The Parts I Dread by Pictoria Vark Nobody sounds like Pictoria Vark. She’s a classic punk balladeer and veritable witch of the North. Her melodies are cool and ethereal. It’s the lyrics that are warm, and when she sings, her voice is naked: wholly unadulterated and unpretentious. Carrie Brownstein would be a fan if she […]
Melanie Hanson
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Album Review: Dead Ensign — ‘Q: What Else Is There To Do?’
Q: What Else Is There To Do? by DEAD ENSIGN The first five seconds of Dead Ensign’s Q: What Else Is There To Do? give me a powerful sense of foreboding I haven’t felt from a piece of music since Thom Yorke’s Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film). “Can you feel it?” the vocalist […]
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Iowa Label Spotlight: Station 1 Records in Des Moines
There’s more altruism in music than the notoriously exclusive and abusive mainstream industry would have you believe. Station 1 Records in Des Moines is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit designed to not only record local minority and underrepresented artists but to serve as a sort of business school for artist entrepreneurs. “We take on a handful of […]
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Album Review and Q&A: Good Morning Midnight — ‘Songs of Violence’
Songs Of Violence by Good Morning Midnight Good Morning Midnight’s latest album is expansive. Songs of Violence is an aural road trip down county highways in an unfamiliar wood. It is a definitive Midwestern rock album. Singer-songwriter Charlie Cacciatore explained the sound over a pilsner at George’s Buffet on a recent summer afternoon: “When I […]
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Album Review: Penny Peach — ‘Brain Gamez’
brain gamez by Penny Peach 2021 is the year of reinvention, and Penny Peach’s Brain Gamez is the perfect soundtrack. Penny Peach is the multi-talented Elly Hofmaier. The singer, writer and recent University of Iowa grad released this carefully crafted five-track EP on March 5 along with an apt message: “just tryna get my mind […]
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THE FESTIVUS SHOW brings a panoply of QC musicians to your living room
Artist and emcee Royce Barnett is ready to close out this chaotic trip round the sun with an appropriately explosive event: an extra special two-day edition of THE FESTIVAL SHOW. Better known as Crunk Chocolate of podcast Stuck in The Middle, Barnett launched THE FESTIVAL SHOW series in late 2019. At the time, the program’s […]
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Album Review: Giallows — ‘Enochian Power Ballads’ and ‘Placer’
Enochian Power Ballads by giallows Adam Wesconsin and Devin Alexander of Giallows have been making music together for much of their lives. In fact, in the first 10 seconds of Enochian Power Ballads, the groggy riffs and tentative tapping will instantly transport longtime fans back in time to Peabody’s, the bygone Quad City coffeehouse and […]
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Artist profile: QC lamp lover Mike Steele
With his recent multimedia avant-garde ode to light fixtures, experimental artist Mike Steele demonstrates the potential of creative constraints and a renaissance of absurdism. Eastern Iowa and other QC live music fans already know Steele as the human giant who has introduced bands at Codfish Hollow, the Rust Belt, RIBCo and other staples of the […]
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Album Review: Condor & Jaybird — ‘The Glory’
A full-bodied chord progression, disguised as a bridge (where the other shoe just never drops) closes out Condor & Jaybird’s latest album, and it marks the end of an era: the completion of a trilogy six years in the making. First there was The Kingdom, then The Power — now, The Glory is the climax […]
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Album Review: Aubs. — ‘Sensei of Syllables’
The first time I heard Aubs. perform the titular “Sensei of Syllables,” he was on the Rozz-Tox stage with one of his writing students. Abdur, 12, had just made his debut at Roaring Rhetoric, the spoken word event series Aubs. founded. Aubs. is Aubrey Barnes, known to the QC lit community
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Album Review: Dark Family — ‘Holiness’
Dark Family’s second album of 2019 is a fucking groove. Released on Oct. 30, Holiness essentially takes the psychedelic supergroup’s first album, The Reverberation Cult, and retrofits it with all the inky, druidic, pot rock energy the band’s full lineup commands.
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Album Review: Pollinators — ‘Return Home’
At first listen, Pollinators’ new album, Return Home (out Oct. 4) seems to be from an era that never existed, but should have. It’s a version of the 1990s where Jer Bear got healthy and the swing revival never happened. Energizing guitar riffs make you want to lace up your Docs and jam. It sounds like Weezer before and after their pop makeover
