Meat Wave | Heartbreaking Bravery

April 6, 2015

Meat Wave – Sham King (Music Video)

Now that the site’s all caught up on songs, it only seemed natural to overhaul the music videos as well. Here, the formatting will be slightly different than it has in the past for this format, with 35 excellent clips being linked beneath the main feature, Meat Wave’s slasher-indebted short that accompanies the bruising “Sham King” off their tremendous EP from this year, Brother. Before going any further, it’s worth noting that Meat Wave is one of the few bands that will always have a special place carved out in reference to this site, having played the first-ever Heartbreaking Bravery Presents to help this place celebrate its first anniversary (several months after they were featured as part of the site’s On the Up series). Their self-titled record is still one of the best things to have come out of this decade, so any time the band does anything of note, it’s probably a safe bet it’ll secure a feature spot here. Which leads us back to the focus of this piece: “Sham King”.

In the Andrew Robert Morrison-directed clip for “Sham King”, a lot of things are at stake. Most notably, the bands lives. A grim reaper figure, complete with a scythe atop a bicycle, mercilessly stalks the power trio through dead, snow-capped streets. During the opening chase, Morrison (who also edited the video) injects the clip with a serious sense of dissonance with furiously paced loop-back smash cuts, lending the affair an added sense of disquiet. Before long, death zeroes in on guitarist/vocalist Chris Sutter, who leads the masked figure on a chase through an abandoned warehouse. Vantage points switch and become a narrative function as the viewer’s occasionally allowed to take on the first-person viewpoint from behind the killer’s mask, effectively rocketing up the video’s sense of tension. When one side emerges victorious, a solo is mimed in front of a towering wall of various amps before giving way to the video’s final shot- which ranks among one of my favorite images from the year.

Watch the madness of “Sham King” unfold below and pick up the Brother EP here. Beneath the clip, watch 35 other great videos from the past few weeks. Expect regular coverage to resume throughout this new week and going into the future.

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Day Creeper – Luxury Condominium
Ryan O’Reilly – Northern Lights
Little Death Machine – Pale
Hallelujah the Hills – Destroy This Poem
Algiers – Irony. Utility. Pretext
Dan Deacon – When I Was Done Dying
The Go! Team – What D’you Say?
King Tuff – Madness
Modest Mouse – Lampshades of Fire
Chastity Belt – Cool Slut
The Bandicoots – Mind Your Manors
Stella – Last Minute Boy
Hey Elbow – Ruth
Coliseum – Sunlight In A Snowstorm
Ceremony – The Separation + The Understanding
Built to Spill – Living Zoo
Pile – Rock And Roll Forever With The Customer In Mind
Albert DeMuth – Finally Found A Job
Gymshorts – Hey Parents
Oscar – Daffodil Days
Modern Vices – Smoke Rings
The Great Albatross – Righteous Man
Turnover – New Scream
Oh Land – Half Here (Live One Take)
KEN Mode – Blessed
A Place To Bury Strangers – What We Don’t See
The Smashing Pumpkins – Drum + Fife
Pinact – Anxiety
Laura Marling – Gurdjieff’s Daughter
Inheaven – Regeneration
Hot Chip – Need You Now
Great Cynics – Lost In You
Le Volume Courbe (ft. Kevin Shields) – The House
Algiers – Blood
Courtney Barnett – Depreston

3 Comments

December 20, 2014

Male Bonding – A Kick to the Face (Stream)

In the last batch of posts, there were recaps built around some of last week’s finest musical moments. There was a brief delay in regularly-scheduled content that necessitated an outpouring of material to keep this site’s regular coverage humming along. Similarly, this post will concentrate on the music moments worth celebrating to have emerged from the Monday-Thursday range. Following this post will be two more entries dedicated to some of the stronger musical content that emerged on Friday. With all of that out of the way, it’s time to dive on into the three major categories: single streams, full streams, and music videos.

