Circles Around the Sun are coming in for a landing at SLO Brew Rock next
Thursday, May 6. These far out LA cats are consummate musicians who last year dropped their third studio full-length, a self-titled follow-up to 2018 s
Let It Wander and 2015 s
Interludes for the Dead. click to enlarge Photo Courtesy Of Circles Around The Sun
TASTY JAM Instrumental jammers Circles Around the Sun play an intimate, seated show at SLO Brew Rock, on
May 6. Before COVID-19 came along and smashed the live music industry, Circles was headlining big venues like the Brooklyn Bowl, NYC s the Beacon Theater, and LA s Echoplex. Seeing them in SLO Brew Rock is a pretty big deal, especially since this is a table-seated-only show, meaning very few people and a lot of socially distanced intimacy. In fact, no single ticket
This is the second release that Tuba Skinny member Max Bien-Kahn has done in the past six months under the Max and the Martians banner, and they couldn’t be more different: Last year’s
Stay at Home Demos was made for the moment, a set of Covid-themed songs with a proudly homemade sound; while this more-produced album is in a more timeless power-pop vein.
There’s still a Covid reference or two between the lines or maybe it’s just that any album that begins with a reference to sitting in a burning building is bound to sound timely in 2021. But these songs are all concerned with the classic pop topic of romantic loss. No idea whether Bien-Kahn was going through a split when writing these songs, but it does play like a model breakup album, and the emotional tone is in fact miserable from start to finish. That doesn’t mean it’s a depressing album, but it does mean that the hooks and grooves are there for reassurance as the singer picks up the pieces.
The second studio album from All That Remains,
This Darkened Heart, was released on March 23, 2004 (Prosthetic / Razor & Tie). The band’s debut record,
Behind Silence and Solitude, as well as its third release,
The Fall of Ideals, are very good records in their own rights; but it is their sophomore release that stands in a category all its own.
So, All That Remains was first listed as a “Heavy Metal” band, with
This Darkened Heart listed in the genre of “Melodic Death Metal.” Later, the band would come to be known as one of the first bands of an evolving sub-genre known as Metal Core, while the vocal style of