The latest edition of our Singles Club feature comes to us from beautiful and mournful Portland, the West Coast’s answer to NYC’s Billy-burg and home to gentle indie chanteuse Shelley Short. Miss Short will shortly (wonder how many times that pun has been used and abused) release A Cave, A Canoo on Hush Records (on [...]

This aptly titled post is in direct reference to both Jimi and, perhaps slamming headfirst into a cliche, the way I feel this week.  This primarily applies to our regular readers and not those of you visiting for the first time to snag an MP3.  Our regular readers are pretty aware that I use this [...]

My pops and I went to New York City last month to catch a Mets game.  We try and hit an out-of-town ballpark every summer and we decided to splurge a bit on the trip this year.  I’d never been to what is, essentially (I’d argue) the capital of the world before, so along with [...]

I hope that everyone else’s weekend is getting off to a better start than mine.  Not that 99.9% of you likely give a shit, but I have a blog and you don’t do I’m going to tell my story anyway.  When I went to my car for a trip to the grocery store last night [...]

He’s ba-ack. And this time, unlike when Carol Anne creepily uttered the warning, the return is a good thing. That’s because this time, the phrase is less warning and more celebration of the upcoming full-length album release by Langhorne Slim. Be Set Free, due out September 29th on Kemado Records, finds Slim at his most [...]

(Editor’s note:  None of us went to the Columbia School of Journalism, so we feel compelled to keep you in the loop on how we modified the following interview; maybe this stuff is common practice in “newspapers” and the like, we’re not sure.  We eliminated, to a large degree, vocal tics from both the interviewer [...]

Sometimes the gentlest and faintest breezes carry our most heavy memories along with them.  In fact, it’s when we’re in our most contemplative and serene state that true recollection and emotional digestion occurs.  William Wordsworth fancied his pals at his lake house with “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” glancing upon that “inward eye” and [...]

To begin this review, it’s important to make our apologies for getting this review up nearly a month after the show took place.  This isn’t our normal operating procedure, and folks, we feel terrible about it.  Of all of the shows this summer, these two early August gems were among the best we’ve seen all [...]

One of the best moments in my sometimes semi-professional career as an indie rock writer occurred only a handful of days ago, some time around 8 PM Sunday before last. A few moments earlier, I had just begun interviewing Daniel Johnston, but his brother, who serves as Daniel’s manager, had pulled him away to sound [...]

It’s been rough going back to the office.  We did not have a full length review for you today, principally because the majority of us were slogging through meetings, fine-tuning lesson plans, photo-copying syllabi and, in general, greasing the wheels of the educational process.  Thank god Bob Geldof knows how we feel.  (To get all [...]

This has been a killer week of coverage and reviews here at Citizen Dick, and I played absolutely no role in it.  I’ve decided to pop my head out from underneath the rock I’ve been living under to deliver today’s Radio Dick feature, and with quite a bit of regrets, I’ve not written as much [...]

(Editor’s note:  Brief reviews of two records that you need to be aware of in advance of their August 25th release.  Strangely, we’ve talked about both bands briefly in the past, but they’re both deserving of the broader treatment we’ll get today.  You also get two live tracks.  Hooray!)

I’ve been excited for the debut full-length [...]

I don’t have much witty banter to get out today, and the Chicago concert landscape is pretty barren this weekend, rather than entertaining you with my wit or helping you fill the holes in your weekend social schedule, I want to take this opportunity to gloat a bit.  If you read last week’s column as [...]

This kind of thing usually isn’t my bag, but when the piano bit from “Come Sail Away” kicks in around the one minute mark, I lose my shit; for whatever reason it strikes me as really funny.  (Mash-up artists, listen up:  the first one of you clowns to put “Mr. Roboto” in front of a [...]

(Editor’s Note: There’s a lot going on at Citizen Dick world headquarters.  As Kevin described on Sunday, three-fifths of us are prepping to return to school.  At the time of this writing, I’m a mere 36 hours away from sitting through my building’s opening meeting.  Two days after that, I’ve got students streaming into [...]

If we’re being 100% honest, we don’t know why we’re so fascinated with Twitter and, more saliently, our number of followers thereon.  We realize that, to a large degree, it’s just marketing and product placement and so on and so forth.  (Nobody gives a shit that you’re at the airport.  We all care that Shaq [...]

Today’s review is a bit of a technicality in terms of actually qualifying as a new release.  Personally, I came across the record about a week ago, and the ‘official’ release date is listed as today.  On the other hand, the record has been floating around physically for about a year now, and has been [...]

We here at Citizen Dick HQ get a lot of music crossing our desks and filling our headphones and sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we just can’t get to everything. Speaking for myself, one of the first things that tends to determine the importance that I assign to some new releases is whether it [...]

This week is an ominous black cloud, menacingly hovering above Citizen Dick headquarters.  Three of our five writers are educational professionals, meaning that in five short, fun-filled days our carefree summertime existence comes to a screeching halt.  Our three month hiatus from all things work-related has been a great ride, as it is every year.  [...]

(Editor’s note:  The last two Lazy Saturdays, we’ve gone with bands that might not be on your radar yet paired with a live track or two; you’ve seemed to be into that, so we’re going to keep it up this week with a slight twist.  The two bands we’re highlighting today released records earlier this [...]