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Review: Spanish Love Songs – A Brief Intermission In The Flattening Of Time

Spanish Love Songs - A Brief Intermission In The Flattening Of Time
Adam Grundy

The latest taste of music from Spanish Love Songs, called A Brief Intermission in the Flattening of Time, is a guest-heavy, moody and reflective romp of well-written songs. The set was collaborated with producer Arun Bali, and each of these vibrant tracks feature a guest artist/friend of the band. On the key song of “Cocaine & Lexapro” that features Kevin Devine, frontman and guitarist Dylan Slocum shared, “I’ve been trying to work with Kevin for a while now. We have a good number of mutual friends but had never met up until this. The reasoning was simple — our band doesn’t exist without Kevin Devine, so when he agreed to sing on a song, he got to sing on a song. He took what I had demoed as an angry, contrarian second verse and turned it into something delicate and full of pathos. It absolutely floored me the first time I heard his vocal tracks dropped in.” By working with four great artists on this EP, Spanish Love Songs reinvigorate their passion for writing songs filled with uncertainty in the days that lie ahead of us, but with a beating heart of hope that things can and will get better.

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Jordan Maye ft. Rebecca Soul – “The Puppeteer” (Song Premiere)

Jordan Maye
Adam Grundy

Today is a great day to share the new single from Jordan Maye that takes classic rock and symphonic elements, and builds on a modern indie singer-songwriter foundation layered with Maye’s powerful vocals. “The Puppeteer” features guest vocals from Rebecca Soul, and showcases a sound similar to Foxy Shazam paired with the classic rock leanings of The Rolling Stones.

If you’re enjoying the new single, please consider streaming Jordan Maye’s music here.

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‘Kid A’ 20 Years Later: Why Radiohead’s Masterpiece Still Matters

Radiohead, Kid A
Mary Varvaris

20 years ago, Radiohead released an album that encapsulated an experimental fusion of cacophonous jazz (“The National Anthem”), ambient music (“Treefingers”), “traditional” rock moments (“Optimistic”), and electronic music (the rest). Kid A was unveiled during a moment in time that demanded heated discussion, introspection, and patience. With patience comes great reward: to understand the album the way it was intended opens up a whole new world. The record also immediately cast a behemoth-sized shadow over what Radiohead had done before (yep, even OK Computer) and what would come after (In Rainbows, too). 

Singer Thom Yorke found himself exhausted with burnout following a lengthy tour of OK Computer. He began to despise everything about “rock music” as we knew it – guitars, the glamorization of drug and alcohol addiction – and his vision of what “rock” music could be would inadvertently change the music industry and online music culture for decades to come. For many Gen X-ers, Kid A was one of the earliest albums experienced online. Pre-streaming era, over 1,000 websites posted Kid A and it was streamed over 400,000 times, three weeks before the album’s release. There was no promotion – no music videos, the band declined to do interviews – but that didn’t stop incessant arguments on whether the album was Radiohead’s magnum opus or hot garbage, nor did it stop the reviews coming.

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Review: Twenty One Pilots – Breach

Adam Grundy

It’s both hard and easy to believe that Twenty One Pilots are at the point in their career where they have now released eight studio albums. The band have been scene mainstays since being signed to Fueled By Ramen records in 2012, and yet many casual fans don’t realize that Twenty One Pilots also released two other LPs in advance of their major label signing. Breach comes storming onto the rock scene brimming with a similar sound to TOP’s arsenal, and the new record is catchy, familiar, and filled with several key thematic callbacks to keep fans engaged. It’s been just over a year since Twenty One Pilots released their seventh studio album, Clancy, and Breach feels more confident, urgent, and moves the needle even further in a positive direction in TOP’s creative approach to blending so many genres in their music. The set was produced by Paul Meany, Mike Elizondo, and the band’s vocalist Tyler Joseph. The set was preceded by three singles in “The Contract,” “Drum Show” and most recently, the sprawling, bass-heavy opener of “City Walls” that was accompanied by a long-form music video of the five minute-plus song. Breach ultimately ends up being one of the most thrilling records, if not the most important album, since Twenty One Pilots first formed in 2009.

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My Life In 35 Songs, Track 1: “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers

My Life in 35 Songs
Craig Manning

If your life was a movie, what songs would make the soundtrack?

Earlier this year, I found myself trying to answer that question, all because I was looking for a project to get me excited about music writing again. A decade ago, I couldn’t wait to write up reviews of every new album I liked. Now, the thought of going through that process feels exhausting, and maybe meaningless. Does anyone care about album reviews in 2025? And if not, where does that leave those of us who love trying to articulate what it is about a certain piece of music that makes us think, or makes us weep, or gets our hearts racing a little faster?

I came up with the life soundtrack idea almost on a lark. It would be a fun challenge, I told myself, especially if there were limits and rules by which I had to abide. The first rule I gave myself was to theme this project around my forthcoming 35th birthday. In honor of that milestone, I decided, I’d have the space of just 35 songs to tell my life story.

I didn’t know how maddening this game would prove to be – or, ultimately, how emotionally fulfilling. I’m an old veteran when it comes to making lists, but this version of the music list was so much harder than anything else I’d ever attempted. Picking your all-time favorite albums is easy. Picking your favorite songs is harder, but still somewhat intuitive. Trying to boil down your entire life’s journey into what is essentially a two-CD compilation is an exercise guaranteed to result in constant hand-wringing, excessive second-guessing, and endless revising. There are currently 47,145 songs in my iTunes library. How was I supposed to be satisfied picking such a tiny percentage of that?

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Thank You For The (New) Venom: An Analysis of My Chemical Romance’s 2025 ‘Three Cheers’ Remix

My Chem - Compare
Adam Grundy

I have to admit that I rolled my eyes a bit at the thought of remixing/remastering what I consider to be one of the most sonically dynamic records this scene has ever had the privilege of calling our own: My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. How exactly do you make any improvements to a classic recording? The answer was found out quickly when I first put my ears around the 2025 remix/remaster of Three Cheers. Instead of just making it louder, the original mixer of the record (Rich Costey) used the original source files that were carefully stored away by veteran producer Howard Benson to fully revamp the overall sound that comes out of the speakers when you hit “play.” This article will not be so much of a review per se of the Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge record, as I originally did the retrospective review a few years back, as much as it is a deep dive into the overall package that is presented here in 2025.

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