Reaching the pinnacle of his songwriting acuity, the vignettes Cass McCombs paints with his voice and guitar on his 13th album, Interior Live Oak, evoke a conversation between Thoreau and Nick Cave. Read my full review on FLOOD.
Archive for the Reviews Category
Cass McCombs’ ‘Interior Live Oak’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Cass McCombs on 09/02/2025 by Kurt OrzeckAt Boise Gig, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst Recalls Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch Doing Him a Solid
Posted in Concert Reviews, News, Reviews with tags Bright Eyes, Built to Spill, Commander Venus, Conor Oberst, Doug Martsch, Saintseneca, The Poison Oak Project, trans, Treefort Music Hall on 09/01/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Bright Eyes commander Conor Oberst shared a heartfelt and formative memory with the crowd that packed the Treefort Music Hall to see his ensemble perform tonight.
About halfway through Bright Eyes‘ 20-song set, Oberst recalled that his prior band Commander Venus opened for their idols, Built to Spill, when the latter band performed in Oberst’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He noted that he was only 14 years old at the time.
Oberst then recounted that when Bright Eyes played to an empty Neurolux in Boise when they were starting out, he received a note from that city’s hometown hero, Built to Spill leader Doug Martsch, on which he had written his home phone number an invitation for Oberst’s band to crash at his house for the night.
Continue readingAnciients, Now Touring the U.S., Are the Must-See Metal Band of the Moment
Posted in Concert Reviews, Reviews with tags Anciients, Dawn of Ouroboros, Nott, The Shredder on 08/31/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Keeping this quick, because The Bad Penny doesn’t typically run a review of a show previously previewed on the site: By any means necessary, catch Anciients on their current tour of the U.S., the Vancouver band’s first in eight years. Their gig in Boise on Friday night at the Shredder was pitch-perfect. When the band finished their 10-song set, it took awhile for the attendees to leave, as they struggled to locate their jaws, which had dropped off their faces and onto the floor during Anciients’ unrelenting, uncompromising, unpretentious and unimaginably spot-on set.
Continue readingSlow Crush’s ‘Thirst’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags shoegaze, Slow Crush on 08/29/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Slow Crush present the noisiest and more mature version of themselves yet on Thirst, which arrives today. The Belgian shoegazers’ third record takes the form of a hopeful manifesto that the human race still has the opportunity to reinvent itself. Read my full review on FLOOD.
Drag City’s Cory Hanson Breezes Through Boise With Graceful Gig
Posted in Concert Reviews, Reviews with tags Cory Hanson, Drag City on 08/26/2025 by Kurt OrzeckCory Hanson, now four albums deep into his career with Drag City Records, is one of the label’s alt-rock/folk/psyche/psychedelic rock artists du jour. He’s performing selections from his recently released full-length I Love People with the same grace as if they had been in his oeuvre since the very start of his career. He never appears like he’s trying to sell his new material to the audience or convince them to stay watching instead of getting a refill at the bar. Read my full review of his recent gig in Boise via Music Connection.
Led Zeppelin’s ‘Live EP’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Led Zeppelin on 08/22/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Archival Led Zeppelin material almost always boils down to semantics, and this collection of four songs is the ultimate case in point. Read my full review on Music Connection.
Slake’s ‘Let’s Get Married’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Slake on 08/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Slake’s Centrifugal force Mary Claire proves on their debut that they are an outlier. The musician also makes the very convincing points that the power of love is much, much stronger than statistical data; far more precious than the way we carelessly bandy about the word in our degraded and thus devalued lexicon. Read my full review at Post-Trash.
Mawiza’s ‘ÜL’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Mawiza on 08/11/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Mawiza, an indigenous metal/folk group born and bred in sacred Mapuche Nation lands in Chile, is more than just a band, despite their compelling and unique sound. In fact, the posse even have a mission statement: “to preserve ancestral roots, rescue indigenous moral values and to promote biodiversity conservation, guided by the indigenous worldview and struggle.” Perhaps that’s a mouthful, but it’s fitting for a band whose deafening groove metal is an earful. And with their third record, ÜL, the quartet are on the right track, drawing recognition and even popularity at a rapid clip.
Read my full ÜL review on Treble, Mawiza’s harrowing account of the heinous human rights abuses that the Chilean government wrought upon the Mapuche Nation, and the band’s exclusive comments to The Bad Penny about their recent collaboration with Gojira on a song about the environmental crisis that far too many of us continue to ignore.
Cory Hanson’s ‘I Love People’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Cory Hanson on 08/11/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Wand frontman Cory Hanson’s fourth solo outing confronts American grift culture with hope and a communal spirit, as his backing players seem to prevent him from turning inward and catastrophizing. Read my full review at FLOOD.
Nuclear Daisies’ ‘First Taste of Heaven’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Nuclear Daisies on 08/04/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
The club-ready breakbeats and unrelenting experimentation on Nuclear Daisies’ second LP, First Taste of Heaven, serve as a deafening clarion call for humanity to get its act together before it’s too late. Read my FLOOD review.
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