We’re not quite sure what’s going on, but we’re not here to complain about it.  Our local music venues are housing some great shows in the upcoming weeks.  It could be that we’re just a dusty stop along the trail, but we’d like to think the scene is on the up and up here.  If [...]

There are a near infinite number of ways to stumble across new music.  Thinking about my favorite artists often makes me think about the first time I heard them.  I caught Ani DiFranco’s “Little Plastic Castle” on the radio on a Saturday morning, driving home from the laundromat.  The first time I really listened to [...]

This weekend was good to me musically.  I decided it was about time I launched back into the vinyl arena after long abandoning it for the ease of digital downloads.  It’s not that I haven’t always loved the warm sound vinyl gives off, but as a broke ass college student, well, you know the drill. [...]

We’ve been a bit UK focused over the past few weeks, with an unexpected and much appreciated link on Fat Cat’s homepage. Our across the pond angled ears have caught wind of a band we think will create some waves this May. Kill it Kid is a five piece from Bath just signed to One [...]

You know how we roll here at citizendick; we’re cowed by the stern words of my man Sam Coleridge: “reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.”  That burns.  As such, we [...]

We know you’ve been on the edge of your seat, waiting expectantly for Citizen Dick’s first road show, covering Blitzen Trapper from Chicago to Detroit.  We pulled out all the stops on this one, with pictures, commentary, set lists, and even a few words from the Trappers themselves to share with you today.  So sit [...]

Happy Friday, kids!  We have a bit of a hodge-podge for you today, so bear with me if you can.  First of all, I would like to share a bit of bad news with you from Citizendick’s western campus.  As of last Friday, yours truly Diamond Jim has joined the ranks of the unemployed.  That’s [...]

As a society, we throw a lot of mythology and stereotypy at our artistic figures.  Ask your buddy to describe a writer and he’s going to give you a caricature of Ernest Hemingway or William Styron, right?  A tortured booze-hound hammering out art on a manual typewriter with a sticky key, ashtray full of cigarette [...]

As Brian succinctly pointed out in his Boston Spaceships review, it’s good to know that artists can stretch outward into other areas and be successful without the tag and label of their home base.  Kyp Malone is an amazing musician, and regardless of TVOTR fame and stardom, his musicianship is only amplified when examining his [...]

One of the immediate perks of critiquing music is the broadening of my sonic spectrum.  I’m typically a rock guy, and this is no secret.  I love me a good rock record. However, and this has been a regular occurrence for me since I’ve become more focused on the reviewing side of things, I’m astounded [...]

Odawas’ new LP, The Blue Depths, really starts to make sense about three and a half minutes in the third song, “Our Gentle Life Together.”  The first chunk of the song shares a distant genetic ancestor with Radiohead’s “No Surprises.”  It’s one of those things that isn’t overt, but the first minute of the Odawas [...]

Citizen Kevin and I had the pleasure of catching Blitzen Trapper opening for Iron & Wine in Buffalo, New York this winter.  They played a slightly restrained set, avoiding some of their noisier material in deference to the bearded, acoustic-centric Sam Beam crowd.  Highlights included a transcendent “Wild Mountain Nation” and the show’s one notable [...]

Before I get into the Radio Dick segment, and because I’m not sure if I have formally done so publicly, I wanted to send a shout out and a thanks to Joe at Each Note Secure and Ryan at Muzzle of Bees for linking up with us on their much older and wiser music blogs. [...]

After Purim and Arbor Day, President’s Day is Citizen Dick’s third favorite holiday.  In celebration of President’s Day weekend, we’d like to offer our thoughts on three records;  Warren G. Harding would want you to have a lot to read before the holiday that honors him.
Henry’s Funeral Shoe – Everything’s for Sale
The inclination when examining [...]

 
Scottish quartet The Twilight Sad are currently in the studio, working on the follow-up to their excellent 2007 Fat Cat debut, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters. The explosive muscularity and emotional weight of that record have us on the edge of our seats for new material.  We had the opportunity to bounce a few questions [...]

I remember not long ago, a friend of mine looked at me on a Sunday morning after I had just woken up on his couch still fully dressed from the night before and said “Jesus, you’re a hot mess.” I took it as a compliment. I was wearing skinny black Dior jeans, ankle boots, a white [...]

As a man of Irish lineage, I tend to avoid the nonsense associated with the “American” St. Patrick’s Day and and usually, all economically created imagery surrounding my heritage.  Instead, when I think of Ireland, I think of labor, rural towns and fighting.  I think of bland food, warming folk balladry, and angst filled lyricism [...]

A generation ago, Sub Pop gave the world a slate of artists with a singular ethos, destroying corporate rock in the process.  Mudhoney, in our humble estimation, was the apogee of that sound, bringing northwestern sludge into the stereos of plugged-in hipsters everywhere.  This millennium’s Sub Pop is presenting a similarly uniform stable of artists, [...]

It’s often difficult to disassociate canonical artists from the bands that they left or dissolved.   Has anyone ever written about Frank Black without referring to him as “ex-Pixies front man” or reviewed a Morrisey solo record without mentioning Meat is Murder and gladioli?  (On a far less cool note, don’t try to tell me that [...]

Bobby Driscoll died in 1968, a penniless and drug-beaten shell of a 31 year-old man.  As a prodigious child of Hollywood, Bobby Dee culminated his career as the voice of the animated Peter Pan, which eerily symbolized his own fate.  Peter Pan is canonized because of it’s timeless themes; youthful innocence and the direct defiance [...]