Lovin’ Wreck: Blindfold Test #7

The most exciting part of these columns, immediately after I listen to all 25 songs (okay usually I’ll make it 26 just in case I mess up and one of my writeups is completely flat and incoherent), is going back and checking the app queue to find out what music I was just taking notes…

150 Best Albums of 2015

To hear some critics keeping tabs at the time tell it, 2015 was the year albums started acting like albums again. And I bet you didn’t even know they’d stopped! Me either. But Carl Wilson in Slate, for instance, detected “something especially significant about the immersive long-form record this year, about ‘muchness’” — an attribute…

Janitors review, 1986

Can’t remember why these blokes didn’t make my metal book. Not sure why I didn’t keep their first couple 7-inch 45s, either. The band didn’t last long, and my interest lasted shorter; two more brief EPs and a 1988 full-length I never knew about until now, and that’s it. And oh yeah, if the “incursion…

Snapshot J. Geils Band Images, Frozen Without A Sound

1. Put on the J. Geils Band’s self-titled debut during muted pre-Obama-interview Super Bowl pre-game festivities, and yeah, it pretty much kicks the butt of every other Geils album I’ve pulled out lately. Just real solid, and never much winds up seeming stodgy or sluggish no matter how bar-band blues it gets. Six covers out…