Author: Bill Adams
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HELLBOUND STAFF PICKS, FEBRUARY 2018
Last month we reintroduced an old Hellbound tradition – our monthly staff picks/playlists! We’ve asked our regular and longtime contributors to weigh in on a few categories as follows (expect a few variations to our lists throughout the year, as well as some individual quirks and touches): Listening to – an album, ep or song from…
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King Leg – Meet King Leg LP
The beauty of working in a pop culture-identified medium like pop music is that, while the music does initially have finite appeal as ‘new music,’ the basic structures and forms can easily be revisited, re-purposed and re-presented as often as new artists are willing to rediscover them. Any music can be reborn with the power…
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TLC – Ooooooohhh… On The TLC Tip (LP, reissue)
From a historical standpoint, it’s always remarkable to observe how and when a dynasty began. Take TLC, for example: to date, the group comes second only to The Supremes in regards to how far their influence reaches on both musical and cultural levels. That statement is made here with no hyperbole at all, it is…
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Lilly Hiatt – Trinity Lane LP
I must confess that I slept on Lilly Hiatt and her Trinity Lane LP when the album first arrived in my office. Regrettably, there was no good reason for it; given the timing of when it arrived, the album just kept getting shuffled under one thing after another. I did not give it the attention…
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Green Day – Revolution Radio (LP)
Some smart aleck is going to say that this review is a bit late in coming (yes, Revolution Radio was released fourteen months ago) but that’s part of the point here. Green Day‘s twelfth album was touted as a much-needed return to the band’s roots after almost a decade spent releasing concept albums and enormous album…
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Vulture Whale – Aluminium LP
Sometimes there’s just no way to mistake where a band comes from. In any given case, it might be the singer’s accent or tonality that does it or sometimes it’s just a particular vale or sound inserted somewhere among the instrumental performances, but it’s unmistakably there and listeners know it as soon as they hear…
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Looming – Seed
It’s only upon starting to listen to Seed that one realizes a female singer fronting an emo band is such a rarity. Why is that? In many ways, it could be argued that the music is tailor-made for a female sensibility (women learn to be in better touch with their emotions and can definitely articulate them…
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The Texas Gentlemen – TX Jelly (LP)
It might not be so easy for readers to remember now, but TX Jelly – the debut LP by Texas Gentlemen – actually springs from a tradition which once favored allowing an album to build and develop organically as musicians made it in the studio. Back before punk rock and all its myriad sub- and…
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Flipper – Generic Flipper (vinyl reissue)
In music, as is the case in chemistry, the most important element is the one that ultimately provides the catalyst which sets everything else in motion. In chemistry, for example, the right combination of sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter can still remain perfectly inert but, when a spark gets added to that mix, the results are…
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Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards – Viking LP (reissue)
If the idea that a classic album is defined as ‘one which holds personal meaning for a listener’ can be taken as factual, then I can say confidently that Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards’ sophomore album, Viking, is one of the most important albums of my life; for me, it is a personal classic. I remember, for…