When I first met Chris Ford, the force, soul, and spirit of Christopher the Conquered, it was through a mutual friend, who was looking for people to dress up in character and help create a scene to be photographed for Chris’ album cover.  At the shoot, there was a giant wooden box, shovels, red yarn [...]

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The idea of trying to tell you that the new EP from Jordan Mayland and the Thermal Detonators is great or good or awful or assigning it a 10.0 or 7.2 or 2.6 or an A+ or B- or D is, well, frightening. What right does anyone have to determine the value of someone else’s [...]

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If Something Bad’s Happening were a short story, the protagonist would, at one point, look up to his mother and say, “I love you so much but I just can’t help but be afraid for you. I’m young now but you know I’ll get older and probably sad and more than likely hurt. But you [...]

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The Mystery Mines is the wonderful work of Kate Kennedy. Kate has been an incredible fixture in the Ames music scene for years, honing her craft as an extremely talented singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. I can remember the first time I saw Kate play – it was April 29, 2005. I had just come off a 35 date solo [...]

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Patrick Tape Fleming, Devin Frank, Joe Terry, and Don Ephraim, the four permanent members of the Poison Control Center, are spread across four cities in three states in two time zones. But listening to their upcoming album Sad Sour Future, you’d never know it. The band recorded this lush new record – which is to [...]

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Charles S. McVey’s new album Animal is a confrontational concept album that unabashedly addresses a God that the singer simply cannot respect. The record is a piano-driven rock album with songs that sound, at first, like traditional pop compositions: strong melodies supported by driving rhythms and organized into verses, bridges and choruses. But the pop [...]

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Midwest Dilemma is an Omaha band ranging from one to twenty-two people. In the past year, since I met Justin Lamoureux - the central figure and songwriter for Midwest Dilemma - on a blizzardy night in Des Moines that kept everyone from our show except the musicians, I have been able to see many different [...]

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After buying some overpriced, imported soap on the ped mall and joining an anti-war march I’d happened across, I sit in a coffee shop, read Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist (an old recommendation from JC), satisfy my ever-growing need for caffeine and await E’s arrival.
I call B, my last Iowa City contact who hasn’t moved to [...]

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The first posthumous collection of Elliott Smith’s songs, 2004’s From a Basement on a Hill (ANTI-Records), showcased the music he had been recording in the months immediately preceding his death. There he can be heard leaning more heavily on electric guitars, experimenting with trippy ambient noises and sounding at times like a self-conscious one-man Beatles. [...]

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