Before I say anything else today, I want to apologize for over-hyping last Sunday’s Elvis Perkins performance at Wicker Park Fest.  If you were there, you know what I mean.  Elvis and the boys all did their thing, no doubt, but the sound people at the festival really dropped the ball and let an otherwise [...]

You know how The Rolling Stones and The Beatles traded identities?  The Stones acted like they were working-class hooligans, when in fact they were middle-class private school kids, while The Beatles were legitimately low-rent but played (at least at the front end) into white-collar expectations about youth, class and language.  In a vacuum, John would [...]

(Editor’s note:  I’ve alluded to it in the past, but Medeski Martin & Wood are one of my all time favorite acts. One of the first concerts I ever attended featured MMW opening for the late Mark Sandman and Morphine.  (I’m a dork; I keep this shit.  I have a Toronto Maple Leafs ticket stub [...]

Much like seasonal transitions signify the cyclical and unavoidable movement from life to death, a truckload of high yielding wealth and beauty often goes unnoticed during the interim months.   The constantly melting snow sends water back to the sea.  Trees die and buckle in the hot sun of summer, and the bristling air of fall [...]

(Editor’s note:   Brand new dick Justin absolutely killed his first live review for us yesterday.  As such, I’m feeling more than a little bit of performance anxiety.  James and Kevin and I have kind of grown up together on the internet and then new guy comes in and shoots his first two posts into [...]

On my walk over to the Grog Shop last night I was still a block or so away when my show partner for the evening texted me that she was waiting outside the venue. She also added that there was a long line. The fact that she beat me there, despite her 40 minute drive [...]

The debut release by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Up From Below, has somehow been both the easiest and the most challenging record I have had to digest in recent memory. As a listener, this album is unadulterated joy – the band’s sound is new yet familiar, and the sound changes enough from track [...]

We’ve been trying to look for a good time to mention some big changes at Citizen Dick, and we decided the weekly Radio Dick feature is as good a time as any.  We’ve been experiencing some heavy growing pains in the last couple of months and after we wound down from the madness of our [...]

One of the best parts about writing for a music blog is the occasional disagreements that we get into as a staff.  Kevin says something stupid, James calls him out on it, I lob in my two cents and we’re off on a fifteen message e-mail string where everybody is calling everybody else an asshole.  [...]

Disclaimer:  Rob is a new addition to the Citizen Dick family, and he attended this show with me.  In a horrible mishap of miscommunication, he thought I’d bring my camera and I thought he’d bring his.  This was not good.  Unfortunately the few pictures we were able to take were from his Blackberry.  We apologize [...]

Now that the Pitchfork Music Festival is but a distant memory in our collective rearview mirrors and I am completely settled into the new pad, I can finally get back to using this space for my free music recommendations for the weekend in Chicago.  This time around only one festival comes to mind as worthy [...]

By this point in my life, I have a pretty good idea of what I like musically and what I don’t.  Sometimes, this leads me to have an affinity for records that others dismiss as somewhat repetitive, containing a collection of tracks that are difficult to distinguish from each other.  Usually those are the records [...]

One of the great things we learned quickly about the Pitchfork festival is that the bands do, indeed, enjoy performing music.  I grow tired of bands that whip through a quick set and hit the road as quickly as they entered, all with a lackluster attitude and nonchalance that borders on confrontational.  It’s an all-round [...]

There are a couple of things that are interesting about the new record from Magnolia Electric Co.  Principally is the band’s steadfast attachment to a certain sound and ethos.  This is best understood as a nearly pure country record; certainly there are moments where the sound diverges towards a rockier place, but this isn’t an [...]

The Flaming Lips wrapped up our weekend in Union Park on Sunday evening with the legendary Oklahoma City rockers closing the festival down with a much anticipated set.  Crowds began camping out and securing their spots in front of the Aluminum Stage as early as 2pm just to be near thew front for the spectacle, [...]

Japandroids were at the center of one of our biggest Pitchfork dilemmas of the weekend (the other involved Wavves and Yeasayer, and we ended up regretting our decision on that one), playing at the same time as Walkmen late on Sunday afternoon.  It didn’t take a lot of discussion to settle on Japandroids, and luckily [...]

After our Blitzen Trapper update yesterday, our day was too filled with music to get back to the press tent with more coverage, so now after a day of rest and recovery we’re back to round out our festival coverage starting with The Thermals.  After starting out their set with a raucous cover of Sonic [...]

You know Cursive.  They’ve been pumping out albums from Omaha since 1997 including this year’s top-drawer Mama, I’m Swollen. You’ve got at least one of those records on your shelf (if you’re me, the one you keep going back to is 2003’s The Ugly Organ and its lush arrangements.  Bizarre side note:  after the last [...]

Frightened Rabbit kicked off our day today, but Blitzen Trapper was the early set that we had circled on our calendar for the last month.  After opening with Wild Mountain Nation, which was a surprising yet effective choice, the Portland boys laid down a Furr-heavy set that had the masses who had been camping out [...]

Somewhere between my arrival in Chicago on Friday and my departure on Monday morning, traditions and normalcy have some place on our blog.  While I’d like to pretend superhuman ability, and that I somehow managed to see thirty bands play, travel across three states, secure housesitters for Jolene, my cat, and manage to keep my [...]