Available as a 4xLP and 5xCD box, Ida’s limited-edition Will You Find Me sets have so many cover songs, demos, outtakes and alternative mixes that it’s practically too heavy to carry up a flight of stairs. Read my review of the mammoth reissues for Treble.
Now in their 30th year, the Faint is an anomalous Saddle Creek band that never broke up. The gang is now finally putting its two best albums on wax for the first time ever. Read my review of the Blank Wave Arcade/Wet From Birth (Deluxe Editions) for Treble.
Jesika von Rabbit recently reached out to New Noise say she enjoys our Pet Sounds series and wanted to pay homage to her recently deceased pet, Buzz (who, for the record, was a cat and not a rabbit).
It could be argued—hell, let’s have it out right now; why wait for a rainy day?—that there’s actually no better time for a musician to launch a side venture when their primary project is experiencing peak success. Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme pulled it off with Them Crooked Vultures and Eagles of Death Metal. Jack White kept his seat with the White Stripes warm while engaging in extracurricular activities with the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather. And Chino Moreno put them all to shame by dividing his time between Deftones, Team Sleep, Crosses, Palm s and Saudade. And you have the nerve to call yourself busy?
The latest band to experience the music equivalent of polyamory is Sheer Mag. The Philadelphia punk-rock posse quickly started gaining traction less than a year after congealing in a dilapidated house in which they creatively made room for a studio too. Slipknot started out in a similarly shared dwelling, and it took them about four years of surviving their hellhole before terrestrial radio came a knockin’. Sheer Mag managed to do it in less than half that time, finding themselves transported to Coachella and a late-night TV talk show only two years after they set sail with their band.
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The two principal members of Shearling, a new band formed after the demise of Sprain, recently shed a lot of light on their ambitious, hour-long, single-track debut album, Motherfucker, I am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”… Read my recent FLOOD interview, the first one the band gave in support of their debut album, for more.
From start to finish, Wet Leg’s Moisturizer hits all the right notes, creating the classic conundrum of whether to fade out a song or turn off the music altogether if you’ve got somewhere to be. Read my Music Connection review.
There’s a default word that society uses when it deems someone to be neither pretty nor rude: mediocre. Unlike the gnarly way that the badass villains in Fury Road employ the term as a cutting insult, in real life, the term is—in the common parlance of our times boring. So, while the guys in the band at issue in this feature story might not exactly make hearts go a-twitter when they saunter down sidewalks or even grace stages at music venues, they seemed far more polite than rude when The Bad Penny caught up with them a month ago. “Mediocre” was the one of the last words we’d reach for to describe them.
A far better descriptor for Pretty Rude would be “ballsy.” Brooklynites James Palko and Matt Cook connected less than a year ago to form Pretty Rude, signed with revered, 30-year-old punk label SideOneDummy Records in February. Just a few days later, they introduced themselves and showed their sweet side by presenting their first release—a self-titled EP—on Valentine’s Day. A pretty rude gesture that most certainly was not.
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You people can’t seem to read a full article these days unless it’s a Top 10 list. So The Bad Penny is going to jump on the bandwagon from time to time and see if ours are as riveting as “Top 10 Substitutes for Mayonnaise,” “Top 10 Best Bob Seger Songs,” “Top 10 Ways to Sneeze Politely in Public,” etc.
Here’s our inaugural one. We think. We’re too lazy busy to comb through our labyrinthian archives to see if we’ve posted an edition during the sordid history of this website.
Fun fact: With 27 LPs and three EPs under their belt, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are close to matching the number of felony convictions on Trump’s “record”—pun very much intended. Read my Treble review of their latest album, Phantom Island.
Because Transcending Obscurity founder Kunal Choksi’s moral values include humility along with nurturing strays back to health, few are aware of his superhuman efforts helping animals concurrent with running his Mumbai-based record label. Read my profile on one of the most standup dudes in underground music via New Noise.
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