My friends are my world. They are, in all fundamental ways, my family. And just as any good family member should, they provide unprecedented support, joy filled laughter, wrenching heart ache, and raw, honest, growth. I expect the same from my music. Lucky for me, I stumbled upon Elizabeth and The Catapult.
Album Review: Elizabeth & The Catapult – The Other Side of Zero
Filed under Album Reviews, Reviews
Album Review: Women – Public Strain
Public Strain is darker in tone, more pensive and anxious than Women’s exceptional eponymous debut. It also marks a more focused and profound approach to songwriting, expounding on themes of personal longing, anxiety, and estrangement. The album winds through eleven closely knit songs that build tension without ever granting complete emotional release. The opener, “Can’t You See,” presages the tenor of the album with a lone bassline bolstered by a steadily intensifying cacophony of static, feedback, and the pining of a full string section that never ultimately resolves itself, but instead fades into silence.
Filed under Album Reviews, Reviews
Sounds Abound: Sufjan Stevens – “I Walked”
Boy has there been a lot of activity on the Sufjan-front within the past week. First came the surprise All Delighted People EP, followed by the announcement of a forthcoming LP, and now we actually have a preview track from the The Age of Adz. Dig it:
Filed under Sights & Sounds, Sounds Abound
The Minnesota State Fair: A Really Big Deal.
I have recently been hipped to the fact that we are accruing a good amount of Minnesota followers here at TRACER – and I say that’s 
awesome! As it says in our manifesto, this blog “celebrates the vast musical talent located throughout the Midwestern United States,” and you don’t get much more authentically Midwest than Minnesota. Plus, the music and foodie scenes there are both busting. Have you ever heard Atmosphere? You need to…
Filed under News, Upcoming Events
HotChaCha at The Comet
The Cleveland all-girl band HotChaCha will rattle Northside’s favorite laid-back watering hole The Comet this Friday the 13th. Since HotChaCha is a little bit dance, a little bit punk and apparently fully hot (according to the gospel of countless male reviewers), the show promises to be a good time.
Filed under News, Previews, Upcoming Events
The Nuclear Return of Margot
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If you were to force me to pick my favorite Indiana-based band, I’d have but one reply for you: Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos. After the back-to-back brilliance of The Dust of Retreat and Animal, it seems like the sky is the limit for this outfit.
Filed under News
Preview: The War on Drugs Return w/ Daytrotter Session and Forthcoming EP
Come with me, if you will, back to the halcyon days of 2008… back when four plucky Cincinnatians launched an independent music e-zine called TRACER Magazine (why would we name a website TRACER Magazine? That’s a whole other post, my friends). Back in those carefree days, one of the first bands TRACER profiled was a Philadelphia outfit called The War on Drugs. The band’s debut LP, Wagonwheel Blues, was one of our favorite albums of ’08… but things have been pretty quiet on The War-front ever since.
Until now.
Spinning Plates: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Once a week, Curt Whitacre examines an essential long player, an album worth listening through from the first note to the last. This week, Spinning Plates presents Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
The truth of the matter is, I was a Son Volt fan before I was a Wilco fan. Back in 2002, Jay Farrar’s post Uncle Tupelo project was still more aligned with my own musical sensibilities than anything that Jeff Tweedy had produced. At the behest of a friend, I had picked up a copy of Being There shortly after its release but quickly moved on to more straightforward musical endeavors. I chalk this all up to my own late-collegiate narrow-mindedness, but the fact remains. More alarmingly? The first time I heard Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I didn’t really get it. Sure, “Heavy Metal Drummer” and “I’m the Man Who Loves You” were catchy, quirky pop songs that were already gaining traction on college radio, but tracks like “Kamera” and “Pot Kettle Black” really just seemed more like AOR fodder on my first detached listen.
Filed under Features, Spinning Plates
Where the Boom Bands Are: Maps & Atlases
I get so over-inundated with new music these days that it can be hard for anything to make much of an impression. Fortunate for me, then, that I was able to catch Chicago’s Maps & Atlases opening for Frightened Rabbit at the Southgate House a few months back.
It’s a very special thing when an opening act is actually able to cut through the mindless chatter and eager anticipation at a club and unexpectedly connect with an audience, but Shiraz Dada (bass), Dave Davison (guitar/vocals), Erin Elders (guitar), and Chris Hainey (drums) won over more than a few new fans that evening. I spent some time with the band after the show, put their You and Me and the Mountain EP into heavy rotation on my turntable, and eagerly awaited their Barsuk Records-released debut LP, Perch Patchwork.
Filed under Columns, Where the Boom Bands Are
Declarations of Independence: Beware Fashionable Women
Artwork by RMBLS.
One of the greatest things about getting to work on TRACER is the part I am able to play in getting exposure for truly talented, hardworking independent artists. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to feature Pittsburgh’s Beware Fashionable Women for months. Barak Shpiez, the band’s creator and central songsmith, sent me their self-titled album over a year ago. As sometimes happens when you get fifty+ press releases per day, the album and my initial correspondence with Shpiez got lost in the shuffle, but every so often he sent me an email to see if I had any coverage plans for his band. Rather than feel annoyed by his persistence, I became really impressed by it (and began to feel like a huge jerk). He was clearly handling his own publicity, and as I soon found out, his own recording and distributing as well. I decided I needed to stop being a slacker and get an interview with this guy pronto so that I and everyone else could learn what he has to say.
Filed under Columns, Declarations of Independence
