Aquabear Legion

Category: Record Reviews

  • REVIEW: Founding Fathers “Rapid Transit”

    REVIEW: Founding Fathers “Rapid Transit”

    Founding Fathers, “Rapid Transit” Snax, 2013 I’ve read a lot on the topic of increasingly non-geographical musical landscapes. Those days of 70’s, 80’s, or even 90’s scenes in cities across the country spawning great bands, venues, labels that shaped my own musical development have been replaced by an internet age where the concept of belonging…

  • REVIEW: Connections “Private Airplane”

    REVIEW: Connections “Private Airplane”

    Connections, “Private Airplane” Anyway Records, 2013 Take a quick glance at the cover of Connections’ debut LP and you’ll surely notice a hot pink biplane soaring across an empty sky. It’s a seemingly calculated piece of iconography that links this record to Dayton, OH, the birthplace of aviation and the ancestral home of legendary Ohio…

  • RECORD REVIEW: The Black Swans – Don’t Blame the Stars

    The Black Swans Don’t Blame the Stars Misra, 2011 Jerry DeCicca is one hell of a songwriter. He has quietly amassed a catalog of gems over the course of several stellar albums, an ep and a handful of equally stellar 7″ tracks that follow a solemn tradition, a niche of singer songwriters that defy categorization.…

  • REVIEW: Southeast Engine “Canary”

    Canary is the album I have been waiting for Southeast Engine to make. It is really good. Seriously. I have always had a great deal of respect for this band and Adam Remnant’s songwriting, but they’ve never before grabbed my attention the way this record does. In my almost 10 years in Athens these guys…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Wheels on Fire – Cherry Bomb EP

    This album seems like a demonstration of how deeply Wheels On Fire can worm four songs of their greaser surf-rock into your skull. It’s a cleaner break from the straighter rock sound of Get Famous!, and more in line with beach riffs of Liar Liar. (So much so that there’s a different version of a…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Orchestraville – Poison Berries

    Orchestraville were one of the premiere bands as I came of age in the dingy clubs of the early ’90s Athens music scene.  They stood out from crowd by infusing their music with quirky angularity and a much poppier feel than their contemporaries.  I had, at a young age, developed an affinity for XTC, and…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Whale Zombie – Whale Zombie LP

    The guys in Whale Zombie know what they’re doing. They’ve crafted a sound and persona that borrows from numerous characteristics of pop rock history while somehow maintaining an identity that’s all their own. Playing with the vigor of a bunch of teenagers who just bought their first battered secondhand instruments and the finesse of seasoned…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Megachurch – Megachurch

    “Holy shit! These guys are fucking awesome!” That was how I responded when I first saw Megachurch play live at last year’s Aquabear County Fair. That exact same reaction held true when I first heard this album. Their music is a punch to the gut. It hurts a little bit, but it makes you feel…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Tom Evanchuck “Tom”

    by Laura McMullen The first few songs on Cleveland native, Tom Evanchuck’s album, Tom, have lots of talk about train stations, roads, coming home, etc.—the usual sort of reflective, acoustic shtick. But at about two tracks in, it’s clear Tom makes it work better than most. Sure, there’s the Lonesome Dove sort of fiction lingering…

  • RECORD REVIEW: We March – Creator/Destroyer – Non-Prophet, 2007

    – by Pencil – Full length number three from Athen’s vanguard of punk/hardcore/garage/psyche, WE MARCH’s “Creator/Destroyer”, ranges from the speed and fury of 80’s H/C punk to scrappy garage stomp and murky psyched-out jams, but don’t think for one second that this is anything but the most scathing Punk record you’ve heard in a long…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Percolator – Man is Not a Bird, 2007

    – by Brian Wiebe The relationships we have with music are as varied and complicated as the ones we have with people.  Sometimes a song or album is love at first listen—swooning as I hit repeat for the fifth, sixth, seventh time—enraptured in immediacy.  Other times, the relationship takes a little while to develop.  Maybe…

  • RECORD REVIEW: The X Bolex – This Time Next Year You’ll Be Oxidizing Stone – Tower Control, 2007

    – by Brian Koscho – The X Bolex began as a solo project for then Small Object a drummer Nate Scheible while he was still living in Athens, Ohio. But, The X Bolex is now a full band made up of  some of the greatest musicians in the Cleveland music scene. Nate also co-runs Zombie…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Machine Go Boom – Music for Parents – Collectible Escalators, 2007

    – by Brian Koscho Cleveland’s Machine Go Boom has been one of my own personal favorite bands for years. Music For Parents is their second album after 2004’s Thank You Captain Obvious, both were recorded by Paul Maccarrone at Cleveland’s Zombie Proof Studios. Machine Go Boom’s music is an audio sugar rush, with band-leader Mikey…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Southeast Engine – ” Wheel within a Wheel” – Misra, 2007

    Adam Remnant, Southeast Engine’s principle penman and visionary, is a Dayton native living currently in that mythical berg of Athens, OH… a town often described as sleepy, dreamlike… you get the picture. Let me tell you about the Remnant’s house: piano, keyboard, drum here, drum there, harmonica, violin, organ… zounds of guitars. And that is…

  • RECORD REVIEW: Casual Future – “Footnotes in the City Lights”

    On their debut album, Casual Future gets into character as musicians from the slacker set, slinging well-penned quips filled with cynicism and absurdity, while keeping pretty level heads.  It’s a well-balanced act owing much to lead singer Scott Spice’s almost ho-hum delivery, dancing drunkenly over lyrics finely calculated and clever.

  • RECORD REVIEW: She Bears – “I Found Myself Asleep” – Self-released, 2009

    She Bears is a six-piece band from Athens, Ohio who have found their voice with their new release I Found Myself Asleep. I had the opportunity to play several of their earlier shows with them in my former band Casual Future, and one thing that stuck out to me was how good they sounded then.…