Skip to main content

The Onion Write-Up

Here's a little write-up in the Onion's Chicago edition:

The City On Film w/ The Firebird Band, Hirudin & Dogme 95
Beat Kitchen, 9 p.m., $8, 18+
After Andy Greenwald’s 2003 book, Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, And Emo, infuriated him, Eric Grubbs decided to try and do the ’90s post-punk scene justice with his own history. Post is a work in progress, but publisher Mission Label will host this benefit so that Grubbs’ book can hit the streets sooner rather than later. Two bands whose leaders—former Braid members Bob Nanna and Chris Broach—figure prominently in Post will head the bill. When Braid broke up in 1999, the body was barely cold before Broach formed The Firebird Band anid the remaining three-fourths started Hey Mercedes, whose troubled run ended earlier this year. Nanna has since shifted focus to his former side-project, The City On Film, where he delves into understated pop instead of Hey Mercedes’ full-bore guitar rock. TCOF’s debut, In Formal Introduction, came out earlier this year. In The Firebird Band, Broach ditches guitars in favor of keyboards and drum machines, but the group’s sprawling, inconsistent album, The City At Night, suffers a bit from its own ambition.
-Kyle Ryan

Comments

Anonymous said…
city on film has a new ep -- www.redderrecords.com -- know if it's any good?
Eric Grubbs said…
If it's from Bob with City on Film, you can pretty much guarantee its goodness.

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J

Hello, Control

I'm still a big fan of iTunes . I haven't tried Napster , Urge or eMusic as I've been perfectly happy with Apple's program ever since I downloaded it two years ago. However, an annoying new feature has come up with its latest version, 7.0. Whenever you pull up your music library, a sidebar taking up 3/4ths of the screen appears plugging the iTunes Music Store. Why is this an annoyance? Well, first and foremost, since you can't close the sidebar, you can't escape it. I believe a music library is a private collection, a spot away from the music store. So what's the need for constant advertisements and plugs? To provide a better visual, let me describe what I see whenever I pull up a song in my iTunes library. When I listen to "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans, I see a graphic for Left and Leaving , the album that it comes from (and available in the iTunes Music Store), along with a list of the Weakerthans' other albums,