canada and Europe many times over, playing concerts every night. I’m essentially a really hardcore modern chaotic good wandering bard.

BSR: Your songs don’t always cover the usual musical fare, what types of things do you enjoy writing about?

MC: Many songwriters tackle love and romance, but I don’t know too much about that. So I find inspiration in unusual places, like avocados, Jane Austen, medieval architecture, Shark Week, tech support hotlines, and Battlestar Galactica. Often these songs do wind up commenting on humanity and relationships, but sometimes a song about Shark Week is just about Shark Week.

BSR: Speaking of Jane Austen and Battlestar Galactica, what are your favorite fandoms?

MC: Firefly, the new Battlestar Galactica, The Muppets, Star Wars, Star Trek TNG, Zelda, and soooo many others.

BSR: What’s a fun fact most people don’t know?

MC: About me or about the world? Hmm. About me: I play an absurd amount of Don’t Starve (alone) and Star Realms (with friends) while at home in Juneau.

About the world: I learned in Utqiagvik (the town formerly known as Barrow on the North Slope) that polar bears hide their black noses with a paw while stalking people through the snow. So if a polar bear plans to end you, the last thing you will see is a cuddly white bear covering its nose with a giant paw. Adorable! I have no idea whether this is a true thing, the locals might have been telling tales, and I’m sure I deserved it.

BSR: Do you have any upcoming musical projects or projects outside of music you want fans to know about?

MC: Hmm, my Twitter is a very thorough multi-year memoir of traveling the nation and life in Alaska. In very small doses. It’s a work in progress. I’ve just completed my tenth album called Standing Stones about storytelling and the internet and astronomy — it’s inspired by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, among other things. Right now I’m finishing up a new song for the Eclipse!

BSR: Is there anything about tonight’s show that people should know? 

MC: You should drop in for a few songs for free! Live music is so different than any recording or video. Besides, I’ll need a little help with some nerdy audience participation elements.

We want to thank Marian for speaking with us. She’ll be playing live at Watchtower Cafe in Salt Lake City tonight at 7:00. Be there and be square. For more information and to follow what Call is doing, you can find her on Twitter or at her website.

Gorillaz will always, in my mind at least, be the perfect fictional band that isn’t really a band. A group whose image is completely separated from the artists who created them. Who theoretically could be continued forever past the point of their inventors demise. A group whose digital representation exists past the borders of conceived reality, and into the realm of facsimile and imitation. Created by musician Damon Albarn (of Blur) and artist Jamie Hewlett (of Tank Girl), who envisioned the project to be an Eff-you answer to modern pop’s artifice. Take the distance between the pop star’s image and the actual creation of the music and stretch it, on the rack, to its extreme — make the band entirely virtual. Albarn, along with the ever-shifting group of musicians he enlisted, would make the music, and Hewlett would be in charge of the visuals. They would lure with pop, deliver something substantive. 

Humanz, the seventh studio effort, showcases that these animated proxies still know how to rock. I do miss the layered production of a Dan the Automator and a Brian Burton A.K.A. Danger Mouse. However, The LP is almost entirely synthesizers, Damon Albarn made use of iPad applications to create the sonic architecture. There are almost no organic instruments on this thing whatsoever. Albarn is happy to cede the spotlight on record, too. He lets more of-the-moment guests like Keela, Vince Staples and Jehnny Beth of Savages take center stage on Humanz biggest tracks while offering sporadic vocal commentary from the wings.

My personal favorite guest spots are the rappers. Vince Staples, De La Soul, Danny Brown and Pusha T all absolutely slay their cameos. I wish they’d given Pusha T a little more room to be Pusha T on “Let Me Out”. However, It is a great collaboration with the R&B and gospel legend, Mavis Staples. Popcaan is another highlight for me. More people should listen to his dancehall opus, Where We Come From. Both Popcaan and Gorillaz make perfect summer music so finding them on “Saturn Barz” is gold. “Hallelujah Money” starring 2015 Mercury prize winner Benjamin Clementine in full quavering voice mode, features lyrics about building walls and the all-consuming desire for power (Sound familiar?). “We Got The Power” is an impassioned call to arms by Albarn opens the track – “We’ve got the power to be loving with each other no matter what happens”. The positivity and defiance refuses to let up, as Jehnny Beth speaks of having a “heart full of hope, I will change everything” over a typically frantic set of percussion and soaring keys.

