Brian alluded to MJ in his early morning post today, and it got me in the spooky sort of mood.  I’ve been knee deep in house cleaning duties today.  I have no significant other at the moment, so you can imagine the intestinal fortitude it takes to get off my ass and scrub stuff.  Nonetheless [...]

(Editor’s Note: I’m all over the map today.  I feel like there’s been a kind of fallow period for me; work and school have been a bit more intense lately, so I’ve been listening to old music that I know I love instead of plumbing the depths for new music to wrap my brain around.  [...]

To keep things in the holiday spirit, over the next couple days I have some singles to share with you that are as frightening in their narrative as they are in their awesomeness. Today’s selection comes from Youngstown Ohio’s Abortopotamus Rex, which has newly formed out of the ashes of OH/PA indie stalwarts You Are [...]

By this point, you know that there are times when I listen to Jay-Z and/or Fugazi to get myself into an appropriate frame of mind for any number of activities.  There’s nothing as good for walking into a hostile meeting than a killer Jay-Z lyric; there are almost too  many to list: “Things just ain’t [...]

You know how you have a thousand channels on your television? And a thousand stations on your satellite radio?  And an infinite number of media options on the internet?  That’s sweet, right?  I’d argue that, in reality, it sucks (kind of).  This sort of fragmentation of both media and audience means that there will never [...]

I was reading Indiemuse.com and came across a musician located about 45 minutes west of Cleveland, I was hooked after hearing the first song. Wisdom Tooth is the name and it’s a project by Oberlin’s Meagan Day. Meagan’s instrument of choice is the ukulele. I love listening to ukuleles. They transport me to a happy [...]

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Cleveland. The temperature was in the mid 60s and the sun was out. Just add some frisbee golf with a good buddy and that makes for a perfect day, well almost. My friend Vin recently had a serious back issue and this was his first time playing since then. [...]

Independent rock and roll seems cleanly cleaved into a couple different groups, at least when it comes to the role sex plays: asexual well-behaved (largely) pale dudes in skinny jeans and hyper-sexual bad boys, also largely pale and donning the ever-present skinny jeans. Electric Tickle Machine falls clearly into the latter category, with lyrics about [...]

We’ve dished out quite a bit of content this week, so I suppose I’ll get to the music list early.  If you’re just tuning in, I’ve switched up the way these Radio Dick posts go, attempting to offer a little more commentary on the tracks I’m posting.  This week, I’ve got an interesting mix of [...]

Before we dive into tunes today, I wanted to pass along two wildly unrelated (and potentially , but hopefully not actually, uninteresting) things that happened today.
1. It was a great mail day, the kind of day that makes up for Columbus Day, when I received no mail.  I got two things in the mail that [...]

Once again, we proud citizens, we dicks, we Citizen Dicks are back with another batch of EPs for your consumption and consideration. This week, we have a somewhat NYC-centric batch, though that is tempered with a healthy dose of Midwest. At first I thought about apologizing for it, but then decided it seemed apropos, what [...]

Debate time, friends. Here’s your prompt:
Is Nick Diamonds the hipster answer to Justin Timberlake?

This is what I’ve been asking myself lately anyway, at least since the last Islands record, Vapours, came out last month on Anti-. The song that’s really behind this particular topic of wonder, “No You Don’t,” has been bouncing around the internet [...]

Raise your hand if you like thought experiments.
Cool, me too.
Since you are still reading, I’ll take that as consent and keep going with this hook. Imagine we live in a more just and progressive society where anyone can marry anyone else, and Annie Clark and Laetitia Sadier have decided to come together in wedded bliss. [...]

Thursdays are the days that I write record reviews.  You know this.  Last night I stumbled to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to get one done; I thought I had one paper due today, but I actually had two due.  I had a great record to write about (Castevet, which I’ll hit you with [...]

The apostrophe at the end tells it all. Lissie’s recently released single, “Little Lovin’” is a solid artifact of post-millenial approximation of that wonderful era of country, the one that came after the seminal gents now thought of as “old country” – the kind hipsters feel comfortable hat-tipping on their facebook profiles – but before [...]

Editor’s Aside:  There are a lot of things that could be researched and alluded to in today’s review, particularly the history of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and more lightheartedly, what exactly a tabla, rabab, and dilruba are musically.  They show up as misspellings in my spellcheck.  Levity aside, an entire cultural landscape is impossible to [...]

Hit play on the lead single from the recently released Electric Owls’ record Ain’t Too Bright. Listen to that sweet acoustic intro, backed by a subtly dancing bell sound, punctuated by a hard rock power chord at the ten second mark, launching into sweet multi-tracked vocals ranting about telekenesis and so on.  The rest of [...]

I remember getting in big trouble because I played a pretty explicit song during one of those holiday classroom parties in 8th grade. I don’t remember which holiday it was but I do remember that the stereo’s volume had been turned up very high and I will never forget hearing James Hetfield’s voice that day. [...]

Periodically, I like to tilt at windmills, especially the kind of windmill tilting that only irritates and sometimes offends those around me without ever accomplishing anything meaningful or substantive. Lately, one of my primary windmill tilting themes has been haranguing those friends of mine that won’t admit that certain local bands just aren’t good. My [...]

Sweetest Day didn’t go well for me.  On one hand, I woke up entirely hung over from Friday’s Dr. Dog show at Beachland.  We had a little Citizen Dick reunion of sorts, with Rob, Brian, and Justin all converging at my place after the amazing set the medicinally astute canine put on for us.  Plenty [...]