Adventure Time Recap: “Betty” – Simon’s Return and Strength in Nostalgia

Check out my full recap here!

“This marks the third episode in which Hambo takes centerstage, or more specifically, the sentimentality behind Hambo which everyone (Ash the ass, Maja the Sky Witch, and now Simon) wants to harness for their own ends. Which leads one to wonder: what’s the big deal, what’s the mojo of sentimentality that makes it a currency of power, as an ingredient for potent wiz-biz, even as fuel for time-bending apparati?  It’s a piece of symbolism that cuts to the core of what Adventure Time is all about: a conception of nostalgia, sentimentality, and childhood memories as a foundation of personal strength, but also the danger of sentimentality’s perversion …”

Shimmering PsychPop: “The Sacred Burial Urn” – Cull

Angular Retro-Rock: “Father of the Man” – Cairo Gang

Album Review: Woodsman’s ‘Woodsman’

I wrote a review for psych-ambient group Woodsman’s new self-titled, released day before yesterday.

“. . . I had the impression of beginning in the woods and ending up elsewhere, a good sign for a psychedelic recording. It reminds me of a fantasy series, Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber, in which the main character arrives on other planes by walking and simultaneously imagining the destination piece by piece, subtracting elements that don’t fit, thus shifting the landscape around him until he has arrived at the place he’d envisioned. It’s a good model for how each track tends to progress – movement in pieces, like clay being shaped.”

Check out the full review here.

“Bollywood” – Magic Eye

angel tones filtering through staticky midnight TV

Album Review: Warpaint’s ‘Warpaint’

 

“A melodic focus would be hard to pinpoint, as everything else drifts in and out, creating a cloud of sound in which the movement is slow but constant and all elements are dialed way down. After all this painstaking distillation, what you have is an extremely atmospheric, rhythm-based album, one whose experiments bring it to the border of alternative R&B and ambient psychedelia.”

Full review here.

wrtng: his claws are