The group has never made a bad album, each of their LP’s a beautifully realized alternate universe. Gorillaz make concept albums not burdened with the weight of an actual spelled-out concept, with one or two undeniable singles to anchor it in real-world pop. The shift towards more aggressive dance has made me disappointed that it wasn’t more Clint Eastwood and Manana but that’s what evolution is….evolution. They exist on their own evolving musical timeline – separate from (but still connected to) ours. As it stands the singles are catchy, upbeat, and still somehow jaunt between the here and now… AND in the late 90’s/early 2000’s euro sound that just will not go away because well, it can’t. It’s what they do and they do it well.

-Dagobot



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The music that drives the next big Marvel Netflix franchise, “Luke Cage”, is a critical part of the street level hero storytelling. In the trailer, Method Man admits to anticipating a “Luke Cage” series since his childhood. The politics of hip-hop and the messages of justice and inequality will be a wonderful soundtrack to a hero who believes in the same but may have a hard time fighting for what he believes in. Music Supervisor Adrian Younge says that each episode was treated like an album. That’s good news for binge viewers because they’re in for a visual and auditory treat. ‘Luke Cage’ premieres in full on Netflix September 30^th, 2016. 

David Bowie passed away on January 10, 2016 – two days after his 69th birthday, two days after the release of his 25th studio album. 

Bowie was easily one of the most influential artists in pop music. His ever changing style, the rotation of characters he portrayed, and his success in embracing musical cultures that were far from the face of normalcy created a half century of music that was never stagnant nor redundant.

Bowie’s early works merely hint at the grand things to come. Songs on the first couple albums sound like ragtime folk with a dash of John Cage thrown in for good measure. By his third record, “Hunky Dory,” the grand cinematic pop of David Bowie was born, and from there his career was a whirlwind of moods and themes that made loners dance and parents wildly uncomfortable. I’m told that his “Top of the Pops” performance made many a stodgy parent very, very ill at ease.

With the introduction of his first alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, Bowie became an official Star. A Rock Star of the highest order. The Ziggy era allowed Bowie to bring the glam era to the forefront of music. His first giant success came through an androgynous package that experimented with jazz and caberet, that utlized Orwellian themes and Burroughs like stream-of-consciousness writing, all during a time of utter civil unrest. He sang to the dissatisfied and the confused.

Ziggy was followed by the Plastic Soul era, in which Bowie became interested in music that was being played in the dance halls of the time. He worked with Luther Vandross and Andy Newmark, and coined the term “Plastic Soul” as a knowing wink to his extraordinarily white and British reinterpretations of R&B and funk influences. “Station to Station” introduced Bowie’s final character, the Thin White Duke. This era was largely fueled by cocaine, and this record (probably my favorite) heavily employed religious themes and returned Bowie to his preoccupations with the esoteric played over pop synths and pre-industrial beats. Even while the influences chimed through, Bowie still made groundbreaking art.

The 70’s closed with Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, a three disc series that received mixed critical and public opinions. Bowie worked with Brian Eno to produce German-rock influenced instrumentals, worked with a veritable who’s who of Prog Rock, and “Low” boasts one of the most unique and mysterious drum sounds ever recorded. Following this trilogy, both David and the world met Mtv.

Was ever a medium and an artist a better match? “Let’s Dance” exploded into pop culture boasting slick Niles Rodgers production, a guest appearance by a young Stevie Ray Vaughn (seriously!), and genius deployment of the new medium of music videos. The decade rounded out by Bowie forming Tin Machine, which functioned as a democratic band in which Bowie did something new yet again – he fully collaborated with a group of musicians. 

The next decade saw Bowie embracing his influences more than treading new waters, yet his career remained groundbreaking. He recorded his first digital album with proud nods to big beat and house music. He released the very first album for download from the internet, and worked within the new structures of electronic communication and visibility to embrace new ways to make art and connect with fans.

After an unacknowledged decade long break, David Bowie surprised the world with 2013’s “The Next Day,” and just days ago he gifted us with “Blackstar.” His final record is a collaboration with a jazz quartet and cites influences from modern hip hop. The album was produced by Bowie’s long time collaborator Tony Visconti, who states that Bowie intended to leave us one final gift with this record, and wanted us to know that he was at peace with his fate. 

