We know that Blitzen Trapper calls here home. I say “here” as if I really know what that means. That’s what happens when the help is freelancing from hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Never been to Portland. Never been much west of Colorado, in fact. The Pacific Northwest is a baffler to me. Everything […]
Sean Moeller
Posted inMusic
Love and Ink
Jesse Sykes Will Make You a Believer
Love and all its trappings, all of its mannerisms, will continue to bedevil man and woman, boy and girl, until time no longer exists. The amount of time already spent on the confounded emotion in song is obsessive and most definitely compulsive, but it’s how love is thought about and explored that gives it any […]
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Get Right With God
Page France’s Moral Dilemma
With Page France, before you know it, you’re completely immersed in singer Michael Nau’s metaphorical world of blatantly religious ideas that are nowhere near to having any invested interest in religion. His lyrics latch onto many of the most pertinent symbols and catch points that are found in the Good Book, exploring them and turning […]
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A Place for Friends
Gym Class Heroes Are in Your Top Eight
There have been and always will be “new Beatles.” There will forever be offerings of “new Rolling Stones” and other second comings. It couldn’t possibly be any other way. Everything new has been done before, so they say. There have not, however, been many new bands going after the sound of the Roots re-imagined as […]
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Greetings from Iowa
Love Songs to the Hawkeye State
Understanding the state of Iowa that William Elliott Whitmore calls home is key to describing the man who released 2006’s Song of the Blackbird—a smokey banjo-heavy soul record for the indie set. Iowa is the state that I also call home, and the state where all political pundit eyes focus on every election year—and as […]
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Parlez-Vous Français?
Malajube: Singing in French, Joking in English
When Malajube frontman Julien Mineau speaks of his band’s music, he’s forced to discuss the Anglophiles and Francophiles of the world as if that’s the only way he and his bandmates can see it. In every city the Canadian band travels to, they’re visited by some of each—those who are used to their indie rock […]