Stefanie Santana's "I Admit I Am Glad" Album Review

Stefanie Santana's "I Admit I Am Glad" arrives at a time when precious acoustic music appears to be on life support. It's an album that's simple sincerity is so delicate that Santana herself appears to be delivering a sad and unintentional eulogy to the genre.
That being said-it's so good that none of that hardly matters. The opening track "All the Obstacles" is the star maker and it's no wonder the album kicks off with it. It's obvious that Santana is gifted. Her phrasing alone has tiny hints of Dylan-esque mastery. "All the Obstacles" is the high water mark but it's marked so high that the remaining eight tracks hover microscopically close. "Moonspeak" even hints at something beyond it with it's slightly over-driven keyboard accents and Santana's voice stretched into the exasperated range that squeak & exhaust some perfectly desperate emotions. It's a relief to hear a songwriter that appreciates the space between things both technically and poetically.
"I Admit I Am Glad" is a solid effort by a musician that appears to be bursting with potential and an amazing voice. One can only hope when Santana eventually picks up an electric guitar that her sincerity, humor and delicate touch rise slightly above the roar. I'm betting on brilliant.

-William Chaffin

Get "I Admit I Am Glad" here: https://stefaniemadethis.bandcamp.com

Lace Curtains "A Signed Piece of Paper" Album Review

Lace Curtains' new LP "A Signed Piece of Paper" is Michael Coomers' manic, everyman poetry smashed delicately against an art-school interpretation of soul music. It's not only beautiful it's also beautifully heart-breaking. It's second by second chooglin for hooks and exasperated exhales emit flashes of brilliance...like sitting on a breezy, Midwest front porch on an overcast Sunday morning.


When Coomers' voice cracks in "Pink & Gold" it cuts into deep muscle tissue and never lets go and only minutes later the listener is thrown into an even MORE beautiful and Lennon-esque tune "Be Good" which feels like a continuation (possibly a more contemplative and lethargic one) of "Police Brutality" (the finest track from Lace Curtains' first album "The Garden of Joy and Well of Loneliness")


A Signed Piece of Paper isn't as instantly accessible as Garden of Joy but it's just as vital and important and without a doubt an arm's length more mature. Michael Coomers executes upon a real appreciation of aesthetics and fragility that makes a Signed Piece of Paper emote an honest & sensitive understanding of an examined life. The languishing time where his characters trade in the sadness of youth for something equally sad with clarity of foresight making it the Lace Curtains "morning after" record. A place filled with longing, sorrow and the spaces between the silence.


A Signed Piece of Paper is an amazing piece of work that quietly struts at the speed of memories and speaks of even greater things to come. This is Lace Curtains second act and it's nearly perfect-just as it should be.



-William Chaffin

Get "A Signed Piece of Paper" here:
lacecurtainsband.tumblr.com

If I Die Just Pretend I Was a Ghost the Whole Time

https://trueloveisugly.bandcamp.com/releases

The Anti-Selfie Collection Vol. 1

Nothing wrong with a few self-portraits. A culture obsessed with self-portraits however may push a once honest and engaging aesthetic into wince-inducing vulgarity & irritating narcissism.
Enter the Anti-Selfie. A tiny artistic protest against the overuse of the self-portrait or something even greater perhaps? An inadvertent homage to Magritte's surrealistic and prophetic genius? An aesthetic revolution of palimpsest-like proportions?
All of the above?
And although it's too soon to tell about its social and artistic ramifications-the *anti-selfie* surely deserves its place among the current social media oeuvre or at the very least, a gentle reminder of our growing self-obsession & lack of overall awareness concerning it.

-William Chaffin

J. Wold

C. Cogdill

K. Ford

J. Chaffin

W. Chaffin

S. Akright

M. Chaffin

M. Stuber

The Ghost & The Starkness: Chad Cogdill's Haunting Photographs of Kansas City

by Chad Cogdill

Chad Cogdill is a ghost and he photographs Kansas City within the metaphoric Gaussian blur of this amorphous tempo. He stalks it's hulking, concrete creatures with the same intensity that a Zen master stalks peacefulness. His best images speak a multi-layered perversity with our urban surroundings and purvey the dichotomy of the city as a constant & immovable force and the city as a slowly decaying corpse. This Titan-like struggle happening entirely within the small confines of a digital light box.

Old world meets computer chips. That Cogdill's world. A world which dissipates into line, color (or most likely lack of it) contrast and geometric shapes. The ghost & the starkness. An artist looking for something in the silence and distance...

by Chad Cogdill

Cogdill's lens captures the living of the non-living through the entropy evident in it's scars & it's persistent grayscale. His work culminating in a reimagining of a once-great city through a visual re-mapping of it's quiet downtown.

