It was Glen Campbell who first approached Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson about recording a version of the Jimmy…
Music Reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Acoustic Guillotine – Hurry Up and Finish Dying/Raw Meat and Gunpowder 7″
Billy Mackenzie and Peter Rohrbough of Acoustic Guillotine have been contributing members of the Iowa City rock scene for close to 30 years. Their 2011 self-titled…
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Album Review: Har-di-Har – Hard Parent/Thick Child EP
In the laundry, shorts and t-shirts remind me that summer is over. After a brief mourning for the lost season, I banish them to wash not to be seen again until next spring. After much resistance, I resolve to switch the thermostat to “heat” as if it was the last defense of the impending colder weather.
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Album Review: Dana T – abbr. relation
Dana T abbr. relation danatelsrow.bandcamp.com Dana Telsrow is a guy who recently graduated from the University of Iowa and works at Public Access TV. Over the summer he was ps•z’s first artist in residence. He’s also a composer and songwriter, and took classes in the university’s music department. abbr. relation is a four song concept […]
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Album Reviews: Love Over Gold – Fall to Rise
Love Over Gold is the name of a new collaboration between Pieta Brown and Australian singer-songwriter Lucie Thorne, who met during a tour of the land down under a couple of years ago. The two became fast friends, and, after some correspondence and planning, they formed the group named after a Dire Straits song.
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Album Reviews: The White Elephant – Fly
The White Elephant The White Elephant (“Fly”) www.thewhiteelephantband.com The history of distortion effects on guitars dates back to what is usually considered the first rock and roll song, “Rocket 88.” Distortion was accidentally introduced by the guitarist Willie Kizart’s—of Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm—broken amplifier. Guitar distortion has come a long way since that fateful […]
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Album Review: Dylan Ettinger and Goldendust – Split 7″
This two-song single, the first release on new Atlanta lable DKA, feature’s Iowa City’s Goldendust and Bloomington Indiana’s Dylan Ettinger. As with nearly all music on the outskirts of popular music, these songs are a re-imagining of a musical style from the past—in this case, 1980s darkwave synth pop. Both Ettinger and Goldendust favor big analog synth sounds and archaic drum machine rhythms; there’s no sound in either song that departs from a musical palette available 30 years ago.
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Album Review: Nic Arp – Tiny Wings
It’s hard to define an Iowa sound exactly, but Nic Arp has it, inexactly: not quite country music, but folksy; not exactly rock & roll, but with the occasional snarly electric guitar line. I hear echoes of 1970s Iowa folk artists like Bonnie Koloc and Freeman and Lange, but Arp has an unusual voice, with some of Elvis Costello’s timbral quirks–he goes from growly to nasal in two syllables.
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Album Review: Douglas Kramer Nye – No Good Samaritan
There is something amazing about watching a musician evolve from square one. Shawn Reed from Wet Hair described it as the “without a net” stage of a musician’s career: They tend to be a little more timid, experimenting with voices, phrasings and nuances for the first time. Onstage you can watch them fail and succeed during what can be a spellbinding evolution of their talent. Douglas Kramer Nye had only been playing the guitar for three months when he wrote his first songs. And, over the course of three years, he learned more guitar chords, wrote more songs and made connections around the Iowa City music scene. His album, No Good Samaritan, is the record of these first steps.
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Album Review: The Blendours – Drama Queen EP
The Blendours’ Trevor Treiber is a contemporary and West High classmate of Lipstick Homicide, and the one time I met him he was hanging with Rachel and Kate at Gabe’s. So, it’s no surprise that there’s a strong affinity between The Blendours and Lipstick Homicide when it comes to songwriting: They both write songs that are short, sweet and infectious. The Blendours songs on this EP are performed simply with acoustic instruments. Still, there’s a lot of pure punk rock energy even with a single guitar and no band.
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Album Review: Dustin Busch – Down Home
Down Home is Dustin Busch’s first solo album in a long time (he was 15-years-old when he made his first), and showcases his slide guitar and country blues. In most people’s hands—at least people who weren’t born 100 years ago, poor and black in Mississippi—this is a recipe for embarrassing tedium. Yet Busch combines a complete mastery of the technique and style of blues, as well as a relaxed, nothing-to-prove attitude to make serious music that never takes itself too seriously.
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Album Review: Radoslav Lorkovic – Clear and Cold Remastered
I’ve mentioned on these pages before that my first time in a bar underaged was seeing Bo Ramsey and the Sliders playing Potter’s Mill in Bellevue, IA.