As is wont to happen over a period of time, there were some fairly extraordinary songs that surfaced in this week’s first stretch. Some of the more favorable ones included the following: Gal Pals’ zippy throwback basement pop stomper “Ex-Marionette“, Evans The Death’s absolutely monumental “Don’t Laugh At My Angry Face” (a legitimate song of the year candidate), Los Angeles Police Dept.’s severely bummed out holiday tune “Oh Lonely Night“, Menace Beach‘s latest stunning Ratworld teaser “Tastes Like Medicine“, No Monster Club’s defiantly vibrant (and tantalizingly weird) bedroom pop earworm “Arms Across America“, The Julie Ruin’s mesmerizing “Blueberry Island“, Kind of Like Spitting’s revitalizing “Bullied By A Bee“, the best remix from Perfect Pussy’s Shaun Sutkus to date (this time of Rubblebucket’s “Carousel Ride”), and an absolute monster cover of Wipers’ “Mystery” from site favorites Meat Wave.

Music videos fared just as well, with a few very resonant clips. There was Small Houses’ engaging visual journey for “Staggers and Rise“, Cave People’s wearily homespun “Brace“, and Literature’s woozily kaleidoscopic “New Jacket“. Additionally, there was Anti Pony’s seductively colorful “I Go Places“, WRAY’s effortlessly propulsive “Bad Heart“, Laura Marling’s autumnal and slow-galloping “Short Movie“. Rounding things out were Breakfast In Fur’s jaunty graphics experiment “Shape“, Erase Errata’s near-static stunner “My Life In Shadows“, and a resoundingly powerful reminder that TV On the Radio got where they were by virtue of making excellent decisions; “Lazerray” is yet another towering culmination of several wise moves.

Full streams were, comparatively, a little shorter in supply- but there were still a few gems that were unearthed and brought to life. Lazy threw caution and fear out of the window with their Soft Sheets 7″, Trauma Harness unveiled a severely damaged basement punk triumph with their discography-spanning Advent Calendar, and TIT (a collaborative effort between Digital Leather and The Hussy) offered up a stream of their psych-drenched self-titled 12″. Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle provided a quietly intense and arresting live recording of one of his extremely intimate house shows (and appropriately titled the recording House Show). There was also a very personal release from Jarad Charles Lee Francis Olson that tethers a wide-reaching array of genre influences into something unwaveringly hypnotic and, ultimately, tragic (while still managing to subtly incorporate a devious streak of dark humor) in the My Cats Are My Dogs EP.

Even with all of that to consider, today’s feature fell to an anomaly of a track- Male Bonding’s standalone single, “A Kick to the Face”. The title’s an immediate eyebrow-raiser and the accompanying title track lives up to its promise. All scorched-earth and fury, it’s an exploration of an abusive relationship that simultaneously rails against the fact that they’re a common occurrence and empathizes with the abused. Structurally, it’s constantly shifting and punctuated by brief bursts of searing intensity before sharply settling back into its normal pace, providing a near-perfect reflection of the song’s central topic. It’s a brave track that suggests Male Bonding’s ambitions may be higher than they initially let on- and it’s one hell of an appetizer for whatever the band’s cooking up next.

Listen to “A Kick to the Face” below and keep an eye on this site for any notable future items from the band.

1 Comment

December 14, 2014

2014: A Pictorial Review, Pt. 2

One thing that this site has strived to maintain is its own visual aesthetic. While it’d be impossible to find a photo in the archives for every given band that headlines a post, an original photo will be posted anytime the opportunity presents itself. Upgrading cameras halfway through the year provided a bevvy of new opportunities and the subsequent implementation of a more photo-centric presence. That’s not by mistake. Photography (especially event photography) has always been an important crux of multimedia journalism. It can be a way to implicitly (or explicitly) convey some of the more minute details of a singular moment to a reader- or it can simply act as an intriguing supplement. Those were just a few of reasons that went into the decision behind a headfirst dive into photography investment (on both a personal and public level) and factored into why one camera or another was brought along to every show this site covered in the past year. Now, with 2015 just around the corner, seemed like as good a time as any to showcase a few photographs from the past 12 months that stood out as personal favorites. Since there are a few too many to go up all at once, they’ll be posted at random as part of installments that will run from now to the start of January. Most of these shots have been published on the site before (or on The Media), though there are a few that will be appearing for the first time. Enjoy!

