fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
Even though I enjoy a few albums that rely pretty heavily on programming, and despite the fact that I actually own a drum machine, I don't know much about electronic music. I'm just not all that familiar with the style. So now that I've spent a good deal of time enjoying Tilian's decidely electronica Material Me (as predicted here), [...]
Given my ties to the band, I suppose I should start out by saying that I am, obviously, biased in favor of all things Gates. If that's too close a bond for you, that's fine. You're more than welcome to head somewhere else on the internet to read any number of glowing reviews of Bloom [...]
Given the occasion, I'm going off of schedule a bit here with a special Friday music post. I've been a big fan of the band Gates for a long time. Their thunderous brand of post-rock is emotionally and intellectually engaging and basically embodies everything that I love about music. It also doesn't hurt that their vocalist/lyricist/guitarist [...]
Meghan Trainor's debut EP Title arrives on the scene squarely at the intersection of contemporary pop and nostalgia. Like a lot of its pop contemporaries, the album is heavily processed and rigidly structured with everything in its appointed place to an almost mechanical degree. And yet the backbone of the EP is its doo-wop inspired, throwback-to-the-'50s [...]
I was recently introduced to the music of Hail the Sun. It's fun, it's fast, it shreds. That's really all you need to know. Because I'm old and grumpy and like for the things that I own to have physical form, I pre-ordered their upcoming full-length, Wake, on CD. And then, only a couple of days [...]
It may be that I've talked music with the Brothers Dye more than I've talked about...anything else with...anyone else. Yeah. That sounds about right. So when I was in the car with Matt over last weekend, we talked about music a lot. A. Lot. And as is often the case, Matt recommended a bunch of ridiculously [...]
Over the weekend I traveled to Chicago with my friends Matt and Brenda in order to attended all three days of the Riot Fest music festival. The whole weekend, held in the Windy City's Humboldt Park, was a strangely segmented affair and trying to turn all of my thoughts from it into one cohesive piece seems not only painfully [...]
For reasons that are not entirely clear to even me, I spent a small chunk of last night playing Red Faction. To those of you unfamiliar with that title, suffice to say that it's a video game from 2001 and, perhaps unsurprisingly given all the technological advancements in that medium in the past 13 years, [...]
When I was younger I would listen to the same CD on repeat for hours upon hours and days upon days. I would come home from school and go up to my room and before I sat down to do my homework, play video games, or watch the Red Wings I'd hit the PLAY button on [...]
There is a certain anxiety inherent to a new release from one of your favorite bands, especially if it's a reunion album. The upside is obvious - you're fairly likely to enjoy a new album from a band that you already like. And yet what if you don't like the new release because it, in no [...]
Songs & Stories 