Jeremy Ryan

Wooden Shjips: Wooden Shjips EP (Retrospective Album Review)

Jeremy Ryan
October 8, 2012October 8, 2012

Growing up in semi-rural Washington, specifically in the early nineties, I was always surrounded by a dumbfoundingly random array of neighbors. There were always a collection of traditional red-state, tractor-towin’, shit-kickin’ Republican families; an abundance of well educated, upper-class elitist families (they may have referred to themselves as familial unit, or whatever happened to be politically correct at the time), and a host of hard-to-peg inbetweeners. However, regardless of whatever neighborhood I found myself in, there was always a Camaro or Trans-am sportin’ bad ass. Read More »Wooden Shjips: Wooden Shjips EP (Retrospective Album Review)

The Dodos: Visiter [Album Review]

Jeremy Ryan
October 14, 2008May 8, 2023

A friend of mine recently pointed out how quickly disposable today’s technology has rendered music. Though this statement appears to be quite obvious in a superficial sense; i.e., gone, for the most part, are the days of unwrapping a new album and listening to it’s contents with entirely fresh ears, excitedly perusing the record’s album art and lyric sheet. It is also true in that, given today’s technology, after a few listens, if a record doesn’t catch one’s ear, one artist is conveniently and quickly replaced by another (or twenty others). As a young teenager, I purchased a number of deplorable records (ahhemmm, I’m looking at you, Stone Temple Pilots), and, no matter how bad they were, I repeatedly listened to them, desperate to hear some melodic nuance, some clever lyrical phrasing… shit, something that made me feel like I had not just blown fifteen hard earned dollars.