Music

Sarah Saturday's dreamy-reflective bedroom pop rock project captivates and compels with earnest songwriting. Sarah Saturday might be my longest running rock crush—while all of the cliché reasons admittedly apply, more importantly she’s always seemed to remain relevant to me. She’s thoughtful and reflective, without pretension. Initially our musical star aligned over bratty indie pop-punk. Guilty as charged—and not the least bit remorseful about it—but just as our bleached hair (both her…

Maybe you can never go home again. But if you could, Ghost Notes would be the soundtrack. For some reason I’ve avoided writing about Ghost Notes since it came out last summer. I’m not sure why—I really like this album. I also love Veruca Salt. They make the short list of my all-time favorite bands. The only thing I can think of is that I was trying to keep this album for myself. It’s like reliving a memory—something you’d only share with someone who understands what…

Guilty Pleasure? Embarrassed??? Hardly. As much as I love music, and devoted a significant amount of my life to it, I can still be pretty closed minded. I like what I like and over the last few years I’ve lived deeply in that bubble. Why listen to the radio when I’ve got 20k+ songs in iTunes? I also no longer care about being cool—I’m over having to be the first to hear a new rock band or searching for the meaning of life within lyrics. I think there’s two reasons f…

I don’t know much about hip hop, except I know when I like it. And I like Broken Ankles by Girl Talk and Philadelphia Freeway. The combination of Girl Talk and Freeway is unlike anything you’ll hear in Top 40 radio—mostly because the music industry is way behind modern art. Record labels can’t, or won’t, touch Girl Talk because of copyright laws, but I challenge you to argue that Broken Ankles isn’t original work. When does a sample no longer become a sample? You ca…

It’s often hard to articulate the thoughts and emotions that consumed me the first time I listened to Bikini Kill. Awestruck. Captivated. Confused. Moved. Inferior. To me, the band was the beginning of an awakening or rather a tangible example of something I already knew to be true- they just personified it. I wasn’t aware of sexism until later in childhood, roughly when girls started to develop and I didn’t. Even then, I didn’t really understand it. I understood…

The mixed tape; the most powerful device of the squared glasses hipster. His version of the Sistine Chapel or that crazy sex wall in the Middle East. His contribution to the uneducated music masses and his chance to tell the greatest untold story of them all- his own. Within an hour and twenty minutes, this inept jerk can create the greatest love story of all time, free Tibet, mock emo, or simply turn a friend on to new music. The tape’s power is limitless and timeless. If played by someo…