If it seems like I always mention how much good music has been released during the previous month that’s because that’s probably correct. The fact is that we’ve been enjoying an insane outpouring of music for years now and these posts, keyed as they are to some sort of “summary”…
There are certain privileges and challenges that come when you get to interview a band multiple times. On the one hand, building a relationship and rapport with bands and artists breeds a certain familiarity and comfort that allows for more natural conversation that can dig deeper than your run-of-the-mill press…
Editor’s Note: I’m glad to welcome longtime reader Remi VL as a regular guest contributor to our Release Day Roundup posts! He submitted several of the albums listed below. Join his Facebook group for more recommendations. -Scott Murphy Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to…
Energetic. It’s probably one of the most amorphous concepts we use when speaking about music (and, let’s be honest, we use plenty of those). It is used to denote a sense of immediacy, urgency, and power in music, usually describing music that’s very direct, loud, and often fast. However, this…
OK, this one is going to be hard to review so I’m just going to start like this: Elizabeth Color Wheel’s Nocebo is one of the more earnest records I’ve heard in a long time. Forget the musicality of it for a second; it’s just extremely honest. You can hear…
Well, here we are – another year full of new releases. In lieu of our weekly Release Day Roundup, we thought we’d preview the months ahead of us and highlight which albums we’re most heavily anticipating. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and we hope you’ll comment with…
HFollowing on from the inaugural 2017 edition, we’re back in 2018 with the Heavy Blog Yearbook, a look back at some of the articles from last year that we’re most proud of. We love sharing things with our readers, and we’d hate for people to have slept on one of…
Maybe I’m finally showing my age, but I’ve gotten to the point where it takes something really special in the indie rock sphere to impress me. Albums still come through occasionally that scratch that itch I felt so often throughout college and much of my 20s, but few things really stick and weave their way into my brain like they used to. I still keep my ears out though for new bands and tunes that can bring those earworm melodies packaged with interesting songwriting that deftly balances hooks with more challenging meat that I crave. This is exactly what drew my attention to Richmond, VA’s Spooky Cool when I found their debut EP Every Thing Ever in my inbox. Formed in 2015, the band blend the big hooks and powerful melodies of classic indie like The Pixies, unconventional art-rock/pop noodling and vocal stylings reminiscent of Dave Longstreth and Dirty Projectors, with the occasional outbursts of angular guitars and noise that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Deerhoof record. The band have already premiered the excellent tracks “Strange Rooms” and “Old Hair Mine,” which you can hear on their Bandcamp. We are pleased to be premiering another track, the epically groovy “Black Wine,” which you can listen to here!
This post has been a long time coming. Heavy Blog has been around for almost 10 years now, and in that time we’ve grown in every possible way. The breadth of music that we cover has grown. We’ve launched new initiatives, such as the podcast Noyan and Eden have made…
Of the many bands I became familiar with and wrote about in 2017, few meant more to me than the Boston art-rock/prog rock/whatever you want to call it collective Bent Knee. I’ve written about them several times this year, including a lengthy interview and profile of the band with frontwoman Courtney Swain. Frankly, by the time we were ready to roll out our album of the year list (where they ranked #17) I didn’t think I would be writing about them again for a while. But they were stopping through Brooklyn again in December, this time with the always amazing prog force that is Thank You Scientist, and I knew I had to come out and see them.
