mitch easter Archive

Today I’m revisiting a review originally posted more than a year ago. Songs From the Hydrogen Jukebox received what we’ll call a soft release in late 2020. As nice as that set looked, it’s really about the music. And now it’s out with professional packaging worthy of the contents inside. Highly recommended, like I already

If you’re at all familiar with the alternate and/or college rock scenes of the 1970s and ‘80s, you’ll know the names Mitch Easter (Let’s Active, producer of R.E.M.), Peter Holsapple (The dB’s, Continental Drifters), Chirs Stamey (The dB’s, work with Alex Chilton) and Don Dixon. This busman’s holiday of a sort is a document of

Here’s the thing about powerpop: it’s either very good or hopelessly bland. There’s seemingly no middle ground; artists working in the idiom either knock it out of the park – see Badfinger, Gladhands, Greenberry Woods – or the results are faceless and shamelessly imitative. Happily, Charlotte N.C.-based trio the Eyebrows succeed on Volume, their debut

In the histories of power pop, indie rock and college rock (and whatever you want to call the musical scene that bubbled under in North Carolina several decades back), there’s one band that elicits approving nods whenever it’s mentioned. Sneakers never released a full album and played only a tiny handful of live shows, but

Here are three more shortish reviews, this time all new releases. Randy Jackson – Empathy for the Walrus As a rule, I’m rather wary of tribute albums. More often than not, they’re bereft of original ideas, and too reverent by half. And when they’re not, they seem likely to miss what was/is important about the