Related Recs

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jason isbell's documentary "runnin' with our eyes closed"

I don't know many recovering alcoholics who are so open about their struggles with sobriety; the challenges of being married to and creating with someone who's also in your band (Amanda Shires, who has a solo career of her own); being away from your little daughter on tour; opening up about the weight problems you had as a kid; allowing a film crew to come into the studio and watch the painstaking process of creating an album (during Covid, no less). I love how raw and ragged this is, how emotionally "wet" the paint is in parts, and that Jason is brave enough to let us all inside to see. I loved Drive By Truckers ("Goddamn Lonely Love" anyone?) but his solo work is just *chef's kiss*. This doc kind of explains why and showed me so much more than I expected to see. And it's playing on planes too, ha.

@coreydubrowa

Jan 25, 2024

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Jason isbell

His music is like a comfort food for me and I often turn to it in times of transition or turmoil. Highly recommend the remastered edition of his 2013 album Southeastern!!

@sunnypinwheel

Aug 16, 2024

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the solemnity of bruce springsteen's "nebraska"

Caveat: I'm not a midlife-crisis "Brooce guy." But every so often I return to his four-track, almost-demo LP "Nebraska" like it's a prayer. To call this a "shock" when it was released in 1982 is a huge understatement. "The River" (the LP just before it) had been a huge hit and he was poised for superstardom, which would come on the NEXT album, "Born in the USA." In between -- Bruce discovered the TEAC 144, a four-track home recording device that nobody was using at the time and disintermediated the studio process. He had originally thought this version of these songs would be presented to the E Street Band as demos, they'd learn 'em, and record them in the good ol' E Street way. But they didn't. They went out just like this -- spare, skeletal, almost entirely acoustic solo sketches of desperate American lives poised on the brink of disaster and cataclysmic change. The title track is about a convicted murderer awaiting the electric chair (based on the all-too-real spree killer, Charles Starkweather). The rest of the album is equally as dark, which is a near-complete contrast with the energy and optimism Bruce and the band were known for previously. In one night -- January 3, 1982, in a rented ranch house in Colts Neck, NJ -- Springsteen recorded "Starkweather" (later, "Nebraska"), "Atlantic City," "Mansion on the Hill," "Johnny 99," "Highway Patrolman," "State Trooper", "Used Cars," "Wanda," "Open All Night," "Reason to Believe," "Born in the U.S.A." (acoustic), "Downbound Train," "Child Bride," "Losin' Kind," "My Father's House" and "Pink Cadillac" for a total of 16 songs, 10 of which ended up on "Nebraska." It remains punk AF and I can't imagine being someone of Bruce's artistic and commercial stature at that point just lobbing this home-recorded thing out into the world and then not even touring behind it but moving on to the next thing.... which was the album that turned him into a Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Bowie-level entertainer. (It remains one of the top-selling albums of all time while "Nebraska" may be one of his least-selling records despite having made it to number 3 on the Billboard charts). When I think about our country -- the good, the bad, the ugly -- this is the album I turn to. And I know for fact that so many artists who would (much later) record albums at home or in their basements or closets -- Elliott Smith, Lou Barlow, Neutral Milk Hotel, Mary Lou Lord, Cat Power, anyone who ever traded in "alt country" like Wilco or Son Volt or Drive-By Truckers, etc -- were almost totally obsessed with this album as a starting point for their songwriting craft. If you haven't heard it yet, it's here in its entirety. It's not only the best thing I think Springsteen will ever do, it's one of the best LPs ever recorded. There have been months at a time ever since where I listened to almost nothing BUT "Nebraska."

@coreydubrowa

Apr 25, 2024

Top Recs from @coreydubrowa

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When your new book is finally available for preorder ❤️

Hey tyler hopefully this doesn’t violate some PI.FYI golden rule But after nearly two years of writing, editing and arguing, my book about the EP is coming out in May and can be preordered here: https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/ The book is about the origins, history and cultural impact of the EP since these little objects first started coming out in the 50s. Over 50 of my music biz friends then helped me shape the list and review the top 200 ever released, according to us (ha). For those of you who are into this kind of geekery/snobbery, I can’t wait to hear what you think. A labor of love, as all books are! ❤️

@coreydubrowa

Mar 27, 2024

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The cure announcing their first album in 16 years by PUTTING up a single poster outside the pub in crawley UK where they played their first gig

“Songs Of a Lost World” coming to a goth listening station near you Nov 1 🖤 The fr FW Me Friday the 13th the world was looking for

@coreydubrowa

Sep 14, 2024

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Unwound

I will fail to explain just how much this band meant to me in the 90s. So I will borrow from AV Club who did a fine job of distilling it: “Unwound is the best band of the ’90s. Not just because of how prolific, consistent, and uncompromising it was, but because of how perfectly Unwound nested in a unique space between some of the most vital forms of music that decade: punk, post-rock, indie rock, post-hardcore, slow-core, and experimental noise. That jumble of subgenres doesn’t say much; in fact, it falls far short of what Unwound truly synthesized and stood for. Unwound stood for Unwound. But in a decade where most bands were either stridently earnest or stridently ironic, Unwound wasn’t stridently anything. It was only itself. In one sense Unwound was the quietest band of the ’90s, skulking around like a nerdy terror cell. In another sense it was the loudest, sculpting raw noise into contorted visions of inner turmoil and frustration.” R.I.P. Vern Rumsey. This is their finest song, from their finest album. I really can’t say enough about the sheer bloody minded genius of this group. 🖤

@coreydubrowa

Mar 23, 2024

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