Posts by Ron Hart

I first learned about the Tuesday music release date when I began copping the ICE magazine newsletter in about 11th grade. They used to have it on the sales counter of Rhino Records in New Paltz, NY, a place I have been shopping since it opened up in town 25 years ago this year. I […]

[rating=9.00] Funny how one can measure the shifts in civilization by the span of time that has lapsed between new albums from a favorite band. And in the eight years that lapsed between Modest Mouse records, we’ve experienced a societal de-evolution the likes of which none of us presently alive on Earth have ever endured. […]

[rating=10.00] For some, when it comes to digging new music, especially from an established act, it tends to be quite difficult to get the pre-release rock critic slobber out of your ears in enough time to actually take in the album caked with a thick layer of the stuff. Such is the case of the […]

If there is anything as expected as the announcement of the new year’s inductees into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, it is the massive blowback it receives from the supporters of those who remain overlooked from consideration.  After careful mulling over the holidays, it has been surmised that these ten artists rank at […]

[rating=8.00] Music has always played such a massive role in the films of Paul Thomas Anderson. He had the foresight and the knowledge to recognize the genius of Jon Brion well before he became Kanye West’s homeboy, enlisting the former Til Tuesday/The Grays auteur to score his directorial debut Hard Eight, which then led to […]

[rating=8.00] A lot of people bag on Yoko on the bogus allegation that she broke up The Beatles. But Polly Samson is a rock ‘n’ roll wife far more deserving of your jeers for her role in transforming Pink Floyd into a big puddle of MOR goo that undercut the very fabric of the band’s […]

There is a reason why the news about Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss resurrecting Sleater-Kinney for a new album and tour in 2015 sent so many music fans to run up and sing from the digital mountaintops this past week. Whether it was by design or not, the scoop came the week the […]

[rating=9.00] Coping with a loved one who is undergoing treatment for cancer is heavy stuff. It’s happening to someone in all of our lives at this very moment, be it first, second or third hand. And for those along for the ride in the thick of the chemo treatments,  hospital trips and moments that intersect […]

[rating=9.00] There should never be an argument over who was the true heart of KISS. Original guitarist Ace Frehley never ceases to remind the international fanbase of rock ‘n’ roll’s most fruitful experiment in marketing and commercial excess that he, in fact, has been the man who, once you strip away the costumes, kabuki makeup […]

[rating=9.00] Hailed as the first stadium tour of its kind, Crosby, Sills, Nash and Young’s 24-city tour across the summer of 1974 is the stuff of pure classic rock mythmaking. And this long-awaited, hotly anticipated 3 CD/1DVD box set, simply entitled CSNY 1974, has been on the minds and message boards of AOR savants since […]

[rating=7.00] Thirty years ago, while Aimee Mann was on the cusp of the biggest hit of her mighty career as a member of Til Tuesday with “Voices Carry”, Ted Leo was a Seton Hall prep school kid woodshedding his love for punk and hardcore on the New York City underground scene. Yet while the two […]

[rating=8.00] Your lyrics might have some mean cuisine references, but they are no match for the queens of “crazy food”, Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto. In a year that has seen an uptick in long-overdue returns to the national stage, from Neneh Cherry to the Afghan Whigs, for longtime fans of the […]

[rating=7.00] Jonathan Meiburg hails Fellow Travelers to be his favorite Shearwater album, as it serves as a quintessential chronicle of the Austin band’s 13-year existence told through the songs of the various acts they’ve toured with during that time. Originally conceived as an EP release, it had quickly grown to LP proportions after realizing the […]

[rating=8.00] When it came to quality power pop in 2013, pardon the pun but there was nobody better than Ezra Furman. For both Year of No Returning and Day of the Dog, the Oakland-based songwriter opted to record without his longtime Tufts University-born group The Harpoons, instead utilizing the skills of his current touring band […]

One can talk about Lou Reed’s life in albums until he or she is blue in the face. But as most of the Long Island native’s fans are mourning his death from this past Sunday after succumbing to complications from a liver transplant are well aware, the true strength of Lou’s rock ‘n’ roll powers […]

[rating=8.00] Not since the late-career heyday of RL Burnside has the contemporary blues market been as exciting as it’s been over the past couple of years. And right alongside Gary Clark, Jr. in the march to bring some soul back to the age-old American art is none other than fellow Austin Texan Black Joe Lewis, […]

[rating=8.00] Though he might have spent his early years hanging out with the likes of Patti Smith and Television at CBGB’s, it was at the recently shuttered rock ‘n’ blues club Kenny’s Castaways on Bleecker St. where a young Willie Nile made his name shortly after moving from his hometown of Buffalo, NY down to […]

Maxwell’s of Hoboken, NJ, is one of the last iconic punk/alternative clubs in the New York Tri-State area. And. It is a loss on par with that of CBGB in terms of its history and importance, leaving an impression on its corner address at 1039 Washington St. all the children of the Real Housewives of […]

[rating=7.0] Normally when your lead singer dies, that spells curtains for a band. But Alice in Chains was always more about Jerry Cantrell than Layne Staley arguably speaking. And the guitarist’s decision to resurrect the name 11 years after the enigmatic and troubled original vocalist for the Seattle grunge titans succumbed to his crippling narcotic […]

There's a certain kind of heft to Wakin on a Pretty Daze that wasn't present on a Kurt Vile LP before. And not just with regards to the length of several of the songs that appear on this eleven-track collection bookended by the nine-and-a-half minute "Wakin on a Pretty Day" and the mesmerizing ten-plus minute comedown "Goldtone". What is more prevalent perhaps is the sense of ease by which the songs seem to just roll out of your headphones as Vile and his current primary Violators–multi-instrumentalists Jesse Trbovich and Rob Laakso–submerge the street cool of late-80s Lou Reed into that hazy psych-rock thing he's been doing since since his bedroom dubbing days, albeit less volatile from the sounds of such key tracks as "Was All Talk" and "Shame Chamber".