2 Comments

December 10, 2014

2014: A Pictorial Review, Pt. I

One thing that this site has strived to maintain is its own visual aesthetic. While it’d be impossible to find a photo in the archives, an original photo will be posted anytime the opportunity presents itself. Upgrading cameras halfway through the year provided a bevvy of new opportunities and the subsequent implementation of a more photo-centric presence likely showed. That’s not by mistake. Photography (especially event photography) has always been an important crux of multimedia journalism. It can be a way to implicitly (or explicitly) convey some of the more minute details of a singular moment to a reader- or it can simply act as an intriguing supplement. Those were just a few of reasons that went into the decision of photography investment (on both a personal and public level) and factored into why one camera or another was brought along to every show this site covered in the past year. Now, with 2015 just around the corner, seemed like as good a time as any to showcase a few photographs from the past 12 months that stood out as personal favorites. Since there are a few too many to go up all at once, they’ll be posted at random as part of installments that will run from now to the start of January. Most of these shots have been published on the site before (or on The Media), though there are a few that will be appearing for the first time. Enjoy!

1 Comment

December 7, 2014

Watch This: Best of 2014 (Video Mixtape)

Live music videos never seem to get the emphasis they deserve. It’s part of why Watch This was created; to celebrate stunning documents of equally stunning performances. A good band can make a great record but a truly great band usually excels in the live setting. With 2014 winding to a close (and with another 100 posts in the past), it seemed appropriate to start reflecting on some of the year’s best offerings. Lists of LP’s, EP’s, 7″ releases, and more will be forthcoming but today the focus will fall on live clips. And, yes, 2014’s not quite over yet and there will be a few weeks worth of live clips to consider (in addition to the past few weeks, which will be focused on in the posts immediately following this one) and “best” is still subjective- but the videos contained in this mix were simply too good to just feature once. If there’s enough material, an appendix will be added around the start of next year.

To be eligible for this video mixtape, the videos involved had to have been previously featured in Watch This and not contain an interview sequence. Full sets were ruled out as well (with a lone exception being made for one of 2014’s best videos in any capacity to provide a sense of closure to the proceedings). These videos were pulled in from as many places as possible with only Chart Attack, La Blogotheque, and Little Elephant making repeat entries (with two each). From the painfully gorgeous (Mutual Benefit, Angel Olsen) to sublime perfection (Radiator Hospital, Little Big League) to the absurdly impressive (Kishi Bashi) to the most electric late night performance of 2014 (Ty Segall), there’s a little something for everyone. 25 clips are included and listed below, with a hyperlink provided to their respective installments in Watch This‘ always expanding catalog. Since this brings the site to another 100 post mark, hyperlinks will be provided to posts 300-399 for anyone interested in checking out past material. With all of this exposition out of the way, there’s really only one thing left to do: sit back, focus up, and Watch This.

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1. Audacity – Counting the Days (Jam in the Van) — vol. 24
2. Greys – Guy Picciotto (Chart Attack) — vol. 24
3. Radiator Hospital – Fireworks (BNTYK) — vol. 51
4. Ovlov – Where’s My Dini? (Little Elephant) — vol. 23
5. Frankie Cosmos – Embody (Radio K) — vol. 55
6. Mean Creek – My Madeline (Wondering Sound) — vol. 19
7. Joanna Gruesome – Anti-Parent Cowboy Killers (BTR) — vol. 51
8. Sweet John Bloom – Aging In Place (Allston Pudding) — vol. 48
9. Emilyn Brodsky – Someone Belongs Here (TCGS) — vol. 28
10. Mitski – First Love // Late Spring (bandwidth) — vol. 43
11. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Jubilee Street (ACL) — vol. 54
12. Sharon Van Etten – Serpents (Pitchfork) — vol. 40
13. Mutual Benefit – C.L. Rosarian (Bruxelles Ma Belle) — vol. 19
14. Angel Olsen – Enemy (La Blogotheque) — Vol. 11
15. Kishi Bashi – Philosophize In It! Chemicalize In It! (WNYC) — vol. 29
16. Little Big League – Year of the Sunhouse (Little Elephant) — vol. 45
17. Screaming Females – It All Means Nothing (Audiotree) — vol. 27
18. Ty Segall – Feel (Conan) — vol. 40
19. Dilly Dally – Candy Mountain (Chart Attack) — vol. 51
20. Cloud Nothings – Now Hear In (Amoeba) — vol. 57
21. MOURN – Otits (Captured Tracks) — vol. 53
22. Courtney Barnett – History Eraser (KEXP) — vol. 34
23. Lee Fields – Don’t Leave Me This Way (La Blogotheque) — vol. 54
24. Jenny Lewis – Slippery Slopes (KCRW) — vol. 52
25. Saintseneca (NPR) — vol. 38

