Year: 2013
Local Reviews: Stag Hare
This album is nearly 42 minutes long � but feels like 10. Starting off slowly with an almost-tribal melody, Ahspen easily could have been the soundtrack to The Martian Chronicles, because all 42 minutes in this piece are an instrumentation of beautiful bliss that seem to follow an internal storyline. … read more
Local Reviews: The Tenants of Balthazar’s Castle/Stag Hare
I once watched a performer maintain a tricky, tempo-swaying drum roll using a stick in one hand and a rubber ball in the other. I was completely mesmerized by the performance, but letdown by the recording and unable to convince any who heard it how magnificent it had been. This is my beef with 90 percent of so-called noise music: you have to see it to appreciate it, otherwise, if you expect anyone to listen, you damned well better make the aural side really interesting. … read more
Local Reviews: Top Dead Celebrity
The opening track “Illuminati” on Top Dead Celebrity’s self-titled album made me hope this would be a dynamic instrumental band, and then right towards the end of the well-laced opening track they speed it up, give it the Kyuss kick and the hammer drops. … read more
Local Reviews: Monorchist
You have to give respect to Monorchist. This band drops straight-up garage rock that is so unpretentious and unpolished that it sounds like you’re right in the middle of one of their band practices. Hating on it is next to impossible. … read more
Local Reviews: Negative Charge
Although Negative Charge have been together (in some form or another) since 2005, it’s probably a good thing that they waited until now to release their debut album. After opening for many decent punk bands here in SLC (Street Brats, Lower Class Brats, Funeral Dress, GBH, The Casualties, etc.) and a plethora of lineup changes, Negative Charge finally seem to have perfected their sound. … read more
Local Reviews: Accidente
Exotic Payday sounds like a moon-shined Paul Bunyan careening around the lumberyard with a hatchet recently sharpened on the ol’ whetstone�in other words, heavy, ungainly and dangerous. Is it wrong for me to think Mr. Peter Makowski is just cuter than ever as he gargles, spits, retches, spews rabies-laden saliva and shreds his throat into Austin pork barbecue to get across his tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic, red-hot-burning angst? … read more
Local Reviews: Aye Aye
Salt Lake has been overrun lately by blues-influenced, mostly acoustic musicians�a visit to any coffee shop on gallery stroll will confirm this. It makes it that much more refreshing to find someone who experiments with the genre and successfully turns it on its ear. Aye Aye does just exactly this. … read more
Local Reviews: The Black Hens
The Black Hens started as a fluke; a thrown together project birthed from a one-off jam session with SLC folk powerhouses: Glade, David Williams, Band of Annuals members jeremi Hanson and Brent Dreiling while in … you guessed it, Albuquerque. … read more
Local Reviews: Knifeshow
I was pleasantly surprised when I popped in Knifeshow’s blue sounding album Here Until It’s Gone. The first thing that caught my attention was Brent Anderson’s falsetto vocals. His voice sounds like a cross between Jeff Buckley and Muse front man Matthew Bellamy. Maybe those two are secretly his parents and he just doesn’t know yet. … read more
Local Reviews: Loom/Prize Country
Loom and Prize Country pair up for this split EP from Exigent. Like kissing cousins at a family reunion, Loom is the agonized genius hanging out in the back room gnawing on beakers and discovering the secrets of the universe while Prize Country is the Pabst-guzzling uncle with a two-foot beard and a long and lively prison record. … read more