Houses | A Quiet Darkness | Rating: 7/11 | Abandoned homes. A post-apocalyptic search for one’s love. These are most unlikely and unusual sources of inspirations to draw upon when crafting a body of musical work, wouldn’t you say? Yes, but we simply cannot fault the end result born by Chicago duo and real life couple Dexter Tortoriello and Megan Messina aka Houses and their […]

Cold War Kids | Dear Miss Lonelyhearts | Rating: 9/11 | Reviewed by: Rodney Schmidt | A contradictory dichotomist of sound that is soul and punk all in one band; the living meet the dead and the hopeless dance with the optimistic is what you get in Dear Miss Lonelyhearts by the Cold War Kids. Their ability to create a story, recite some poetry, or darken the soul […]

The Strokes | Comedown Machine | Rating: 7/11 | Reviewed by: Rodney Schmidt | When musicians decide that they have had their fun, they have done what some have never done, and they are tired of living the life of the party, they look to the record company to write them huge advances. The band shows no care for how the record does, the band does […]

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club | Specter at the Feast | Rating: 9.3/11 | Recordings made in the shadow of trauma or loss can be one of three things: an overwhelming ode to the loss, a cathartic release from that loss or the sounds of picking up the pieces after said loss. For Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s seventh album, Specter at the Feast, the band had to […]

Atoms for Peace | Amok | Rating: 8/11 | Reviewed by: Rodney Schmidt | Drum machines getting trampled on with callused finger tips, low monotone voices rumbling in an empty warehouse that send the mind into a dizzying high, and nothing but waves of vibrations hovering through the air as synthesizers and guitars play their soul maddening tunes. Artistic wonder is the only sound present […]

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club | Troubadour (Los Angeles, CA) | December 21, 2012 | A widely held belief by hippies, hipsters and spiritual path-seekers was that 12/21/12 would usher in the Age of Aquarius: a new and great human era of change. Other intellectually light individuals believed that the world would end. Which would kind of suck. But here on […]

Just came from an advanced screening of Hyde Park on Hudson. What a fabulous little film. The film most likely won’t do big box office numbers… and it wasn’t as moving as The King’s Speech, but that’s no reason to disregard it. Hyde Park on Hudson is highly amusing! Blindly going into this screening, I really had no idea what […]