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November 11, 2014

Meat Wave – Sham King (Stream)

Just as the start of this week’s been kind for great music videos, it’s also granted looks and streams at (and of) several upcoming records. NPR’s First Listen series, as reliable as ever, is currently streaming Mr. Gnome’s subtly frenzied The Heart Of A Dark Star, Crying allowed Noisey to let everyone in on the magic that is Get Olde/Second Wind, Stereogum landed the streaming rights to Exit Verse’s brilliantly contained self-titled record, and PIZZA TIME released their latest hard-charging punk free-for-all- 2 KEWL 4 LIFE– as an actual free-for-all via their bandcamp. Every one of those four records is worth a look but the title that should warrant the most excitement is Meat Wave‘s just-announced Brother EP.

After Meat Wave, the band’s post-punk tour-de-force first effort, was released the band started taking apart audiences with their incendiary live shows. One of those shows was captured firsthand via this site when the band played the first Heartbreaking Bravery Presents, which was announced in conjunction with coverage of their frenetic “Brother” video. It hadn’t been announced at the time but the video was to tease the band’s upcoming Brother EP, which was supplied with additional details today. Most notable is the presence of new songs, their first since their instant-classic debut, and the streaming of “Sham King”, which is as fierce of a song as they’ve ever written.

Right from the onset, Meat Wave seem hell-bent on pummeling the listener into elated submission with a vicious riff punctuated by snare blasts and supported by being doubled by the bass. Guitarist and vocalist Chris Sutter sounds particularly inspired on “Sham King”, showcasing a higher register and his characteristically venomous delivery. A simple but piercingly effective solo in the song’s final act ensures that this band’s somehow continuously building momentum (a feat that seemed impossible in the wake of their blistering debut) and- finally- people are starting to take notice. With Meat Wave behind them and the new songs on Brother ahead it’s going to be incredibly easy to make the case for Meat Wave being one of the best bands in the Midwest. All high velocity and high impact, this is music that’s set to destroy anyone not smart enough to willfully surrender.

Listen to “Sham King” below and pre-order the Brother EP from Meat Wave’s bandcamp.

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October 31, 2014

Heartbreaking Bravery Presents, Vol. 1: Meat Wave, Mumblr, Geronimo! (Videos)

Time to get unnecessarily personal, starting with a number. 365. 365 days, more accurately. It’s a long time to dedicate to anything and it’s the mark that this site hits today, with it’s 365th post. It’s been an insane (and insanely rewarding year), one that’s helped define the past year of my life. I owe this place a lot and it’s given me more than I’d ever hoped for- from one of my closest friends (and patron saint of Heartbreaking Bravery) to an overwhelming amount of support from the labels I genuinely love (especially in the cases of Double Double Whammy and Exploding in Sound) as well as more than a few artists- and guaranteed that this site wouldn’t be relegated to a passing interest. The reason I own a nice camera, the reason I flew out of the country, and a whole arsenal of reasons for my decisions to continue pursuing music journalism by any means possible can all be traced directly back to this site. It’s been humbling to watch it grow (in both size and scope) and it will be fascinating to look back on this very post a year from now as its constant evolution has the potential to open several intriguing doors. Even comparing yesterday’s Halloween post to the very first thing to be published here, there are more than a few noticeable differences.

With a wide set of rules for the site now firmly in place, from the every-50 post Mixtape to the every-Sunday Watch This, this site has kept me on my toes. Gender identifiers don’t get used, ethnicity doesn’t get specified, orientation and preferences are given a deep amount of respect, and everything is treated with empathy because music’s simply that: music. It’s a universal act of artistry that I built this site to support in the best way I could see fit: by shining spotlights on the emerging artists that truly deserved the attention. Granted, their have been a few names to get written up over the year- but that’s only because they either produced something masterful or remained true to a DIY ethos.