Peppered throughout his musical career, Bowie dipped his toes into the world of cinema, giving us memorable performances in “The Hunger,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” and of course as everyone’s favorite Goblin King in “Labyrinth.” I’m not even a little ashamed to admit that “Labyrinth” actually produced one of my very favorite Bowie songs. 

David Bowie, even through all his faces, remained true to his themes, questions, and fears. He taught us how to shout our messages through restrained drama. He wondered if peace was possible through excess. He waxed on the occult, the esoteric, and nihilism. He showed us the horrors of his dystopia, yet somehow made beautiful the death of a lonely man in space. David Bowie understood the beauty of loneliness and mourned the loss of childhood. He connected with those conflicted about sexuality, gender, morality, and purpose and never once alienated the rest of his massive fandom by only speaking to those who mirrored one of his many faces.

Dean Podesta summed it all up brilliantly today: “If you’re ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.”  

Straight Outta Compton (8 out of 10) Directed by F. Gary Gray. Written by Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus. Starring O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins & Jason Mitchell.

N.W.A.’s debut album, ‘Straight Outta Compton’, was released in 1988, launching the careers of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, and MC Ren, eventually going double platinum, pioneering the “gangsta rap” subgenre, and forever changing the landscape of hip-hop. It was a cultural phenomenon, the type of album you knew about even if you hated rap music. You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge. That’s the line that begins the ‘reality rap’ masterpiece, and it’s also the line that bookends the sweeping new biopic of the same name. One of Dr Dre’s only lyrical contributions to his group’s debut album, the line rings true in its original context as both a thesis statement and a kind of threat. N.W.A. was not a group to be f*cked with — by cops or otherwise — and Dre made that clear by practically sneering at the listening public, setting up the antagonistic relationship that would define the group during its short existence.

‘Straight Outta Compton’ is really several films in one. The timeline spans nearly a decade, beginning with a botched drug deal involving Eric “Eazy-E” Wright and ending with the rapper’s death in 1995. That’s a lot of history to fit within a single movie, especially a movie with three central protagonists — Eazy, Cube, and Dre — instead of one. Spoilers to follow.

Eazy’s story alone bounces along a rags-to-riches-to-rags roller coaster, though it’s also where most of the film’s humor and pathos can be found. Actor Jason Mitchell is electric, tapping into the unpredictable currents that made Eazy so memorable. The rest of the ensemble is mostly notable for their uncanny resemblance to their real-life counterparts, but Mitchell is on another level here. He’s a crackling ball of defiance and insecurity in an early scene that chronicles the making of ‘Boyz-n-the-Hood’. That defiance reappears later when we see him come to grips with his AIDS diagnosis through a hospital window, a moment so raw and devastating we’re thankful to not be in the room with him.

When these guys are allowed to be vulnerable, like when Dre learns about his younger brother’s death or when Cube goes postal on a record exec’s office, one catches a glimpse of something that might be closer to the truth. “Our art is a reflection of our reality,” Cube says in a press conference at one point, but one wonders how much reality these guys really wanted to express on film. Even their acrimonious relationship with Eazy feels like it’s given a rosier treatment than it deserves, with everyone able to make their peace by the end. Director F. Gary Gray treats his subjects with a measured kind of reverence, which might have something to do with Cube and Dre sharing producer credits.

Still, ‘Straight Outta Compton’ isn’t scared to take a stance. One of the film’s greatest strengths lies in its unflinching brand of social commentary. Gray sticks his camera right in the faces of racist LAPD officers, and it’s at these moments when his film feels most relevant and least reverential. Police brutality has been an omnipresent issue since Michael Brown was killed a year ago, and the Black Lives Matter movement has helped to shine a light on the systemic injustices facing young black people across America. Watching scenes in which the N.W.A. crew is repeatedly abused and harassed by cops, one can’t help but draw a connection between then and now. “F*ck tha Police” remains a powerful song, and Gray does an admirable job of shining a light on its still-relevant source material.

In the third act of the film, Cube says to Eazy ‘We left a lot of good records on the table’… And that is the tradgedy of N.W.A. Three skilled emcess, a bad-ass DJ, and one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all-time (arguably, the greatest) could’ve and should’ve put out multiple classics. But the LP, ‘Straight Outta Compton’, is left to stand alone as their lightning in a bottle, a stunning portrait of a developing genre and the harsh realities of the artists’ environment. ‘F*ck Tha Police’ is as close to an American version of “God Save the Queen” as I’ve ever seen. Go see the movie and grab a copy of the iconic record while you are at it. Witness the strength of street knowledge, on repeat. 

