Archive

BY GREGORY ADAMS

A few months ago, I spent the back-half of a newsletter praising the then-upcoming re-release of Antarctica’s 81:03, a doubled-sized debut album incorporating anything from New Order-style mood swings, to esoteric guitar-gazing, to late night club pulses. It’s a hell of an album — a longtime favourite — and I’ve been bumping it like crazy this fall.

Antarctica was formed by guitarist-vocalist Eric Richter after the folding of now-iconic Denver emo outfit Christie Front Drive. There’s a similar bit of aching melodicism to Antarctica’s 23:03 EP from 1998 — the yearning chorus to “Drown the Days,” in particular — but the arrangements are more epically wide-scope, rarely dipping beneath the six-minute mark. That was arguably a more rock-centered release than 1999’s 81:03, where keyboardist Nicole Waxenblatt jumps into Antarctica’s lineup alongside Richter, guitarist-vocalist Chris Donohue, bassist Ben Zimmerman, and drummer Glenn Maryansky. The album is substantially more driven by Midi, Roland loop pads, and synthesizers than the project’s six-string beginnings. In particular, 81:03's opening one-two punch of the “Bizarre Love Triangle”-channeling “Absence” and the highly syncopated, never-ender hypnotism of “Tower of Silence” is hard to beat.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Sometimes the shows you remember the most are the ones that don't go according to plan. Through 30 years of show-goin' (lol), there's one that I circle back to often: an early '00s set from Seattle post-punk quintet the Vogue that was beleaguered by missing bandmembers, and saw at least one errant barstool flying through the air. That I took photos that night probably helps.

Two car-loads of Vogue folks planned to drive up to Vancouver's Brickyard venue on May 31,2000, though the one with vocalist Johnny Whitney inside got turned away at the border. Undeterred, bassist Adam Miller opted to put his instrument down for the night and channel his bandmate's energy on the mic.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

While I love hearing a 60’s-era monster party song any time of year, cemetery rockers and blood-sucking bops make up a substantial part of my diet come October. I’ve been reviewing a mix of gleefully ghastly and truly god-awful genre pieces through my Instagram stories all month long, but for Halloween-proper I wanted to dig a little deeper into a record that’s fascinated me for decades: The Ghouls’ Dracula’s Deuce, from 1964.

The Ghouls weren’t exactly a real band, but rather a studio project concocted by Gary Usher, a California producer/musician who carved out a career making music with various fictional ensembles. I got put onto Gary when I was a teenager, after inheriting a copy of his Kickstands’ Black Boots and Bikes, which he also released in 1964. It’s a surf-styled stunner — one of my favourite albums of all time — where a series of songs about daredevil cross-country riders (“Death Valley Run”) and motorcycle toughs (“Mean Streak”) coalesce with fun-and fuel-injected instrumentals. “Hill Climb,” in particular, works a gnarly little 12-bar curio on what must be an early Fender Bass VI model, but I’m also quite partial to the saxophonic, Bo Diddley-beating “Side Car”. Great stuff!

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Jordan Blilie, the onetime co-vocalist for surrealistic hardcore outfit The Blood Brothers. The band recently delivered a deluxe anniversary reissue behind 2003's Burn, Piano Island, Burn, which is out now via Epitaph.

Throughout the talk, Jordan touches on: the dynamic, daring, and essential tandem he maintained with co-vocalist Johnny Whitney; the difference between vocal confidence and vocal competence; going into "survival mode" in the studio; working with Ross Robinson (Korn, Limp Bizkit); making a truly bizarre major label debut; and plying one's trade as a "grotesque mess."

The Gut Feeling Podcast is currently streaming through Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Hey folks! We're back with another rewind, this time around cult Chicago quintet Watchers. I'd interviewed vocalist Michael Guarrine back in early 2007 for California's Chord Magazine, right around the time the band were releasing their sophomore full-length, Vampire Driver.

