Bryan Master//Let Me Come In

Return to the Local: Local Music Friday
What's up with Local Music Fridays?

Wow, where does the time go? Mine went to New York for the week to hang out with good friends, take care of wedding loose-ends and eat/drink my way through the city.

Just before I left, I had the pleasure of attending a new friend's album release show at the lovely Hotel Cafe in Hollywood.

You guys know that I have the tendency to get down on LA. More and more, I'm feeling like my fate is sealed. I may just not be a "Southern California person," whatever that means. And yet, I've really met some amazing, smart, talented people in the two short months I've been here. Bryan Master is, without a doubt, one of them.

Bryan just released a beautiful, sometimes twangy, sometimes a little ambient record. The songs have big, strong hooks that pull you right along. The production is immaculate--at times a little cleaner than my ideal--but it really works with the way the songs build and disintegrate.

Here, harmonies fall right in over the perfect crackle of heavy tremolo, which at first makes me wonder if I'm about to hear the voice of Lucinda Williams. Instead Master is joined by an old favorite, Liz Phair, sounding weirdly...is that sweet? Yes, I think it's sweet.

The whole album is worth checking out. Get more info here.



Let Me Come In.mp3

I've been out too long.
Let me come in.

Liz Phair//Cinco De Mayo

Happy holiday!



Cinco De Mayo.mp3

Cinco De Mayo,
Burn out Ohio,
It wasn’t me this time
Letting you go.

Liz Phair//Fuck and Run

It’s Expletive Week, motherfuckers!!!
What does that mean? That means a week of totally offensive songs!
And what better way to kick it off with than with Liz Phair, a musician who used to write offensive songs and who eventually actually became an offensive individual?

Yes, Liz Phair totally sucks now. No one in 90s indie has managed or aspired to sell out quite as disgustingly as she has. Despite her recent attempted Lindsay Lohan-ization and entry into bland momhood, back in the Matador days, she was one crazy bitch who wrote many filthy songs.

Fuck, let’s face it, I probably could have put any Liz Phair song up here. There really isn’t a single one that doesn’t have some kind of curse word, describe some depraved sexual situation or throw a middle-finger up at the world . I remember when I first started listening to her in high school and I realized just what I was dealing with. It took a few spins to figure it out, but eventually I noticed—“Is that really what she just said!? OH MY GOD.”

When I was 16, I worked at my summer camp in the barn, tending horses and giving riding lessons. CD selection in the barn boombox was a much coveted position. Fortunately for me, a coworker and I were on the same page regarding our love for Liz Phair. We’d pop Exile in Guyville into the tray and crank it up, reminding each other that one of us would absolutely have to run back and skip “Flower” the second it came on, lest unsuspecting little children be in hearing range of Phair’s guttery filth. Loves it.

So, without further delay, I present the first selection of Expletive Week; a song about shameless promiscuity, emotional void and (perhaps too-young) one night stands.



Fuck and Run.mp3

And now....

Expletive Fact #1: While true etymology is almost impossible to trace, the word fuck has probable cognates in Germanic languages, such as German ficken (to fuck); Dutch fokken (to strike, to beget); Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and Swedish fokka (to strike, to copulate) and fock (penis).

I want all the stupid old shit; letters and sodas.