He wanders...shoots and wanders some more. His camera always the focus and contemplation and the city his muse.





Kansas City as muse.
Kansas City as phoenix-rising.
Kansas City in all it's beauty and it's unusual silence.

Chad Cogdill is it's ghost with a camera and his poetry is exposed one frame at a time.

-William Chaffin




Chad Cogdill's next photography exhibition is at the Plenum Space Gallery (504 E. 18th St, Kansas City) onSeptember 5, 2014

View Chad's work online here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chad_cogdill/

Lazy Genius: Soft Sheets 7" Review

The genius of Lazy is that it's a machine that warbles but never stops moving. It's purest moments exist inside of a new-wave-feminine feeling & final droplets of punk rock polygamy. It's Caligula meets Alex Cox and on a mild dose of prescription cough syrup. If you can dig that. (We do.)

Their newest 7" is the perfect art installation as a limited run in a rough part of town. It's lean & mean and coughs chunks in all the right places. A hipster morning hack for the art-school burnouts and post 90's sleazeballs (and their petulant offspring) Y'know man...like Pollock only more desperate *cough*
Lazy & it's sister band Dated are certainly the coolest kids in Kansas City. The music is filled with fantastic ~fuck you~ spirit and a surplus of cool. How cool is Lazy?
Fucking cool.
I once joked (possibly on Instagram?) that even their cigarettes smoked cigarettes. Maybe that wasn't the joke exactly but the sentiment remains. Lazy are oozing the kind of post-apocalyptic hipness that make punk rock legends at a time where even the mention of the phrase punk rock espouses suspicion and here's the clincher-the music is great. It's rough in all the right places and smells like the inside of a 1989 Mustang with a week-old, coconut air freshener tied around the rear view. It's just good, goddamn rock & roll. It's the exact right amount of Verlaine's Television & Hanna's Bikini Kill with just a dash of Television Personalities "And don't the kids just love it" and Wire's "Pink Flag" thrown in for good measure.
They're the best in Kansas City and ready for greater things.
Blue jean commercials or New York City-or both.

-William Chaffin

Get the Soft Sheets 7" here:

http://lazy.bandcamp.com

Evolution/Revolution: A Review of Jorge Arana Trio's "Oso"

A minute-and-a-half into Oso you realize the Jorge Arana Trio is hungry again. Hungry with the same primeval fire and shredded, sweaty guts that made Mapache a jazz fused triumph. 

Oso tears at the listener like a dying warrior-animal fighting for every inch of it's precious and dignified life. It's homage to the frantic fever of John Zorn's lunatic pacing evident in the break-neck gallop of tempo and tone.

Oso is the best thing this band has done so far & Mapache (their debut) was damn near perfect. Arana's newest is more emotional & personal. The echoes of surf-rock sprinkled amongst fuzzed out freak beats and spaghetti western nightmare fizzles give the listener small glimpses into the band's psyche.

Jorge Arana and his trio have managed to grow technically as musicians and arrangers and it shows. Every inch of canvas is carefully plotted and planned to manufacture an EP of transcendent chaos. The band seems hellbent on not only preserving the art form of jazz but elevating it as well.

Oso is simply perfect. It feels like a prize fighter who rallies in the twelfth round. It swings wild but with a skill and determination unmatched by most men. It's this dignity that make Arana and his group distinct from most. They are not a band. They are a trio. A small group of professionals slugging it out in the ring. Every note is the jab as homage and every 90 degree, tempo turn an upper cut for evolution.

The evolution of the acid-jazz, freak scene for the jaded, hipster Internet crowd.

Evolution as revolution.

Press play and get ready.

Get "Oso" here:

http://jorgearanatrio.bandcamp.com

True Love Is Ugly -The Album

True Love Is Ugly is also an experimental, ambient, drone-ambient, instrumental, anti-music, music group. 

For a limited time you can "Name Your Price" for our debut album! This 18 track gem is regularly priced at $10 

So, get it now at the price of your choosing even if that means that price is $0 

You deserve great things.

Get the Album Here:

http://trueloveisugly.bandcamp.com

Steg Party: A Review of the Debut EP From Kansas City's Stegosaurus Wrecks

Perhaps the brutal magic of Stegosaurus Wrecks is the ache & longing in Alex Courtney's whisper singing that evaporates into an end-growl. In the moments where it collapses vocally in on itself ("Nowhere Now") exhausted and yearning speaking a multitude of meanings in tiny gaps of silence. 