Watchers were on Gern Blandsten Records (a label you might recall I'm quite fond of), and even amongst the roster of a small punk label they seemed to fly by under the radar. I dug the records, though.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

For a group quite literally co-founded by one of the most iconic hip-hop figures of all time, DFL is a band that kind of got slept on through their initial run in the ‘90s. Blessedly, the L.A. outfit’s debut album, My Crazy Life, just got a deluxe re-release through Trust Records, and it’s a must if you like your hardcore old school, off-the-rails, and above all else, fun.

I recently had the chance to connect with both vocalist Tom Davis and guitarist Monty Essex to talk about not only the forming of DFL in the early ‘90s — alongside bassist/Beastie Boy Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz — but the dawn of their friendship about a decade prior, when they met on a city bus on their way to a skatepark.

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Vanessa Heins, a Toronto-based photographer who has worked with artists in the worlds of punk, folk, pop, hip-hop, and so much more for more than 20 years.

Throughout the talk, Vanessa touches on: growing up in Vancouver; getting her start behind the lens taking promo photos of her friends' punk bands (including future members of Said the Whale); setting a scene comfortably; an upcoming tour with City and Colour; and memories of shoots with the likes of Alexisonfire, Beastie Boys, Carly Rae Jepsen, U.S. Girls' Meg Remy, John Prine, Sister Ray, and more!

You can find Vanessa's work over on Instagram.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

“It’s really strange and scary-sounding.”

This is Pleasure Forever drummer Dave Clifford on the general feel of Distal, a seven-song mini-album that marks the first new music from the project since 2003. Given the vampiric hypnotism built into its opening “Neolith Nonce,” or the jagged purple squeals guitarist Josh Hughes unpacks amidst a lean, leering backbeat on new single “To The Last Recorded Syllable of Time,” Dave may have a point.

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is with Jack Duckworth, the Vancouver Island-born, Glasgow based musician currently crafting darkwave odysseys as Soft Riot. The synth-heavy solo project's snarky, urgent and playful new No album comes out August 11 through Jack's own Possession Records and the Netherlands' Wave Tension Records.

Throughout the talk, Jack gets into: Soft Riot's latest collection; finding his way back to guitar; cosmic coincidences; Vancouver Island punk in the early '90s; playing his first-ever show with an Acid casualty fill-in singer; hitchhiking; the quaintness of early internet culture; and his time in bands including The Forgotten, Anthony Monday, Slough of Despond, The Measure, and Radio Berlin.

The Gut Feeling Podcast is currently streaming through Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

One of the strangest, and likewise sickest trends I’ve noticed through the past few years of hardcore is the resurgence of a good old “ooh”. Primal and to the point, vocalists are currently punctuating intros, mosh transitions, and all kinds of circle pit-inducing moments with a from-the-gut grunt. From a functional standpoint, it’s a quick and efficient move, one tailor-made for folks that want to take part in a gang vocal pile-on without the hassle of studying a lyric sheet. Across a plenitude of big-name hardcore releases this past year alone, the vocal approach is seemingly omnipresent. But where did this all come from?

Through the contemporary lens, you could argue Kentucky slammers Knocked Loose brought this to the forefront with their 2016 single “Counting Worms”. It’s a wild song, its intro a masterclass in hypnotic harmonic tension. Vocalist Bryan Garris goes meta with a couple of lines about the connection between songwriting and self-care, but when the band pivot towards a disgusting slam riff, the hardcore vocalist drops the tune’s most iconic, bulldog-like bars: “arf arf”.

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast goes down the '90s straight edge hardcore rabbit hole with Dead Quiet vocalist-guitarist Kevin Keegan, who got his start as the 14-year-old drummer for Kelowna, BC's Decoy.

Throughout the talk, Kevin gets into: building up his drum chops to Metallica's Kill 'Em All; getting pulled into his local hardcore scene as a teenage wunderkind; the show Decoy were supposed to play with Refused; road trip chaperones; why he ultimately became a guitarist; voice acting; dog walking; and more!

The Gut Feeling Podcast is currently streaming through Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more.

