Clik here to view.
KETTLEHOUSE: BEER STEEPED IN ROCK AND ROLL.
Double Haul IPA: Decant or Drink from can.KettleHouse started in a modest version of its current Myrtle Street location in the second half of the 1990s as you-brew place, with nice stainless 10 gallon...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PUNISHMENT: FREE MUSIC
Wm. Statler.Sound collage, performance art, exceptionally self-aware pop weirdness and a whole host of other adjectives of my own devising are popping up in my mind-brain while attempting to truly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PRIDE OF THE PEACE GARDEN: MR. DAD
Mr. DadMr. Dad remind me thoroughly of what excited me so much about the Boston band Fat Day: intensity, brevity, and the ability to create a weird parallel universe that exists for about eleven...
View ArticleClik here to view.
GET BLESSED: DIVERS
I was told two things before writing this post: 1) Divers have this habit of being pegged as too "indie" for the punk crowd or too "punk" for the indie crowd and 2) Everybody loves comparing them to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
TOTAL IS TOTAL: NAOMI PUNK
naomi punkEverybody says grunge. I don't think that's it, man. Naomi Punk, yeah, they come from the Great Northwest (Olympia, WA), but just because you play something that looks like a jagstang in a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
KITTEN FOREVER PURRS AS THEY EVISCERATE
The most difficult question I'm asked is "who are you stoked on for this year's Total Fest?" Part of me takes offense to the question. I'm stoked for every band who plays each year. The variety and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
FIREBALLS OF FREEDOM: AS TOTAL AS IT GETS.
Kelly Gately, Fireballs of FreedomAside from having an album called Total Fucking Blowout and being the band that many of us cut our underground punk rock show teeth on, the Fireballs of Freedom have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
IS IT? IT REALLY IS
Like fellow Iowan's Slut River, Sioux City's It Really Is continue what I guess might be called a thing now, this weirdo Midwestern punk explosion that can and often does sound like chaos, but a chaos...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SWEET LEAVES: BENNY & THE JET RODRIGUEZ
Rewind a handful of Total Fests ago and these people, this self-proclaimed "pot-punk" band from San Pedro, totally took me by surprise. I feel that's the general consensus with how Total Fest works...
View ArticleClik here to view.
TOTAL LOCAL: MAGPIES!
I think Vanek sums up Missoula's Magpieshere, where he leads with "The Magpies are one of those bands that you're certain you've heard before the first time you hear them. They've got that built-in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ELEGANCE IN LEISURE: ANCIENT FOREST
To start off I'm gonna quote myself from a review I wrote on Weird Missoula a while ago: "Ancient Forest reminds me of the Tolkien-obsessed eco-folk of Tyrannosaurus Rex...leisurely singing songs in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD TO CANDYLAND: DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM
Maybe I've lost track of how many times I've seen the Underground Railroad To Candyland, but I think that means that they've just become like one of those reflexive things you do to stay alive, like...
View ArticleClik here to view.
TOTALLY SPASTIC: THE BUGS
Portland's The Bugs are one of those bands who somehow remain mind bogglingly obscure. Paul and Mike are perhaps two of the most honest and genuine folks playing music. They've been cranking out fun,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
EVERYDAY SINNERS: WHAT DECADE IS IT?
How many words do pictures say?The Everyday Sinners were a late '90s/early-oughts Missoula band that played scuzzy rock and roll notdissimilar to something like the Rip-Offs or, I don't know, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SMILING IS TOTALING.
Smiling, photo from future-breed.comOur friend Anna set us up with this newer Seattle band called Smiling and said they were playing some of her favorite tunes out there currently. I think Max also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BAD FUTURE: GOOD TIMES AHEAD
Post-punk is one of those labels that gets tossed around so much that I think it's officially lost its meaning. I'm sure other folks have proclaimed the death of the genre so let's leave that right...
View ArticleClik here to view.
TOTAL COMBINED WEIGHT: SHORT SHORTS AND RAWKING RIFFS
Missoula's dad noise quartet Total Combined Weight (they seem to like the term man noise but something about dad noise sits better with me) boasts a lot of things, but they're claim that "we will out...
View ArticleClik here to view.
VOLUMEN.
bCKAWCK and fans.Dedicating a few paragraphs here to a band like Volumen is a kind of ridiculous thing in a number of ways, here's why: I can't think of any other Missoula band over the last roughly 20...
View ArticleClik here to view.
DESERT DOOM: DEATH MOTH
An over-saturated Polaroid. Dreamy, desert-fried blues. Death Moth inhabit a world that's both mysterious yet infinitely familiar, bridging gaps between rock and country and soft-psychedelia that were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
EVERYTHING LOOKS BORING: VHS
Self-described "gloomy analog garbage" seems a pretty simple (and apt) description of what Seattle's VHS throws together but you gotta listen harder, buddy. There is some serious depth at play here,...
View Article
