Sound Obsession

Tame Impala Date:  June 6, 2015 Venue:  Echostage, Washington, DC It's pretty fun, and increasingly rare, to get on board early with a promising new rock band and watch them rise from relative obscurity to international super-stardom in the short span of five years.  I'm talking about psychedelic rockers Tame Impala, all the way from Perth, Australia.  I fell hard for this band when I downloaded their debut album, Innerspeaker , on a whim in the summer of 2010 (my curiosity initially piqued by a sweet album cover that reflected the woozy lava-lamp sound inside) and caught them live with a small crowd of early converts at the divey Black Cat just down the street from my apartment.  I saw them again six months later with a much larger crowd at the same venue, then two years on at a sold out gig at the 1,200 capacity 9:30 Club with the release of their sophomore album Lonerism .  This past weekend, just a couple months ahead of their third album release C...

Mini Mansions:   The Great Pretenders Label:  Capitol Records Released:  March 23, 2015 8/10 Despite what some of the press might tell you, Mini Mansions aren't really a Queens of the Stone Age side project.  Mini Mansions are an LA-based psychedelic pop trio comprised of Zachary Dawes (guitar and bass), Tyler Parkford (keys and vocals), and Michael Shuman (percussion and vocals) - a distinct animal all its own.  Yes, Michael Shuman has been playing bass in Josh Homme's marauding rock collective Queens of The Stone Age since 2007, but arguably wasn't a full-fledged Queen until contributing to their chart-topping Grammy-nominated tour de force  ...Like Clockwork from 2013 ( my favorite album that year ).  By that point Shuman and his Mini-cohorts had already been kicking around for years, putting out a stellar and criminally overlooked self-titled debut in 2010.  That first album , Mini Mansions (released on Homme's own indie imprint Rekord...

Torche, DC9, Washington DC - 3/29/15 Swervedriver, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 3/25/15 Helmet, Black Cat, Washington DC - 2/25/15

A diverse year for music, here are my favorite albums of 2014. Enjoy. . . . 1. D'Angelo & The Vanguard - Black Messiah (9/10) Enigmatic and reclusive Richmond, VA, soul man D'Angelo has been a favorite of mine since the mid-90's when he dropped his debut album  Brown Sugar -  an exceptional 1995 launch that vaulted over its tepid R&B and "neo-soul" competition by merging tough hip-hop swagger with throwback musicality and charm. I even picked that album's version of "Cruisin'" over Smokey Robinson's 1979 original to sit alongside classic cuts by Wilson Pickett, Stevie Wonder, and Bill Withers on my wedding goodie-bag mix CD three years ago. So, after a fourteen year hiatus plagued by legal troubles, substance abuse, weight gain, and the paralyzing anxiety of high expectation to follow up his acclaimed sophomore album,  Voodoo from 2000, D'Angelo finally, and without much warning, dropped his long awaited third LP  ...

Pallbearer, Metro Gallery, Baltimore MD - 10/30/14 Tombs, Metro Gallery, Baltimore MD - 10/30/14 Slowdive, 9:30 Club, Washington DC - 10/22/14 Gorgon City, U Street Music Hall, Washington DC - 10/10/14 Earth, Rock & Roll Hotel, DC - 10/21/14 Earth, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 10/21/14 Black Keys, Verizon Center, Washington DC - 9/25/14 Jack White, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD - 9/14/14 Skeletonwitch, Empire, Springfield VA - 9/12/14 Beck, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD - 7/24/14 Queens of The Stone Age, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD - 7/17/14 Queens of The Stone Age, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD - 7/17/14 Queens of The Stone Age, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD - 7/17/14 Deafheaven, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 6/10/14 Deafheaven, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 6/10/14 Deafheaven, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 6/1...

Failure Date:  June 5, 2014 Venue:  The Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD Naming your band "Failure" seems kind of stupid - not just tempting fate but poking it right in the eye. Then again the early 1990's was a time when a rocker could be a " loser ," a " creep ," or " dumb " and still be a chart-topping superstar.  This was an era of drab irony and false modesty, when po-faced guitar heroes with secret arena-rock ambitions were saddled with the overwhelming weight of "punk rock guilt" - the pop-cultural pressure to act like you just didn't care . It was in this miasma of anti-careerist posturing and slacker ethos that LA based alternative rockers Failure formed and eventually disbanded.  Comprised of Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards, with drummer Kellii Scott and guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen joining later, Failure did everything right.  Their debut album Comfort , released in '92, was produced by indie-rock iconoclast Steve Alb...

Black Breath Date:  May 21, 2014 Venue:  Ottobar, Baltimore, MD The twelfth annual Maryland Deathfest (aka "MDF"), apparently the largest metal festival of its kind in North American, officially kicked off in Baltimore yesterday, but any black denim and leather clad longhair who wanted to get a jump on the four day festivities had their chance at the sold out "pre-fest party" at Ottobar this past Wednesday evening - featuring New York veterans Immolation, Baltimore's Misery Index and Noisem, and Seattle's Black Breath.* Black Breath (left to right - Jamie Byrum, Eric Wallace, Elijah Nelson, Neil McAdams, and Mark Palm)  I've had a lot of fun navigating the metal scene at large with its plethora of sub-genres, over the last decade or so, but death metal (and its close cousin grindcore) has been a final frontier of sorts for me.  Like black metal, with its sordid history of violence and controversial politics, death metal isn't entirely ...