A fair point regarding the disparity between these grades and Todd's! I'm an episode shy of the full season, so I haven't checked that out yet.

It reads more like the reviewer WANTS the characters to display genuine motivations, and really WANTS something interesting to happen, but the grades reflect the fact that these things never arrive. This show is poorly thought out, and tedious as hell: the rare instance of a series which manages to be batshit insane…

Disqus invited me: I get push notifications whenever someone acts like an artist isn't popular or worthwhile just 'cuz they don't enjoy them.

Well, I think it was more like 3 years ago — when Tyler's Goblin came out, the mixtape was big, and people were chanting "FREE EARL" at festival shows, because Earl was in a Turkish prison or whatever*. It lasted a lot longer than 5 weeks, though, as evidenced by the fact that you think it happened a year ago.

Haha! Matchbox Twenty! That's runner-up hilarious to the fact that I can't even tell what state that is.

That could have been pretty cool! Thanks for the info.

I really enjoyed that show as a teenager, and although I haven't rewatched it since it aired, I remembered it just well enough to recognize Christopher's brother and girlfriend when they showed up on L O S T.

No one will be mad if you go bald, Jesse.

This is a good lineup, with a very strange pick for the headliner. It makes sense that you'd want to spotlight a band that's been featured on Undercover; it doesn't make sense that you'd trot out Young the Giant over Neko Case, the Hold Steady, Superchunk, or the Walkmen.

I feel like you might have missed some additional, concurrent fascinations from that period.

There are some very interesting descriptions of the music here — "grayscale guitar," "spidery noise and saw-toothed distortion," "fatalistic farewell" — and even some clever, quick comparisons that use the already-tired reference points to say something meaningful. That's tough to pull off; good job!

I haven't doubled up on them— YET— but I did catch them at the last of Six Damn Shows they played in a row at NYC's Beacon Theatre, and I remember looking at the setlists from the other dates after, for exercise.

Mister Manager of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Any Great Enterprise Needs a Title. So Ours, Frustratingly? Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

I've only read The Thing About Life is That Someday You'll Be Dead, which was just godawful. His style didn't strike me as forward thinking or liberating or anything like that; he just meandered through all these trite reflections about mortality. He doesn't seem to stay interested in anything long enough to figure…

This is brutal, and numbing. I've been going back through his discography and focusing on the stuff I'm less familiar with, which is in abundance; the man's left behind a legacy, no question. So long, Magnolia.

Their site's a little on the nose for me with the whole tough guy humor angle, but Chunklet's been around for a while, and the person who wrote their obituary article is an old friend of Molina's; he helped spearhead that public effort to help Molina a couple years back.

Bejar's lyrics are so sardonic, and so directly concerned with the pitfalls of a creative mindset / artistic temperament, that I don't really see a disconnect between what he sings about and what he talks about in the handful of interviews with him that I've seen circulated.

OMC
Everlast
Primitive Radio Gods

with Andy Samberg as Hodor's vengeful brother