Hello again! The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Justin Gradin, the Vancouver-raised, and soon-to-be-L.A.-based multi-disciplinary artist whom most recently released his debut graphic novel, Mystic Debris (out now via Fantagraphics).

Throughout the talk, Justin gets into: Mystic Debris' somewhat biographical origins; upcoming audio-visual projects with Grammy winner and onetime roommate Tobias Jesso Jr.; the ways our bodies hang onto trauma; transcendental meditation; learning to play drums behind his surf rock-loving dad; early bands w Gossip's Nathan Howdeshell; starting up underground punk venue the Emergency Room; making music videos for White Lung and Louise Burns; how he lost his job at a Toys 'R' Us; and more!

The Gut Feeling Podcast is currently streaming through Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Bully guitarist-vocalist Alicia Bognanno’s Instagram feed has been a gear-hound’s dream lately. If you’ve been following, she’s been using her IG stories to show off an outsized collection of fuzzes, delays, and ‘verbs that speak to the dialed-up-and-blown-out approach of Bully’s explosive new Lucky For You full-length. She’s also been using the medium to explain exactly how character pieces like Earthquaker’s Bit Commander pedal have been affecting the tunes — in this case, the monophonic analog guitar synthesizer courses a vibrant, faux-twinned sound into Lucky For You’s grooving “Hard to Love,” making for one of Bully’s most unique leads.

In a piece through RANGE, the Nashville-based alt-punker told me that her fifth full-length Bully project was informed by the death of her beloved dog, Mezzi, and the dark political swing of the past few years. Despite that, the songwriter feels hopeful for the future.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Hey folks! This time around, we’re rewinding to an old interview I'd done with California hardcore label Sound Virus Records. This was originally published in 2004 through Punk Planet. It might’ve been the first piece of writing I got paid for, but I’m not entirely sure of that.

I got to know Sound Virus’ Mike Ott around 2001, when he started putting out my old band’s music. We often crashed at his place in Valencia whenever we’d roll through town; the other Sound Virus bands did the same. We did this interview at a nearby coffee shop, possibly in May of 2003 during a weekend of Sound Virus showcases that featured sets from the Blood Brothers, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Death From Above, the Cinema Eye, and the Red Light Sting. Then again, it might've happened the following July when we were back out that way for a West Coast tour. Roughly 20 years ago, either way.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Sister Ray's Ella Coyes is a Toronto-based folk artist that perked plenty of ears last year through the tenderly-strummed character portraits of their Polaris long-listed debut, Communion.

More recently, I had the chance to speak with Ella for RANGE, where they got into the sensually berry-stained allusions and nostalgic yearning of their epic-in-spirit, but bite-sized new EP, Teeth. Naturally, I banked a few gear q's for Gut Feeling, too.

Meredith Coloma is the Vancouver-based founder/head luthier at Coloma Guitars, who have blown up the past couple of years following the introduction of the company's now-signature Freya guitar. It's a modernized, vibrantly-coloured take on a Mustang-style offset with a bolt-on neck, and more and more of them are going to be shipping out of Vancouver following some machinery and staffing upgrades at Coloma's shop in town.

I recently had the chance to get into all things Coloma with Meredith for Guitar World, where she spoke on her beginnings as a touring musician practicing luthier skills in the band van; the Pacific Wood Lab workshop she co-ran, teaching folks how to build guitars; locally-sourced wood; and more. While the piece certainly digs into the origins of the socials-favoured Freya, we also got into Coloma Guitar's other current design, the shred-style Dunvegan.

One instrument of Meredith's that hadn't made it out of R&D — or into the Guitar World piece — is the Gummi Bear guitar. It's a literally candy-coated, Les Paul-style six-string that still needs a bit of tooling, Meredith admitting that the prototype was a bit too squishy for its own good.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Hello again! The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Mark Palm, the Seattle-based vocalist-guitarist for contemporary power pop titans Supercrush, and a Vancouver-grown hardcore kid at heart.

