How We Stayed Individuated
An associative journey into the world of the heavy, hooky, hypnotising guitar riff. Protomartyr, “Uncle Mother’s”, from Agent Intellect, 2015 This intricate song marks the point where the Detroit band’s album metamorphoses into a weird and truly wonderful creature. Fittingly, the riff itself undergoes various transmutations, as if intent on presenting the plentiful array of […]
Continental Drift
I’d read somewhere that a book called Hearing History: A Reader, edited by the promisingly Fall-esquely named Mark M. Smith, explored the distinction between “American sound” and “European sound”. This got me all excited and I chased down the book. Disappointingly, though, it turned out that the relevant chapters were not really about the similarities […]
Sharing Secrets in the Future Tense
The release of an excellent new album by Polvo, a band who was mainly active in the years 1990-1998, took me back to that golden age of leftfield American guitar music, when bands such as Polvo, Fugazi, Slint, Unwound, Lync, Codeine and Come formed and recorded their classic albums. These bands’ post-hardcore music was based […]