8 out of 10

The consensus on 2014 was that it has been a banner year for music, one boasting a broader and deeper selection of standout performances across genres and generations than many a year in recent memory. Or Not. Music can be messy. There’s too much, too many genres, too many ideas, for anyone to make sense out of all of it – or even to hear all of it. There’s not one genre or aesthetic or feeling that dominates the whole thing. Instead, I’ve got a list that zig zags wildly between explosive joy and wizened self-aware depression and staring-out-windows indolence and feverish all-consuming rage.

Run The Jewels ‘RTJ2’

The story of Run The Jewels coming together was already a feel-good epic before ‘RTJ2’: two underground rap veterans from vastly different scenes coming together, finding common ground, discovering a shared ferocity that jolted both of their careers to a different level, becoming best friends in the process. These two had chemistry from the first moment, and a year and a half on a shared tour bus has only deepened it. ‘RTJ2’ opens with Mike in full-blown profane motivational-ranter mode – “I’m finna bang this bitch the EFF out.” It ends with a clangorous, expressive piano solo from a dead man. In between, we get about 40 minutes of frantic, chaotic, merciless, gloriously fun hip hop music. Lyrically, both of them are having even more fun on ‘RTJ2’, coming up with convoluted and extreme ways to say “eff you,” sounding like they’re doing whatever they can to impress each other in the studio. But there’s more pathos and feeling in what they’re doing, too: Mike recounting a nightmare arrest on “Early” and lamenting the consequences of his actions on “Crown,” El grinding his noise-synths onto mournful melody on “All My Life” and “Angel Duster.” They’re operating at the tops of their games here, Mike and El sound more like each other. Mike’s delivery is more knifelike, more apt to cut against the flow of the track. El has concentrated his once-cluttered flow into pointed bursts of on-beat double-time. His beats are slower, thicker, more composed – If anything, it’s a loving homage to the Bomb Squad’s soundscape circa 1989. ‘RTJ2’ never lets up, and yet there are so many ideas and feelings and moods within that storm. It kicks you in the head, and it leaves you with plenty to think about. The soundtrack for the shame of Ferguson.

St Vincent ‘St Vincent’

Any artist who can insert the mundane nature of masturbating into a song without batting an eyelid must be special. Sometimes self-titling a record several LPs into a discography is meant to signal a new phase of old things, a mid-career back-to-basics. Other times, it’s something like St. Vincent’s newest offering: an announcement, an arrival. Though ‘St. Vincent’ wasn’t as shocking a step forward as Strange Mercy had been from Actor, it still feels like a destination toward which each of Annie Clark’s albums had been incrementally building. We couldn’t see it with the sinisterly sweet ‘Actor’ or even with the sweetly sinister ‘Strange Mercy,’ but this version of St. Vincent was always what was meant to be – this version, of colorless hair and sci-fi aesthetics and guitar and synth layers ranging from melted to glassy but always, always remaining sterile and ethereally chilly. Clark had steadily been on her way to becoming one of the luminaries of this era of indie, and this album – with mutated grooves like “Digital Witness” or reflections as moving as “I Prefer Your Love” – feels like the official coronation. A heady combination of perfect songwriting, performance and production. As immediately thrilling on the first listen as it remains on the 50th. More than just album of the year, this is one of the albums of the decade.

Budos Band ‘Burnt Offering’

The first way I ever heard the music of The Budos Band described was “the Dap-Kings meets Black Sabbath.” I would only add “70’s car chase soundtrack through a dingy underground club” to that and it’d be pretty spot-on. Everything about this instrumental group reeks of mysterious, ethereal radness. The Budos Band are a nine-piece instrumental group from Staten Island, who’ve previously released three albums’ worth of hard-hitting afro-funk party music, dense with horns and congas. Their last album started to see a bit of B-movie darkness creep into their sound, the funk increasingly mired in nocturnal gloom. But ‘Burnt Offering’ is something else again, the strident, urgent blast of trumpet and sax now pitted against scabrous, grinding guitar in a fight to the death. The Budos Band are the real deal, and ‘Burnt Offering’ is quite a ride. For connoisseurs of heavy sounds, I can’t recommend this highly enough. The 10 tracks on Burnt Offering will pump you up for a battle against Five Armies or chill you out for a couch battle against Five Guys.