Did you realize that this Saturday (April 15) marks the twentieth anniversary of the first ever live performance from Vancouver's Go It Alone? Mark sure hadn't, so I gave him a call to drum up some old memories about the early days of the band.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Hello, hello! The latest Gut Feeling podcast is an interview with Murray A. Lightburn, a longtime member of orchestral pop group the Dears who is also about to release his third solo album, Once Upon a Time in Montreal.

Murray has described his latest full-length as an "audio version of a biopic," inspired by the life of his father William, a jazz saxophonist who passed away in 2020. It’s a contemplative, massively moving collection of jazz, folk, and r&b-styled moments, all of which being anchored by the golden tone of Murray’s tenor-baritone vocal.

Photo: Corey Poluk

BY GREGORY ADAMS

While Heartache No. 2 is a new, Vancouver-based record label and show promotion company putting plenty of shine on the city’s underground country scene, it’s more broadly a hub where arts subcultures intersect (the promotion’s next concert, for instance, is for leather-bound Portland rockers Stainless).

Photo by Katrin Braga

BY GREGORY ADAMS

There’s a fearlessness to Debby Friday’s artistry. From her early breakbeat tapes to the industrial club rap she’s been honing since 2018's Bitchpunk, through to high-concept audio-visual plays, interpretive dance-imbued experimental films, and commerce-and-art-examining NFT drops, the Toronto-based multi-hyphenate has confidently plunged herself into an ever-widening oeuvre. On the upcoming Good Luck — Debby Friday's first formal full-length, which is likewise connected to a short film of the same name — that fearlessness manifests through perhaps her softest vocal take yet, found on the album's first single, "So Hard to Tell."

Botch live in France, 1999.
Photo c/o the band.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Chisel photo by Pat Graham

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Hello again! The latest Gut Feeling podcast is an interview with Ted Leo, the longtime punk-and-pop Pharmacist who is just about to jump into a series of reunions shows with his '90s-era outfit, Chisel.

Photo by Jayme Javier

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Madness Cartel photo c/o the band.

Hello! We've hit the end of 2022, and per tradition I've invited Spectres / Madness Cartel member Adam Mitchell onto the podcast to get into some of his favourite records of the year — this time including music from The Beths, Long Knife, High Vis, and more.

We also touch on Spectres' upcoming album, which is currently being recorded in Vancouver with producer Jesse Gander (Brutus, Neck of the Woods), and Madness Cartel activity following the semi-recent re-release of their 2020 demo.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Hot Hot Heat/Fur Trade's Steve Bays!

Steve gets into the early history of Hot Hot Heat, whom just celebrated the 20th anniversary of their pop-tastic Make Up the Breakdown with a a deluxe, remastered re-release through Sub Pop Records.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Wowsers, today (December 4) marks a whole 40 years since the premiere episode of Inspector Gadget. Titled “Winter Olympics,” the pilot found the titular cartoon character in somewhat of an embryonic stage (he has a moustache for this one episode; it looks pretty weird), but it also hits the beats that count: Gadget is a cyborg lawman sent around the globe to foil the evil schemes of the M.A.D. organization. He’s kind of a bumbler, though. Most missions succeed through a mix of dumb luck and some behind-the-scenes gumshoeing from Gadget’s niece, Penny, and her pet pup, Brain.

Also in place from the jump was Inspector Gadget’s iconic, earworm theme music. Written by composer Shuki Levy, the intro works a choppy synth bass along a playfully eerie motif, which is ultimately resolved by a gleeful chorus of “Go Gadget, Go!”

BY GREGORY ADAMS

If you’ve been following Gut Feeling for a while, you might’ve noticed that I can’t get enough of Vancouver hardcore force Punitive Damage. They were the newsletter’s first published interview, while other posts have seen me gushing over hammer-down tracks from 2021’s Strike Back EP and this fall’s positively crushing debut full-length, This Is the Blackout. The latter is bonafide album-of-the-year material (Revolver would back that up), and is at the very least a must-listen if you like getting your ears mangled by an impressive cross-section of hardcore styles.