Keeping all of that in mind, I was fortunate enough to be gifted an opportunity to celebrate this year-in-existence mark with a showcase. Everything came together at the right time and I wound up putting together the first-ever Heartbreaking Bravery Presents showcase, featuring three bands that had earned positive reviews from this site. Meat Wave and Geronimo! were the first two bands to sign on, as they were touring from their home town of Chicago up to New York for CMJ as a predecessor to Geronimo!’s bittersweet goodbye, then- by some weird miracle- Mumblr wound up with a free night and an open tour slot and became a late addition. A Blue Harbor, a band that started off as a solo project and then turned into a band (full disclosure: I play bass in the full band version), provided the local support. Everyone piled into a basement venue called The Powerstrip and all three touring bands played their hearts out to a rotating cast of people that exceeded 100 by some margin. After playing a quick set, I set up camp and filmed the majority of Meat Wave, Mumblr, and Geronimo!‘s sets, which can now be seen below. I’ve played a lot of shows and I’ve seen quite a few more than I’ve played- but none have meant as much as this one. So, thanks to the bands for coming out and playing this, thanks to the readers for reading, thanks to the artists and labels for caring, thanks to the writers who have expressed interest in contributing content, and thanks to literally anyone else that has even been a tangential part of making this site’s continued existence possible. I will always be in your debt and you will always have my gratitude. Thank you. Here’s to another year of growth and positive change.

Without further ado: here’s the footage from this site’s first showcase. Enjoy.

MEAT WAVE

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MUMBLR

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GERONIMO!

23 Comments

October 8, 2014

Meat Wave – Brother (Music Video)

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for the delay on this post, it was held up pending a confirmation. That confirmation just came through and a regular daily wrap-up of today’s releases will be posted later on in the evening. This post has been edited to reflect its current standing.]

Tuesday was a much quieter today for great new releases than Monday’s mind-boggling output- but the few things that were released managed to hold their ground. Menace Beach’s “Come On Give Up” gave the day a swift kick and got things moving with fuzzed-out basement pop. Happy Diving teased their upcoming full-length Big World with another attention-ensuring track, “Sad Planet“, which provides a glimpse of what’s turning out to be a fairly enviable range (and is one of the year’s better songs). AV Club also contributed to today’s haul with the full stream of the record that’s earned quite a few mentions on this site over the past few weeks: Little Big League’s Tropical Jinx, which emphatically capitalizes on its early promise and is more than good enough to be listened to on a regular basis well into 2015.

Now, admittedly, there’s more than one reason that Meat Wave’s first music video, “Brother”, earned today’s feature spot. Before getting to the auxiliary aspects, two things are worth noting: 1. Meat Wave is a band that’s been on this site’s radar for a long while. 2. “Brother” is one of the more perfect visual representations of a band’s style this year. Those two facts alone would have given it today’s feature spot, with the rest just acting as a sizable bonus. “Brother” is an all-out blitz of a song, reveling in an off-the-rails aggression that’s always guaranteed the band was a serious force to be reckoned with- something the video taps into expertly.

Made up entirely of jagged quick-cuts and stop motion shots, “Brother” is as deliriously frenetic as it is disorienting and ferocious. What makes it stand out is a peculiar sense of humor that the band brings to the clip. It’s also worth mentioning that this is a video for a song that was released two years ago, from a record that’s still holding up impossibly well. With the video providing a reminder that this music is as immediate (and feral) as it’s ever been, Meat Wave’s also managed to bring across a very subtle message in the visual medium: the knives are out and the band’s no longer content to stay still. This is likely part of the reasons as to why the band will be joining site favorites Geronimo! (whose Cheap Trick is one of this year’s best records) on their farewell tour- which is a topic that brings up something else entirely.

Heartbreaking Bravery will be presenting a stop on the tour.

On October 18, both bands will be stopping at a house venue (The Powerstrip) in Stevens Point, WI. Sweetening the deal is the fact that they’ll be joined by Mumblr, a Philadelphia-based band whose recently released Full of Snakes is full of highlights (“Sober” being one of 2014’s finest songs) and exists in the exact space that this site most frequently celebrates; the perfect marriage of basement punk and basement pop. It’ll be the first of what will hopefully be many forays into live shows (and subsequent documentation). Cameras will be rolling and footage will certainly be appearing at some point in the future. So, stay tuned and try to make it out- this should be a celebration to remember.

Watch “Brother” below, download Meat Wave from the band’s bandcamp, and check out the flyer for the show below the video (as well as all of Meat Wave’s other tour dates).

