Author: Christopher Sheridan

Music, Print, Reviews

Album Review: Dub Thompson – 9 Songs

June 24, 2014

It’s not easy being weird. Bands that attempt it come off as either trying too hard, or simply botch the effort to produce a product that skews too heavily in one direction: either half-hearted and boring, or so aggressive and outrageous, it’s off-putting. How impressive it is, then, that duo Dub Thompson toes that line astonishing precision, edging debut album 9 Songs into territory that lies comfortably between those extremes and rarely veering off-course.

Continue reading
Music, Print, Reviews

Album Review: Anchorage – Anchorage

May 15, 2014

I don’t envy bands that have the desire to carve out a fresh niche in the music scene. With the industry populated with so many new (and occasionally fresh) acts, introducing a new sound is not easy. Denver rockers Anchorage set out to do just that, advertising broad stylistic backgrounds and genre-bending music to be a unique new player in the rock scene.

Continue reading
Music, Print, Reviews

Album Review: Afghan Whigs – Do to the Beast

Whigs_cover_nobandIt’s been 16 years since Greg Dulli released an album under his outfit The Afghan Whigs. It’s almost baffling to consider peripherally that the last album dropped in the late 90s. Dulli has remained active under his other groups, The Twilight Singers and The Gutter Twins, but with the former starting to blur stylistic lines with his original group, Dulli felt it was time to come full circle and return to his roots with Do to the Beast, which mostly delivers exactly what Dulli followers are looking for—more dynamic, elaborate instrumentation and smoky.

Continue reading
Features, Print

Recreational Marijuana In Garden City Means Music and Munchies For All on 4/20

April 10, 2014

“420,” pronounced “four-twenty,” has established itself quite definitively in the pop culture zeitgeist as a blanket term for all things marijuana, spawning everything from straight-faced legitimacy to raucous Internet memes. The exact origins of the term 420 are heavily contested, with theories ranging from connections to Bob Marley and Grateful Dead to the number being shared with the quantity of ingredients in cannabis and the code for marijuana consumption. All are untrue. Instead, 420 originated with high school students in San Rafael, California in 1971, who decided on a time—4:20 pm, though probably not on April 20th—to meet at a statue and smoke together. It stuck as a broader allusion to marijuana in general, and now enjoys its status as a flagship term for the drug.

Continue reading
Film, Print, Reviews

Film Review: Noah

April 9, 2014

If one were to compile a list of directors that would be a suitable fit for a Biblical epic, Darren Aronofsky likely wouldn’t rank very close to the top at first glance. With his topics ranging from drug abuse (Requiem for a Dream) to fatally fame-obsessed delusional ballerinas (Black Swan), a story from the Bible doesn’t exactly fit into that class. But one needs look no further than a smaller, earlier film called Pi, in which a man was struck with the unflinching belief that the number 3.14 was a message from God detailing the apocalypse. It’s interesting then that Aronofsky’s latest film, Noah, is about a man speaking to God about just that topic. And what a film it is.

Continue reading
Music, Print, Reviews

Album Review: In the Whale – Nate

As always, In the Whale boasts a driving, electrifying power that takes up an incredible amount of sonic space despite being composed of just two guys. The basic guitar-and-drum formula works, and while there’s nothing at all elaborate about the band’s music, it’s the earnestness with which they perform it that makes it so damn fun.

Continue reading
Music, Print, Reviews

Album Review: Musketeer Gripweed – Floods and Fires

April 8, 2014

It’s difficult to liken comparisons to Musketeer Gripweed. Maybe hints of Zakk Wylde vocalization and Black Keys catchiness can be sought, though such associations only apply sporadically—Musketeer Gripweed is ferociously singular in their style and genre, whatever that specifically may be. Either the band doesn’t know either or they don’t care, given that their official Facebook page refers to their genre as “American Revival Stomp Ass Shake Holla!” The description is fitting: Floods and Fires is a rip-roaring album with very few moments of weakness.

Continue reading
Music, Print, Reviews

Album Review: Pandas & People – Pandas & People

April 7, 2014

It’s always exciting when an existing band branches off to explore a new sound and style. Members of the alt-rock (and generally pretty decent) band Five Day Rhetoric, in their downtime, decided to start experimenting with folk rock–a decision that eventually spawned their new project, Pandas & People. The name is catchy, and the music is nice and catchy. However, the product doesn’t break much new ground in terms of the genre, despite the clear presence of passion and potential.

Continue reading