One thing I hadn’t hit on before, though, was exactly how the band has gnarled things out in the studio — most recently with Taylor Young (Drain, Regional Justice Center) at his The Pit facility in Van Nuys, CA.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Lyndsay Sung, a longtime music-maker currently playing bass in Vancouver punk trio Kcar. Over the past 25 years, she's also played in The Sob Story, Le Petit Mort, Radio Berlin, Pink Mountaintops, Ice Palace, and more. She's also the owner/baker extraordinaire at Coco Cake Land.

Throughout our talk, Lyndsay gets into: becoming a "gorilla on 'roids" while drumming for her first band; queer vampire films; fantasy-based synth-metal; finding goths across America on lengthy Radio Berlin tours; upcoming cookbooks; and more.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

There are a good chunk of spooky cartoons spinning through my brain around Halloween, but one that stands out in particular is 1978’s The Devil and Daniel Mouse. Who doesn’t love a good, Satanic story this time of year, right?

Released in 1978 through Canadian studio Nelvana, The Devil and Daniel Mouse is a creeper that centres on a floundering rodent folk duo who get fired from their house band gig after a club owner deems that people these days only want to “rock 'n' roll, and disco dance.” Rough! When the pair get separated that night, the singer, Jan, stumbles into a Faustian bargain that sees her quickly skyrocketing to fame after literally “selling her soul for some rock ‘n’ roll.”

Photo by Chrissy Piper

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Hey folks!

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Unless you're a year-round horror fan, odds are good you up your slasher and monster movie quota once October kicks in. I know I do!

As we've officially entered the spooky season, I'm shaking up the Gut Feeling mini-guide template. Instead of a record label, this time I'm taking a look at the shredding music behind a handful of heavy metal horror flicks from the '80s.

Hella at the Ché Café. La Jolla, CA. 2004. Photo by Gregory Adams

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Sometimes I forget what's in the archive. A while back I was looking at an old interview with Hella — the experimental rock duo of Spencer Seim and future Death Grips drummer/producer Zach Hill — that I'd done for an issue of Skyscraper magazine back in 2004. I was thinking that could be a cool piece to reprint as a rewind post...but then I remembered I actually had an unpublished interview hiding on a hard drive somewhere, too.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Peter Matthew Bauer has entered his guitar hero phase. For proof, take the onetime Walkmen bassist/organist’s upcoming third solo album, Flowers, which finds him embracing the freeing, fleet-fingered approach of Tuareg blues players like Mdou Moctar. The move even surprised Pete, who hadn’t previously considered getting this expressively extravagant on a project.

“Somewhere along the way, I realized I had never really taken a guitar solo in all the years I’ve played music,” Peter had previously said in a press statement. “I became obsessed with figuring out a way to do so while also still moving the songs along. Now that I’ve started, I’m not sure how I’ll stop.”

Photo by Adam Cedillo

BY GREGORY ADAMS

BY GREGORY ADAMS

It has been a long while since the last label guide. This time we’re looking at some hardcore deep cuts from the Kill Rock Stars catalogue.

Olympia, WA’s Kill Rock Stars was founded in 1991 by Slim Moon and Tinuviel Sampson, the former explaining to Hit Quarters in 2009: “I just wanted to put out my friends’ records, because nobody was putting out my friends’ records.” He did just that, starting with a spoken word split 7-inch between himself and Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna (her side, fittingly enough: “Rock Star”).

Photo by Beatrice Scharf-Pierzchala

BY GREGORY ADAMS

While the gearhounds obsessively refreshing the front page of Reverb.com would disagree, Heaven for Real’s new video for “Do Your Worst” posits that a good guitar is rarely hard to find.

Photo by Pretty Matty

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Photo by Geoffo Reith

BY GREGORY ADAMS

It's not too often an album is responsible for the birth of a music genre, but Vancouver outfit Big Rig's self-titled debut is, in fact, the first project to define the burgeoning twangmo movement.

