Maturity is a scary thing. When you start to grow up people tend to expect certain, more traditional things out of you. Things like: get a full-time job, stop drinking so much, start a family. These expectations tend to crush any mortal soul on Earth who craves their own independence, but this is not all that maturity brings. No, maturity is more about developing, gaining something from your experiences. Collectively putting things together, and being able to look back on them with a special fondness because they helped craft the soul you’ve developed into. It’s about being able to articulate yourself as your point of view on life changes. Romance is Boring is not your typical sophomore full length album, but then again there is nothing typical about Brit pop/punk rockers Los Campesinos. Continue reading
Los Campesinos! “Romance is Boring” [Music Review]
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You might not think you’ve heard of French band Phoenix, but I bet you have. There is a commercial currently on air produced by automobile staple Cadillac, and a Phoenix song from this very album is featured prominently in the advertisement, so much that the person driving the Caddy in the commercial is listening to Phoenix on their iPod in the car. But other than that, I would be surprised if this band had slipped through the more mainstream music cracks.
Describing Los Angeles based Silversun Pickups is a maddening task. They have a number of ingredients that sound quite familiar, but they also have a number of ingredients that are quite unique. On the surface, they’re an Alternative band that seems to pull quite a bit of their sound from The Smashing Pumpkins, but they also have elements that resemble Sonic Youth, and to some degree, a less theatrical Coheed and Cambria.
In 2006, I discovered a band based out of Stillwater, Oklahoma called Kunek. Their music was a delicate balance of hopeful and depressing, uplifting and melancholy. I listened the Hell out of their album “Flight of the Flynns”, and found that the uniqueness of the sound the band created was unlike anything I’d heard before. Years later, I hadn’t heard anything from the band, so I did a quick Google search and found out they changed their band’s name to Other Lives. They added some other elements to the core of Kunek, and that warranted a change in name. But, the question is, did the music suffer? 
I’m sure that if you’ve read my article on the 