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10-14- Beachland Ballroom- Cleveland, OH^
10-17- Kryptonite – Rockford, IL*
10-18- Powerstrip- Stevens Point, WI*
10-20- Township- Chicago, IL*&
10-21- Mahall’s- Cleveland, OH*
10-22- Sharkweek- Pittsburgh, PA*
10-23- Philamoca- Philadelphia, PA*
10-24- Shea Stadium- Brooklyn, NY
10-25- Silent Barn- Brooklyn, NY*

* = w/ Geronimo!
^ = w/ The Lemons, Lasers and Fast and Shit
& = w/ Dope Body, High Priests

2 Comments

February 6, 2014

Heartbreaking Bravery: A Retrospective Introduction

When Heartbreaking Bravery started, it was originally intended to be a place where film and music found equal footing. Now, 100 days and 100 posts later, it’s clear that somewhere along the line it established an identity firmly based on the music side of things. There are going to be a few changes made to the site in the upcoming year, one of them will be a section devoted to the discussion of film. New features will start and old features will be kept running. A few of the first updates were made earlier today. In addition to having its own domain, Heartbreaking Bravery now officially has homes on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Look for extra content, to varying degrees, on all three platforms.

For those just joining in or becoming aware of Heartbreaking Bravery’s existence, there are two things to ease into the familiarization process. One’s a playlist that features the kind of music that’s most regularly featured, which can be found below. Below that, active hyperlinks for the first 99 articles. Happy listening.

There are 25 bands and songs in this playlist. A few have received coverage from Heartbreaking Bravery, another few should have, and a fair few were part of what inspired its very existence. All of these bands mean something to this place and hopefully they’ll mean just as much, if not more, to whoever comes across them.

