Brook Hoover is an Eastern Iowa music scene staple. He plays out every week, whether it’s a solo gig with his cover band the Flaming Camaros or a tour stop with his surf-rock group the Surf Zombies. When he’s not in the spotlight, he’s teaching guitar to folks from the very young to the, well, older. His classes are tailored to the goals of the […]
The brightly illustrated Peter Max-influenced pop-art cover of Time Beach Universe, the debut album from Grinnell band Pink Neighbor, gives us a pretty good idea of what lies within. But, it’s not all tangerine trees and marmalade skies — it’s a perfect pastiche of the full variety of 1960s party pop. The neighborly tone of the record is set at the […]
When a band takes the time to create an album as a single work and does it well, as Iowa City band Halfloves has done with their second album Dazer, the investment of experiencing the whole work pays off. Overall, Dazer explores a theme of human connection or, in some cases, the lack thereof. […]
The press material for Pieta Brown’s new album, Freeway, quotes guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker asking, “what kind of music IS this? Prairie gaze?!” The question, while humorous, touches on the sonic explorations of the sessions that make up her eighth album. For her first album on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe label, Brown returned to Justin […]
If various comic book universes have taught us anything, it’s that every hero needs an origin story. For DICKIE, that was their 2015 self-titled release—a concept album summarizing songwriter and vocalist Dick Prall’s life to that point. Returning like Superman from the Fortress of Solitude, Prall has reconvened DICKIE with a different lineup […]
Subatlantic is not a band that would be described as impatient. Although they have been together since 2009, playing occasional gigs that secured their place on the Quad Cities music scene, they just released their debut EP, Not Louder, But Closer, in 2015. […]
If Des Moines R&B combo the Maytags had followed up their 2016 album Love Lines simply by revisiting their proven formula, it would still have been a welcome chapter in their developing story. Love Lines was a standout in a landscape of retro R&B albums. […]
The Diplomats of Solid Sound are back with a new slab of soul! The line-up has changed a little since 2010’s fantastic What Goes Around Comes Around, but the core of the band is still Doug Roberson on guitar; Nate “Count” Basinger, who flew up from Austin to provide his signature Hammond B3 and piano; and Eddie McKinley on sax. […]
There is a long-standing tradition in jazz of performing pop standards, and those songs became kind of a lingua franca for jazz musicians. Iowa City jazz bassist and vocalist Blake Shaw — whose latest album, it happened., is a collection of standards — explained the tradition […]
Crystal City’s first two albums — ‘Change’ (2014) and ‘Bartenderly’ (2017) — drew from Paul Westerberg’s playbook. They shared his penchant for ramshackle punk and glistening, soaring pop — the electric and acoustic, the sad and hopeful. […]
Halfloves’ new single, “A Little Lie,” was released March 15. The video premieres here today. “A Little Lie” is also the first single from the Halfloves’ as-yet-untitled second album, due out later this year. […]
Listening to the debut album from Cedar Falls band Hex Girls, I’m reminded of the time before punk broke in the ’70s. Bands like the Dead Boys and Johnny Thunders’ band the Heartbreakers took ’60s garage rock and psychedelia mixed in attitude and energy […]
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