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Kyle De Ville, a British Columbia-born, Portland, Oregon-based guitarist with Enact, whom just released their self-titled debut album through War Records.

Throughout the talk, Kyle gets into: plotting hardcore songs in the shower; Enact fighting against political apathy; what happens when the Youth Crew ages into parenthood; growing up a pre-teen suburban death metal head; lessons learned at a Metallica show; and more.

On the throwback side of things, Kyle and I also played in our first bands together in the mid '90s, so we touch on our failed skate-punk band, Rugburn, and our more emo-styled The Self Esteem Project, whose 1997 demo tape I just posted up on Bandcamp.

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Stephen McBean, a prolific, Vancouver Island-born, Los Angeles-based musician currently making music with Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops. Back in the mid '90s, though, Steve was briefly a vocalist/co-guitarist in Ex Dead Teenager, a Vancouver quartet whose 1997 demo, It's OK to Laugh at People Wearing Gas Masks, flirted with full-bore hardcore, sludge nihilism, tattered-psyche post-punk melancholia, and impressionistic, synth-skit weirdness.

Throughout the talk, Steve gets into: hardcore mêlées at East Vancouver's legendary New York Theatre; writing and recording as a roommates-only project in the basement of the Frances Street punk house; the on-tour implosion of his previous project, Gus; dumpster diving for keyboards; reconnecting with members of Converge and Saviours decades after first meeting them on tour with Ex Dead Teenager; and more.

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Earlier this year, I had a chance to speak with Deaf Club guitarists Brian Amalfitano and Tommy Meehan about mangling all sorts of pedal-squelching sounds into the post-grind wonderwall that is the band’s new Bad Songs Forever EP. The artwork for the release is just as a deconstructionist, and is from one of my favourite active artists, Paul Rentler.

Paul's a collagist based out of Columbus, Ohio. He's big on recontextualizing cartoon, comics, and pop culture figures— think Mickey Mouse, Dr. Doom, or the Rolling Stones' tongue logo— into absurdist, stylized hybrids. For Bad Songs Forever, he's grafted Kiss bassist Gene Simmons' tongue-wagging mug atop a sagging, blood-strewn corpse, a gang of red-eyed football ghouls flanking him on each side.

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Lucas McFadden, a Vancouver based musician currently drumming with Madness Cartel and Tilted, and formerly of blisteringly fast hardcore unit Reserve 34.

Throughout the talk, Lucas gets into the life of Reserve 34, from the mid '90s through to their final show in 2002. Lucas also touches on: realizing that in a guitarists world, he needed to become a drummer; teen vandalism; punk mansions; fortuitous parking spots. It's a story that also manages to connect Reserve 34 with members of Trooper, the Pointed Sticks, SoCal straight edge group Carry On, and more!

Nothing from the Reserve 34 discography is streaming officially, but the episode features some samples of unreleased demos, radio show performances, live sets, and studio recordings.

Photo by Vanessa Heins

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Few jilted love songs are primed to hit a guitarist where it hurts as much as PUP's "Matilda." The bittersweet, pop-punk jolt from the Toronto quartet's new The Unraveling of PUPTheBand full-length is sung from the perspective of a once-treasured six-string rusting away in a closet, its owner now focused on a newer model ("You pick up your other and you strum away"). Once, their relationship had been symbiotic—full-flesh fingers constantly caressing Matilda's rosewood fretboard. Now, the instrument laments, "I hardly make a sound."

The latest Gut Feeling Podcast is an interview with Larissa Loyva, a Vancouver based singer-songwriter currently releasing experimental electronic pop as Kellarissa.

The talk gets into the making of Kellarissa's new Voice Leading album, but also: hands-on career changes; Anne Garréta’s 1986 Oulipan nightclub novel Sphinx; high school choirs; her first band's show at a mall photography exhibit; playing in bands like P:ano, Boring, the Choir Practice, and A Luna Red; and finding harmony in life, not just music.

Kellarissa's Voice Leading sees release April 1 via Mint Records.