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings ‘Give The People What They Want’

Written and recorded prior to her diagnosis, ‘Give the People What They Want’ has nothing to do with Jones’ battle or any of the adversity she suffered over the past year. But, its songs are confident and spirited, the songs of someone who could grapple with cancer and emerge victorious. On opener “Retreat!”, she’s downright vicious about it: “Play with me and you play with fire/ I can make you pay/ I burn you up/ This is my desire.” This first track makes it immediately apparent that the Dap-Kings are still one of the best backing bands in the business. Bosco Mann’s production treats the horns, backing vocals, and acoustic rock instruments like a small orchestra, fiddling with every tone so that each stands out behind Jones’ powerful voice. Each instrument can be picked out of the stereo field, concentrated on, and the pure musicianship at work absorbed. We are SPOILED to have recorded music this good.

Sylvan Esso ‘Sylvan Esso’

You can glean a lot about Sylvan Esso’s auspicious debut from its opening cut “Hey Mami.” It is, in case you didn’t know, about girls getting cat-called (guys, don’t do it) and begins with the sound of the streets wafting through an open window. Amelia Meath’s vocals are stacked and stacked again to provide a nursery rhyme melodicism, and then—BAM!—there’s a drop and a beat you can bust a what to. This isn’t Feist gone folk, this is something else: a collision of clarion-call crisp tones and fuzzed-up synths, each song a surprise to unwrap. Like all the best records, the highlights are too numerous to list here, but the hypnotic sway of “Could I Be,” the peaks and troughs of “Play It Right,” and breakout song “Coffee,” compelling even in its moments of whispered hush, are just a few. This is record to get lost in.

Honorable Mention(s): Black Milk ‘If There’s A Hell Below’, Madlib & Freddie Gibbs ‘Pinata’ & Damon Albarn ‘Everyday Robots’

When it comes to video games, it feels like everything BUT the good ones was headline news in 2014. IMO, it was the worst year for games in recorded history. I don’t think there’s been a more polarizing time for video games and those who play them in, errrr, ever. Busted, hunk-of-scrap big-budget releases are raining from the sky as though we’re standing in the aftermath of some quality-obliterating explosion, portions of gaming culture are at war with each other, and even wildly innovative games are finding it harder and harder to stand out. But amongst all that, triple-A games and indies alike are tapping into a rich vein of interesting ideas, people are doing incredibly fascinating things in the games they play, and more strange, quirky, undeniably heartfelt games are appearing out of nowhere than ever.

Telltale Games (The Wolf Among Us, Tales From The Borderlands, Game Of Thrones, The Walking Dead)

I came into the Telltale fold thanks to The Walking Dead’s melodramatic stylings, but Telltale actually has a long history of comedy. With Tales From The Borderlands,a game I really wasn’t expecting much from, they made a fine return to form. I laughed a bunch and found myself really liking multiple characters. TOTB was crammed with intriguing puzzles and difficult moral conundrums. fine examples of emotional, taut, interactive storytelling.

Telltale is red hot right now. Between The Walking Dead Season 2 and The Wolf Among Us, Telltale Games has had an excellent 2014. Add in the above mentioned, Tales From the Borderlands and the first episode of Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series was nothing short of excellent. Telltale’s new dialogue-driven adventure game based on George R. R. Martin’s pop culture fantasy phenomenon almost perfectly channels the dark, shock-laden brand of storytelling found in HBO’s hit TV show. We are in for an amazing Season finishing up in 2015. Oh and Mojang has teamed up with Telltale Games for the development of a Story Mode for the massively popular Minecraft construction game.

Dragon Age: Inquisition 

I’m still trying to find the time to finish up November’s “Inquisition.” However, I’ve played enough that I can pretty safely say it’s one of my favorite games of the year. The third entry in Bioware’s fantasy series has more than enough missions to complete, lore to thumb and companions to woo to overwhelm even the most ambitious marathon player. The story and characters represent BioWare in top form, and the world is massive. It’s an audaciously big and unwieldy game, but so much fun to get lost in. BioWare’s role-playing epic has everything you could expect to want in a fantasy saga: war, magic, exploration, romance and, yes, dragons. I’m sure I could spend hours upon hours in its lush, frightening world. I’m sure I will.