This is Courtney's Man Bear (his previous outfit) all grown up. But not just all grown up...all grown up & got them six-year payment blues. Dig?

There's a confidence that arises from catastrophe that Courtney has learned to manipulate. The glorious example of this being "Maple Come Home" -an example of his real gift for songwriting sorrow...a mature & quiet longing that yearns for more years and nods to those that are forever gone.

Lennon Bone turns in a solid performance as a guest drummer & Aaron Nickless is consistently good. In fact, Nickless may be one of KC's most underrated bass players. He's got a talent for sturdiness on tape and punk rock brashness on stage that is unmatched in that town. He knows *when to be *what and that's goddamn important in a bass player.

In fact-this is the soul of Steg's essence: When to be what.
It's accomplishment residing in the feeling that as long as there's life to live there are songs to be sung AND dive-bars that those songs need to be sung in. Courtney is the reluctant singer and Nickless is his trusted ambassador.

Steg Wrecks is Man Bear 2.0 but more. It's a testament to Alex Courtney's poetic, pop pleasures and Nickless' wink and a smile 1970's bass benevolence. The soul of an artist and the rugged charm of his right hand man.
A good team.
A great friendship.
A damn fine EP.

Get Stegosaurus Wrecks' EP here:

stegosauruswrecks.bandcamp.com

-William Chaffin

A Properly Religious Opening

We're a blog unless you find yourself saying "They're a blog."
*Then* we AREN'T a blog.

Ok.

We're a band sometimes but not enough to say that we are ONLY a band. Besides-we mostly just make noise/drone/ambient experimental music so that we could make t-shirts that everyone would wear. That's not entirely true...but we do love t-shirts.

We're a social media thing. Whatever the fuck that means. We would just as soon throw our phones into the fire and start over with old composition books and copy machines. Having a blog is cheaper and it reaches a wider audience-most of the time.

You know what? We still like the compact disc. There. We said it.
What is so great about vinyl? Sure it possesses a better sound quality & it gives it's owner instant hipster credentials but do we care about that? We most certainly do not. Although that isn't entirely true because we actually do care a little bit about everything. Furthermore we find it sad that the whole hipster thing was hijacked and hacked apart by self-hating hipsters & soda pushing corporate rock sponsors.

Here's something: Women in fedoras carry an unspeakable sadness that cannot be completely masked or forgotten. This means that you can trust a woman in a fedora but only in the morning when the crust is in her eyes, the coffee is brewing and the saints start to whisper.

Too weirdly poetic? Reaching? Looking for attention?

Remember what David Mamet wrote and Anthony Hopkins said in that movie about killing a bear: "Never feel sorry for a man that owns a plane."
We don't and we won't.

We are a brand. Just like any other brand. Every thing is a fucking brand anymore. This is both good and bad and we wouldn't presume to have nearly enough knowledge or wit about us to "tear down those walls"
It's the fucking Internet. It's fucking 2014. You turn it on and it turns you on.


We write about stuff we like: Music. Art. Fashion. Sex. Food.
Mostly about music because I guess we like music best...or too much writing about sex is gauche.

We can all agree that we collectively have dreams about our teeth falling out.

If by some stone's throw chance in hell we ever get really popular and suddenly valuable - we promise to sell this blog to the first business that offers us at least 300k.
So-up front-you know our lowest "selling out" point. You know right from the beginning that we have a price. We assume you have a price also. Would you clean the toilets in a laxative testing facility four days a week for 5 million a year?
Yeah...so would we.


So...

No matter how many beautiful words we can string together---in the end we would rather be laying on a beach & sipping umbrella drinks.
Or, at the very least getting paid actual money and the amount we feel we're truly worth.
Wouldn't you?

Don't take advice from a blog is our first advice.

Our second piece of advice goes:

Don't start a band. Make a film.
Don't make music. Music is for the culturally vapid & weak.
Film is for the brave & brash.
Music isn't anywhere near pure anymore. It's rotten to it's bloated core. Watch the corporate interests scramble to repackage it & polish a turd. It's a waste!!!!
Rock & roll is dead and good riddance!

Our third and final piece of advice which will stick with you all your life is simple and comes straight from the soulful echo burned into our brain from Otis Redding's beautiful baritone... Try a little tenderness

Because...

Everything that is loved & everything that will be truly loved will eventually see an end. Nothing lasts. Every dream is destined for that fixed & forever sleep.

How's that for an existential crisis?

True Love is Ugly.
See ya soon.