Jessica Hernandez understands better than most how to craft a vision through sound. Each track we’ve heard from her, especially those off the five-song EP Demons from last year, is a musical universe entirely unto itself. She makes magic with her songwriting, striking vocals, and backing band’s arrangements — Demons draws much of…
He is an icon of Detroit techno’s second wave, yet that statement alone not only obscures, but also misrepresents, the truth about Richie Hawtin. To start, he isn’t truly from Detroit, but rather Windsor; moreover, his background reads like a travelogue, with stops in England, New York, and Berlin. Nevertheless, Hawtin’s mind-bending, minimalist…
“Freedom at 21,” Jack White’s razor-sharp third single off his 2012 solo debut effort Blunderbuss, still packs a punch. As arguably one of the Nashville-by-way-of-Detroit musician’s better songs — a lovesick garage rock nightmare, turbulent and tumultuous like a fever dream — it contains much of what makes his sound engaging. “Freedom” deals…
Windy & Carl’s 2012 album We Will Always Be came with a caveat — a confessional blog post about marriage’s trials that, depending on your worldview, either upheld or undermined the work’s title. With tracks as generous and genuine as what they ended up recording, songs like “Remember” or “Nature of Memory”,…
The Detroit five-piece Fireworks’ 2011 record Gospel was pure pop-punk that smelled like teen spirit: frontman David Mackinder reflected on adolescent angst as if in need of tranquilizers, yet the slower-paced alt-country touch on songs like “The Wild Bunch” foreshadowed maturity. Nevertheless, on Fireworks’ third full-length studio release, there is no real release…
Michigan-based production house Never Say Die MI has released the highly-anticipated The Living Room Sessions Vol. 2 live album recordings. The first Living Room Sessions release was focused primarily on musical acts of Northern/Mid-Michigan. The 2013 project featured several private performances which were filmed and recorded live from their separate and secret living-room locations. The newly-released…
In June 2012, a documentary premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, whose poster declared in all caps “BEFORE THERE WAS PUNK, THERE WAS A BAND CALLED DEATH”. This film – entitled after the last four words of that tagline – tells the story of the eponymous band, a proto-punk group who formed in…
Detroit foursome Protomartyr suggest a garage rock group gone the way of Joy Division. As a post-punk blitzkrieg piles atop frontman Joe Casey, his vocals convey a complete world-weariness equally well whether they’re sung or snarled. Arriving on the heels of their debut LP released last year, Protomartyr’s follow-up Under Color of…
Young Punk, a three-piece experimental rock-trio from Detroit, has released their sophomore EP titled Movin’ On Up and are celebrating their album release Friday (2/28), at New Dodge Lounge, in Hamtramck. Stephen Stewart and Nick Van Huis, accompanied by seemingly rotating vocalists, make up the ambient-rock group which has become synonymous with flanged…
Detroit emcee and producer-extraordinaire Doctor Illingsworth has released an unexpected Street Fighter-inspired, 12-track instrumental album titled, It Was Tuesday. The opening track, “Shields” (It Was Tuesday),” kicks off the collection with an obscure quote from 1994’s Street Fighter (motion picture) featuring Raúl Juliá as the unforgiving dictator General M. Bison. Illingsworth transforms the quote into a self-proclaiming…