Year Future at Modified Arts. Phoenix, AZ. Photos by Gregory Adams

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Photo by Drew Doggett

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Earlier this month I had the chance to speak with Los Angeles artist SASAMI for Northern Transmissions. The talk centres on the complex metal, folk, and dream pop qualities of her new album, Squeeze, but also on the way various parts of horror lore impacted the aesthetic. It’s a wild record where tap-crazy guitar solos exist over gain-charged Daniel Johnston covers, but it’s just as likely to pivot from nu metal stomps towards gloom-infused classical arrangements and back porch folk bops. It’s a serious head trip!

Photo by Oliver Halfin

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Earlier this year I had a chance to speak with Spoon guitarist-vocalist Britt Daniel for Guitar World, with the talk centering on the long-running Austin, TX outfit’s new album, Lucifer on the Sofa. Long story short, the record cooks, but during the talk, Britt got into everything from his evocatively rhythmic right hand, to bandmate Gerardo Larios’ “fuckin’ ferocious” guitar solo on the “The Hardest Cut”. You can check out that piece here.

While I had Britt on the phone, I quickly asked him about the band’s Get Nice!, a niche bonus EP that came packaged together with 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. The release has fascinated me for years.

Spoon have often been praised for a taut and considered approach to rock. Get Nice!, meanwhile, is a 23-minute head trip of loose song ideas where Spoon wander from guttural graveyard blues (“I Got Mine”) towards astral projected synth-scapes (“Be Still My Servant”, “Love Makes You Feel”), folky character portraits (“Mean Mad Margaret”), vampy, possibly pitch-shifted funk (“Dracula’s Cigarette”), and psych-smeared proto punk (“1975”). Rarely does a song reach completion, making Get Nice! more of a transitory free-for-all. Nowhere is that more clear than on “I Can Feel It Fade Like An AM Single,” an all-time heartwrecker that wildly dips in-and-out of time.

Photo c/o Bratboy

BY GREGORY ADAMS

While Bratboy singer-guitarist Bella Bébê describes the band's new "Dream Rope" single as "a pop song about...bondage," it's fair to say that the Vancouver trio's forthcoming debut album has been strung up by other means. Membership swaps, a name change, and a global pandemic have all contributed to the delay, but over two years after tracking the as-yet-untitled release at Gabriola Island, BC's The Noise Floor Recording Studio, the band are finally rounding the corner on an official release.

Though the record arrives sometime in 2022, there have been a pair of recent previews. "Blue Eyes" mixes its grunge-punk parabola of an intro riff with a hook-heavy chorus; "Dream Rope" entwines Bella and bassist Megan Magdelena's vocal harmonies before the guitarist waggles out a series of swagger-heavy hammer-ons in her guitar solo. Both songs from the band's 2019 7-inch have also been re-recorded with their current bpm-pushing percussionist, Tony Dallas.

Speaking with Gut Feeling, Bella and Tony got into evolving guitar tones, un-Googleable band names, and what to expect from the upcoming Bratboy album.

Photo by Vin Romero

BY GREGORY ADAMS

Earlier this month I had the chance to speak with Cloakroom bassist Bobby Markos for Northern Transmissions. In that piece, Bobby got into the sci-fi origins of the Indiana outfit’s new Dissolution Wave, which finds an asteroid miner filling a culture-eating cosmic void with songs to keep the Earth from spinning off its axis. Heady stuff!

Hello! It's just about the end of the year, and once again I've invited Spectres guitarist Adam Mitchell onto the podcast to get into some of our favourite records of the year—hitting on some contemporary Oi (The Chisel, Boss), sax-smooched synth-pop (Riki), arguably adult-geared post-hardcore (Quicksand), and more.

We also get into Spectres recent Hindsight collection, which traces the Vancouver band's career from their earlier, shoutier, greyer days towards the synth-spangled pop of new tunes like "Tell Me".

I think I'm going to take the next couple of weeks off, but I'll catch you in 2022!