Five Nights At Freddy’s

Five Nights at Freddy’s is the most distilled expression of fear in gaming form I can think of. It is unbelievably simple and effective, almost devoid of anything but gameplay. The dread that accompanies the act of clicking through a variety of security cameras throughout Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is inimitable. It is easily one of the most purely frightening games I have ever taken up, not to mention that robotic, anthropomorphic woodland creatures are innately horrifying, and at $5 full-price, it is a no-brainer. And check this, some online theorists propose that “Five Night’s At Freddy’s” is a living nightmare of Nathan Dunlap, the man arrested for the Chuck E. Cheese murders. The nightmare is that Dunlap is forced to work at the restaurant in which arguably the worst event of his life occurred and be continually haunted by the employees he once worked with. That is some scary ISHT.

Honorable mention(s): Alien: Isolation (PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox 360 and One, Windows) & Dark Souls II (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows)

What are your favorites that didn’t make my list? Let me know.

-Dagobot



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GWAR replaced founding member (and only constant member) Oderus Urungus with, depending on your definition, a lady. If your definition allows for blood and pus spewing forth from gigantic (prosthetic) breasts to coat adoring audience members and not crossing your legs at the ankle, then yes – lady. Vulvatron is your newest Scumdog, and she’s co-fronting the band with Blothar.

In the band’s near 30 year history, they have toured with women in the cast. But none have ever been credited as “band member,” not even Slymenstra Hymen (which I am naming my firstborn, by the way). All the Scumdog women have certainly been integral parts of the performance but have played the role of dancer, backup singer, electricity conductor – never before has a woman taken center stage in this capacity.

Vulvatron is played by Kim Dylla, a clothing designer and musician. She debuted with the band at this year’s Riotfest. 

While this casting is in fact a Big Deal because representation is, in fact, wildly important, I struggle to picture many GWAR fans giving more thought than “dude, GWAR’s new singer squirts blood from her boobies, awesome.” And it’s not, in fact, about the boobies. Thirty years ago a bunch of art nerds formed this performance act, and since then their shows have been gatherings for more art nerds to get together with FX enthusiasts, gore and horror fans, metal heads, comedy nerds, punk kids, and everyone in between, to have some beers and watch a hilarious and energetic show. Those not on the level can certainly find offense with the band, but misogyny would not be on a list of faults. Everyone’s ass hangs out of the primordial torture ensembles, and if a member of GWAR slaughters a woman, it’s ’cause she’s a skinhead. Duh. The loyalty of GWAR’s minions is what led me to assume most only have a passing glance at Vulvatron’s gender. They’re so involved and appreciative of the GWAR mythos that it will be her contributions that matter, and nothing else. 

I wish this weren’t a Big Deal. I wish that in 2014, a band casting a woman as a front-person were more about said person’s abilities than which part of the baby making process they provide. But metal still seems to be a wildly cis-male dominated genre. I always joke that the best part of going to a metal show is never having to wait in line in the ladies’ room. I do, however, always report that I’m most respected at shows where bands are the scariest. I’m very short, and dudes always let me stand in front of them, or get me out of the way when they see my face if the pit expands to far. I also acknowledge that there’s always that one turd who thinks it’s funny to pull a girl’s top down or sling her into the pit when she’s not ready, and now maybe that girl can look up, see Vulvatron, and then head butt that son of a bitch into submission.*

*kmc1138’s stance on headbutting is not representative of the views of Big Shiny Robot. 

A story released by the Huffington Post has confirmed that the last surviving founding member of The Ramones Thomas Erdelyi, better known by Tommy Ramone, passed away Friday at the age of 65. According to reporting, a business associate confirmed Ramone died in hospice care after a recent battle with bile duct cancer.

The Ramones were a one of the original Punk Rock bands and still influence music to this day. Tommy Ramone was the bands drummer and co-founded the Ramones in 1974 with Joey Ramone (singer), Johnny Ramone (guitarist), and Dee Dee Ramone (bass). The founding members all had different last names but changed their names in a unified action that can only be described as Rock and Roll.

