If you’re new to the blog, you’ll find that on Fridays during the summer, we tend to throw off the hockey shackles and write about whatever we want. There isn’t much going on, and it’s nice to stretch the legs. Usually it’s about music, because that’s the subject we love as much as hockey and booze. Sometimes it’s about other stuff, and we’ll touch a lot over the coming months. We’ll get to our exit interviews next week, but for now I’ll just clear out whatever’s bouncing around my emptying skull.
-If you haven’t got the new Bob Mould album, you should. Mould has become one of my favorite artists, and has been putting out consistently good stuff for over 20 years now. And I’m not even that big of a Husker Du fan. This one is just about as loud as Silver Age was, but Mould can equally fade back into an acoustic stretch. Workbook is as good in that genre as you’ll ear anywhere. He’s sort of surpassed Tom Petty as my reliable go-to when he releases something new, as Petty’s last few efforts have been ho-hum. Check it out.
-I’m late to the St. Vincent party. I only got to it after seeing so many people post her SNL performance. I don’t know why it made so many people upset, I thought it was pretty brilliant. It caused me to get her latest album, the self-titled one. It’s ridiculously good. Avant-garde, loud, melodic, and everything in between. She also pretty much killed it on “Lithium” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the surviving members of Nirvana. It was a thing.
-Speaking of that ceremony, it can be a little silly but Tom Morello’s introduction of Kiss will remind you why you listen to music in the first place. Sometimes it doesn’t have to mean anything, it just has to be fun and loud and awesome. I’m not the world’s biggest Kiss fan but some of their early stuff does get turned up pretty loud when it comes on the Ipod. Morello captures this perfectly.
-Speaking of that Nirvana performance, Lorde is at least 28-years-old.
-I really would like to tell you I have a dark horse that’s going to win the World Cup. But no one’s getting through Brazil and the very sweaty Hulk.
Think that’s it for now. Have a good weekend.
