Interview: The Swimmers (w/ Steve Yutzy-Burkey)
MP3: The Swimmers – Shelter MP3: The Swimmers – A Hundred Hearts How does a band follow up a debut that received much love with NPR,

Live Review: Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band @ 1st Mariner Arena (2009.11.20)
Three songs into Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band’s blazing set at 1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore, a city that had not had a tour stop from the band in over three decades, got its catharsis. It’s customary for the crowd to sing the first verse

Preview: Marduk and Nachtmystium @ Sonar Club Stage (2009.11.23)
MP3: Nachtmystium – Cold Tormentor (I’ve Become) from Nachtmystium (2003) To me, “black metal” means a style of music pioneered by Norwegian bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem in the early 1990s. The (again, for me) defining elements of the genre are densely layered trebly guitars, often low-fidelity production, high screechy vocals, lyrics abou

Live Review: Béla Fleck and the Flecktones @ Strathmore (2009.11.18)
MP3: Béla Fleck and the Flecktones – Sunset Road, Live at Vicar Street (Dublin) on Nov 4 2009 (Live Music Archive) Let me be plain: you have never seen anything like

Human Conduct Records: Part 1 – Detox, Form A Log, and Occasional Detroit/Gay Bomb
It’s pretty difficult to bottle together Human Conduct Records as a uniform whole. Portions of their output could pass as material from your average Joe’s favorite freak folk label, whereas the opposite is true for their less accessible releases. An understandable slight of ambivalence may sour your first impression of HCR–and that’s certainly not abnormal in this case. Uncertainty to the nature of the noise going through your headphones can, after all, be a bit daunting. The fact is: that’s precisely the sort of thing you have to expect when you’re talking about a group of people who aren’t afr