The band had hits that would later influence pop culture but that started out as underground punk like “Rockaway Beach”, “I Wanna Be Sedated” and of course “Blitzkrieg Bop”. But, for the geek culture which is now main-stream but was once as underground and even counter-culture as Punk, the Ramones have a special place for their rendition of the animated Spider-Man television show theme song from the late 60’s. The track was originally included as a “hidden track” on the vinyl version of The Ramones album “¡Adios Amigos!”. It appears in many other places but notably on the compilation album “Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits”.

The Ramone’s are known for their fast tempo. Tommy Ramone was originally the producer for the band but was given the sticks and the throne because Joey Ramone became the singer after having an increasingly difficult time keeping up with the high tempo Punk music. He would continue as the bands drummer for four years and three albums, “Ramones”, “Leave Home” and “Rocket to Russia”. Tommy was replaced by Marky Ramone in 1978 but continued on as producer for the band.

The Ramones played together for over twenty years between 1974 and 1996 and surprisingly never had a Top 40 hit. Tommy Ramone, like the other members of The Ramones, struggled with limited commercial success in the beginning of Punk Rock. They would become one of the founding members of the Punk Rock movement. That Punk movement would go on to influence geek culture throughout the 70’s and 80’s and would forever tie skateboarding, graffiti art and zines to the geek movement. 

The wider recognition of their music took some time but there is no mistaking Tommy Ramone and The Ramones place in history. Their band would go onto be included in Rolling Stone’s list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”, and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

Photo Credits: Evening Standard via Huffington Post via Getty Images and The Washington Post

“Hey Kathleen, have you ever played D&D?” “Hell yeah! Why, you wanna start a campaign?” “Um, Kathleen, are you kinda dressed in Gryffindor colors at work?” “Um, der, it’s the anniversary of the battle of Hogwart’s.” “Hey Kathleen, who’s your favorite X-Man?” “Why Dazzler of course.”

“Hey Kathleen, are you a Dream Theater fan?” “Um, well, er, I mean like, I’ve seen them four times and I own most of their records and like some DVDs but they’re no Deerhoof AMIRITE?!!?”

Yea tho’ I am old enough to know better, I still hide the glory of all that is my Dream Theater love. Maybe it’s because my social circle has an infinitely hipper taste in music than I, maybe it’s because of years of snickering judgement. But now I write for an awesome geeky website, and Dream Theater has released a new single… So I hereby cast off my cloak of prog shame and shout to the skies: I. Love. Dream Theater.

While it’s true that their recent releases have been less than magical, I still look forward to the records that seem to come like clockwork every two years. And even when original drummer Mike Portnoy left I didn’t lose hope. Dream Theater has zero false pretenses about it’s reason to be, and that is virtuosity. Kevin Moore’s departure early in the band’s history left a giant mark in lyrical quality, but I don’t listen to them for cryptic tributes to Shakespeare (even though that was kind of awesome) or any kind of moral fortitude. I listen to them because John Myung is such an amazing bass player it almost makes me pee my pants.

“The Enemy Inside” is the first single from their 12th studio album, simply titled “Dream Theater.” And while Portnoy’s replacement tracked on the band’s last record, this is the first that involved Mike Mangini in the creative process. I’m frankly dying to hear the differences. Dream Theater seemed to be heading towards a rut of contrived messages and 20 minute songs. And don’t get me wrong, I freakin’ LOVE those things, but only when they feel organic and emotional, not as fan service.

So far? So damn good. I grimaced a bit before I listened, but by 1:30 had cocked an eyebrow. By 2:45 it was metal face all the way, baby. And here’s the best part: While the song features all the things we need from a Dream Theater song (virtuoso musicianship, some serious riffage and unisons tighter than a heart attack, son) it doesn’t feature what we expect. It’s not quite a radio friendly length but it’s definitely one of the band’s shorter songs clocking in at 6:17. One of Petrucci’s solos has a wild crystal tone that’s a nice standout in such a dirty riff, and LeBrie does exactly zero acrobatics, which he has never needed to do. He’s an astounding vocalist no matter how high above the staff he soars.

And I might be an album too late to mention it, but I’ll say it anyway. I thought I would miss Mike Portnoy’s signature “pap” of a drum sound, but I do not. Here’s to another quarter century of Dream Theater, and fingers crossed for a steady increase in awesomeness.

Dream Theater premiered their single with USA Today, and you can listen to it here. If you like prog, if you like metal, and if you have six-ish minutes, give it a listen.