As far as folk met­al goes I think Grails are it. [Full dis­clo­sure: I still haven’t heard that Asun­der record that came out last year.] I was a big­ger fan of the Black Tar Prophe­cies comp art­work, but it goes with­out say­ing that Burn­ing Off Impu­ri­ties puts the impro­vi­sa­tion­al instincts and impuls­es they honed record­ing the EPs to good use. You can find my review of “Dead Vine Blues” at Paper Thin Walls here, accom­pa­nied by a short inter­view with drum­mer Emil Amos.

The Fad­er is a more or less use­less publication/viral mar­ket­ing rag, but they take nice pho­tos. Here are some of No Age at SXSW.

I hard­ly ever watch TV. I’m either woe­ful­ly late to watch shows [see Steve Car­rel­l’s The Office, which I thought I was the imi­ta­tion crab meat of com­e­dy. I was wrong.] Or I nev­er tune in at all [Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment. I’m still sor­ry. I bought and did­n’t Net­flix the DVDs but that’s no con­so­la­tion.] I almost com­mit­ted the same par­ty foul with Tina Fey’s near­ly can­celed 30 Rock, but I’ve been saved, spe­cial thanks to NBC’s prof­li­gate use of the inter­net. Phew!

Lis­ten: Dinosaur Jr. — Almost Ready

At the time fad­ing into his­to­ry seemed the prop­er thing to do. Dinosaur Jr. had lost the oomph that made those first three records dis­tinc­tive and vital touch­stones to any­one grow­ing up in the Nineties. After that, it was Mas­cis’ nasal drawl and gui­tar lead­ing the way to occa­sion­al moments of bril­liance. But it just was­n’t good enough.

Beyond, their first record since reunit­ing, isn’t all that great either yet some­how in hind­sight it makes me wish that they would’ve labored on regard­less, nos­tal­gia be damned, mak­ing one bad record after anoth­er, min­ing the same sound, the same mate­r­i­al, for­ev­er and ever, amen.

So what if that would’ve made J Mas­cis indie rock­’s Peter Framp­ton? Isn’t he any­way? Con­sid­er the alter­na­tive. Integri­ty isn’t a word that comes to mind when I think of Nickelback.

The inter­view with Masahi­ro Shin­o­da is essen­tial. Uget­su puts Dou­ble Sui­cide in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent light.