150 Best Albums of 2013

Complaints about Beyoncé not taking home the Album of the Year Grammy the same year she broke the record for Most Grammys Ever remind me a lot of Public Enemy (who didn’t give a fuck about a goddamn Grammy but graciously wound up performing this year anyway) complaining about being treated unfairly by music critics…

150 Best Albums of 2012

So hey, were you aware all sorts of new sorts of music came out of nowhere in 2012? I sure wasn’t, but turns out that in The Wire that December a very helpful person named David Wilcox catalogued and explained and/or debunked a whole bunch of them for those of us happily out of the…

Non-Metal Reviews, 2012

Bhi Bhiman, Bhiman This super-idiosyncratic Sri Lankan from St. Louis sings soul-folk through a congested nose; his rhythms absorb Paul Simon’s Afro-Caribbean influence less clinically than, say, Vampire Weekend’s do. But his high-IQ verbosity is where it’s at: Brecht-to-hillbilly-to-talking-blues-infused songs about hopping trains, fuzzy-math accounting, broken atlatls (look it up), murder from O.J.’s perspective, kimchee…

Every Day I’m Shuffling

How much of the music you listen to digitally do you listen to on shuffle, random play, whatever? For me, give or take work necessities, it’s close to 100%. I only stream, never download, and almost never listen to albums all the way through on line. But my supposed extreme anti-rockist (he actually calls himself…

150 Best Albums of 2011

Maura Johnston, at that time holding down my old job as music editor of the Village Voice, designated 2011 “the Year of the Bro” after reassuring readers that “of course it wasn’t” “the worst year for music ever” (she was making a point there actually, about headline clickbait.) Katherine St. Asaph, participating in the same…

150 Best Albums of 2010

You might not have guessed the Romeo (Michigan) redneck and Tamil tigress had much in common, but both Kid Rock and M.I.A. put out singles called “ Born Free” in 2010. And in retrospect, given eternal disingenuous right-wing lip-service to “liberty”, maybe it should come as no surprise 12 years down the line that they…

Poker Face Soundtrack the White Christian Crypto-Nazi Dumbass Revolution

Have yet to identify any Upper Midwest Christian Militia Hard Rock bands (though they’ve gotta be out there — c’mon, Washtenaw County and Sandusky? I wonder if those vigilantes ever do maneuvers at Cedar Point.) But George Smith alerts me to a band named Poker Face “linked to by hutaree.com. You go out to their website, they have…

Other Chuck Eddys

Back in the ’80s I think it was, or possibly even before that in high school, somebody somewhere decided there was something intrinsically drag-racey about my name and I should therefore from hereon refer to myself as “Chuck ‘Hot Rod’ Eddy.” But little did I know then how spot-on that suggestion was: Coincidentally or not,…

Things I Said on June 21

2006: Cuts of meat: Jimmy Buffet “Cheeseburger in Paradise”; Gang of Four “Cheeseburger”; Michael Hurley “What Made my Hamburger Disappear”; Focus “Hamburger Concerto”; Jim Jackson (also covered by Hurley) “I Heard the Voice of a Porkchop”; Rancid “Tenderloin”; Neil Young “T-Bone”; Led Zeppelin “Hot Dog”; all three Hasil Adkins songs about hot dogs and decapitation;…

Things I Said on May 12

2016: Upcoming metal album (June 8, according to Metal Storm website): Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum – Prajecyrujučy Sinhuliarnaje Wypramieńwańnie Daktryny Absaliutnaha J Usiopahłynaĺnaha Zła Skroź Šaścihrannuju Pryzmu Sîn-Ahhī-Erība Na Hipierpawierchniu Zadyjakaĺnaha Kaŭčęha Zasna. Any good?? Encyclopaedia Metallum Metal Archives info: “Country of origin: Belarus; Location: Minsk; Genre: Technical Death Metal; Lyrical themes: Sumerian/Babylonian Mysticism, Occultism, Annihilation, Death; Current…