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HB001: Audacity – Hole in the Sky (Music Video)
HB002: Swearin’ – Surfing Strange (Album Review)
HB003: Albert Hammond Jr – Carnal Cruise (Music Video)
HB004: PUP – PUP (Album Review)
HB005: Perfect Pussy – I have lost all desire for feeling (EP Review)
HB006: All Dogs – 7″ (Review)
HB007: Radioactivity – Radioactivity (Album Review)
HB008: A Look at Burger Records and the Longevity of the Cassette Tape
HB009: La Luz Suffer Major Setbacks in Semi-truck Collision
HB010: Midwives – EP (Review)
HB011: Pkew Pkew Pkew (gunshots) – Glory Days (Music Video)
HB012: Midnight Reruns’ Debut LP Streaming on Punknews
HB013: Nobunny at the Frequency – 11/11/13 (Live Review)
HB014: Angel Olsen – Forgiven/Forgotten (Music Video)
HB015: Polvo – Light, Raking (Music Video)
HB016: Split Feet – Fall Demo 2013 (Review)
HB017: Big Eyes – The Sun Still Shines (Music Video)
HB018: INTERVIEW: Meredith Graves (Perfect Pussy)
HB019: Great Thunder – Groovy Kinda Love (Album Review)
HB020: Gap Dream – Shine Your Light (Music Video)
HB021: Arcade Fire – Afterlife (Music Video)
HB022: Vaadat Charigim – Odisea (Music Video)
HB023: On the Up: Acid Fast
HB024: Watch This: Vol. 1
HB025: Va°nna Inget – Inga fra°gor Inga svar (Music Video)
HB026: Benny the Jet Rodriguez – Run. (Music Video)
HB027: Rookie Streams the Beyond Inversion Comp
HB028: On the Up: Meat Wave
HB029: Popstrangers – Rats in the Palm Trees (Music Video)
HB030: Allison Weiss – Wait for Me (Music Video)
HB031: Watch This: Vol. 2
HB032: Beyond Inversion Available at Bandcamp
HB033: Burger Releases MCII on Cassette
HB034: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Higgs Boson Blues (Music Video)
HB035: Vaadat Charigim – Kezef Al Hamayim (Music Video)
HB036: Angel Olsen – Forgiven/Forgotten (Official Music Video)
HB037: Globelamp – Star Dust (EP Review)
HB038: Watch This: Vol. 3
HB039: Saintseneca – Visions (Music Video)
HB040: Sunn O))) & Ulver Preview Collaborative LP
HB041: Burger Streams Velvet Underground Tribute Compilation
HB042: The Thermals Release Online Video Game
HB043: Tokyo Police Club – Argentina (Parts I, II, & III) (Music Video)
HB044: The Dead Weather Unleash Killer New Single
HB045: Majical Cloudz – Savage (Music Video)
HB046: On the Up: Nervosas
HB047: Watch This: Vol. 4
HB048: Burger to Release Night Drives Debut
HB049: AV Club Premieres Acid Fast’s “Tangle”
HB050: Home for the Holidays & A Guide to Surviving (Mixtape)
HB051: Burger Streams Massive Holiday Mix
HB052: Come Back Soon
HB053: Vertical Scratchers – These Plains (Stream)
HB054: Watch This: Vol. 5
HB055: The Flaming Lips’ Christmas on Mars (Film Stream)
HB056: On the Up: Tenement
HB057: Happy Holidays (Video Playlist)
Hb058: Yuck – Somewhere (Music Video)
HB059: The Flaming Lips’ 1983 2nd Cassette Demo (Stream)
HB060: 2013: A Video Review
HB061: Watch This: Vol. 6
HB062: RIP: Benjamin Curtis (Secret Machines, School of Seven Bells)
HB063: Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks – Wig Out at Jagbag’s (Stream)
HB064: 2013: A Photography Review
HB065: The Hussy – EZ/PZ (Stream)
HB066: Fire Retarded – Meat Stairs (Stream)
HB067: Mutts and Buffalo Moon Release Music Videos, Get People Dancing
HB068: Watch This: Vol. 7
HB069: Cass McCombs – Big Wheel (Music Video)
HB070: On the Up: Technicolor Teeth
HB071: 25 Best Demo’s, EP’s, 7″ Singles, and Compilations of 2013
HB072: Mozes & the Firstborn – Skinny Girl (Music Video)
HB073: Protomartyr – Rise, Scum! (Stream)
HB074: Nothing – Guilty of Everything (Trailer)
HB075: Watch This: Vol. 8
HB076: Liars – Mess On A Mission (Stream)
HB077: Big Air – Cemetery With A View (Song Premiere)
HB078: Perfect Pussy – Driver (Stream)
HB079: Tweens – Be Mean (Stream)
HB080: Cloud Nothings Preview New Record in Brooklyn (Stream)
HB081: Golden Animals – Most My Time (Music Video)
HB082: Watch This: Vol. 9
HB083: Eagulls – Possessed (Stream)
HB084: Sneak Peek: Failures’ Union, Neighborhood Brats, Corrections (Streams)
HB085: Perfect Pussy at Schubas Tavern – 1/22/14 (Live Review)
HB086: DTCV – Alpha Waves in a Gelatinous Conductor (Music Video)
HB087: PILE – Special Snowflakes (Stream)
HB088: Watch This: Vol. 10
HB089: Cloud Nothings – I’m Not Part of Me (Stream)
HB090: Adam Widener – Laughter on Your Heels I’ll Follow (Music Video)
HB091: Potty Mouth – Black and Studs (Music Video)
HB092: Lemuria – Oahu, Hawaii (Music Video)
HB093: Screaming Females at Cactus Club – 1/29/14 (Live Review)
HB094: together PANGEA – Offer (Music Vide0)
HB095: The Trucks – Space Famous (Demo Review)
HB096: Watch This: Vol. 11
HB097: Saintseneca – Happy Alone (Music Video)
HB098: Vaadat Charigim – Ein Nehama Ladoachim (Music Video)
HB099: The Sleepwalkers – It’s A Good Day to Watch the World Go By (Stream)

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November 28, 2013

On the Up: Meat Wave

Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for family, friends, and food. Which is in part what inspired today’s pick for the On the Up series: Chicago scrappers Meat Wave. They’re an aggressive counterpoint to bands dabbling in 90’s revivalism and don’t sound like too many others bands out there. That alone would make them stand out but the musicianship coming out of the Meat Wave camp is astounding.

It’s been a year since they’ve released their self-titled via Let’s Pretend records and they’ve been anything but quiet since. Playing their hometown frequently, that nine song collection has been given more breathing room. All of the songs reward return visits and can offer a much needed jolt of energy. Meat Wave may be aggressive but they’re also surprisingly poppy, finding a counterbalance that should endear them to fans of several of punk’s subsets.

Eat some turkey tonight and crank Meat Wave (below) as loud as humanly possible.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Tag: Meat Wave