What the fuck is this wonderment? “You Can’t Be Alone” starts out like Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” with a simmering, jittery organ n’ drum machine but then kaleidoscopically sunbursts to life as a glorious hybrid of dreampop beatitude and rockabilly leering. An arcing wave of shimmering guitar cuts through the fabric yer consciousness, contrasting sharply with a spare, [...]
Before starting this book, I had hoped that it would begin to redress the reputation of Wynette the artist, Wynette the singer, Wynette the icon, putting her back alongside heavyweights like Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. I realize now that this was a simplistic, naive hope. It’s impossible to separate Tammy Wynette’s personal pain from [...]
Whereas most couples who’ve been together that long have either retreated into sullen TV-watching or are absorbed with the business of day-to-day nuclear family livin’, Hexes and Ohs spend their days and nights crafting winsome, gleaming, Rube Goldberg-esque new wave. Bedroom Madness (funny title) is redolent of New Order and the Rentals (remember them?) and Human [...]
The music that spools out of the Small Black EP is not, in fact, sonically part of the controversial chillwave (non-scene) — eschewing the pained hesitations of Washed Out and the ’80s nostalgia of, well, almost everyone else. Well, I shouldn’t totally lie, I’d be willing to bet that Small Black pine for the ’80s a [...]