Brat Curse delivers a fizzy, bubbly, raucous, wild good time.

Brat Curse's sophomore full-length got a lot of play by me earlier this summer and then got displaced by the realities of currently being unemployed and a bunch of other stuff.* I had put them on the back-burner since I got the album in the spring, but it wasn't due to be released until August. So I offer my apologies for only talking about them now, because they should definitely find a place in your own regular music rotation.

The quartet hails from Dayton, Ohio and—in keeping with my personal experience with Ohio-based musicians dating back to my donewaiting days—Brat Curse's members are also in a slew of other regional bands. Their new album is self-titled, which means either they've jumped the shark or have latched onto a perfect formula for their sound.**

In the case of Brat Curse, Brat Curse is firmly in the latter camp. Thank gawd.

Brat Curse speeds by with 12 songs in 30 minutes without sacrificing subtleties frequently lost by other bands attempting the same economy of songwriting. The guitars buzz and saw back and forth, holding up hooks defiantly nosing their way forward of the din. It's a collection that in a parallel universe would spawn hit after hit after hit, so let's bend our reality to a different plane and make that a reality. If you dig energy that's on the side of controlled musical spasms that expand and contract, rushing you along from one song to the other, you'll love this.

As good as the album is, I get the feeling the band is even better live, though I can't know that for certain since the majority of their "touring" is limited to the Ohio region. Their publicist does saw "the band will tour extensively in the second half of 2019" though, so that opens up hope those of us not in Ohio will have a chance to catch them in the near future.

Until then, give Brat Curse a listen below. It's currently available, along with most of their catalog, as a free download, though if you really dig it, as always, you should throw a couple bucks or more the band's way.




*Speaking of which, if you know of anyone—agency or in-house—looking for an Associate Creative Director or Sr. Copywriter in the Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, or San Francisco areas, please feel free to send every opportunity my way!

**Think of it. Usually self-titled albums that are not a debut are meant to "define" a band, but more often display a group that is stagnant and hoping some new direction will revitalize their work. Just sayin'.

Monday motivation.

Photo via Carly Rae Jepsen's Instagram

It's a rainy, dreary day in Chicago. The good news is that means my call to wait until today to water the plants at K's house while she's out of town was a good one! (Silver lining FTW.)

I have a few things on the docket, writing-wise, this week. But I've been up since 4 a.m. and am champing at the bit to hit the gym. When you're unemployed, routine is really important—more about that later this week—and starting every day off with a good workout does wonders for my mood.

So for today I figured I'd just share a recent tune that seems to straddle the positives and negatives of today's weather. It's winsome but optimistic, and the chorus is one of those things that gets stuck on repeat in your head and might brighten up your day with it's drive. Plus, it features Carly Rae Jepsen, so it's obviously a win-win of a tune.

Happy Monday, and may this morning set your week up for happiness and success. No Monday blues here, only Monday motivation!

Let's take a peek behind the scenes into why music festivals cost consumers so much money.

I've been marinating on a piece about music festivals—primarily Lollapalooza—and wondering where most of them go from here. I've been thinking about artistic choices made by festival booking agents, but I admit I hadn't really thought about ticket pricing since that doesn't seem to act as much of a deterrent to attendees.*

Luckily for me The Economist comes to the rescue, opening my horizons on the subject with the video above. I would've gotten around to this angle eventually, but they did some of the initial legwork for me. Hee. Check it out as I continue to work on my longer piece about mega-fests in general.


*My primary hypothesis is that line-ups are so similar amongst big fests it's growing obvious music is the secondary draw when it comes to getting people inside the gates, so ticket pricing hadn't really initially registered with me. The interviews with attendees in the video supports that notion, and kinda breaks my heart a little. And makes me thankful there are still a handful, albeit shrinking, number of festivals like Riot Fest that focus on the music as the draw, then provide an experience on the grounds to support fans having a good time. But the main focus at a festival like that is the music, not the party.

The Lilacs prove their classic sound will never go out of style.

The Lilacs. Still busy rocking. Still playing clubs with static, single-color stage lights.

Ken Kurson and David Levinsky form the core of The Lilacs, a Chicago power-pop band releasing their first new music in over 25 years. The Lilacs Endure is a 4-song EP that sees the group picking up exactly where they left off, crafting timeless little guitar crunchers that are sticky as warm bubblegum on a hot summer day.

The group’s sound is exactly what you’d expect when you consider Kurson once played bass for Chicago legends Green, and Material Issue’s Jim Ellison provided the band with their name and produced their debut 7” The Lilacs Love You, released way back in 1991.

I’ll admit I’m new to the band, which is odd since they ran—and presumably now run again—in many of the same musical circles I do. But you can certainly count me as a fan now. My initial take on the new material, before I read any of the band’s history, was that they sounded like a slightly more aggressive version of The Pooh Sticks, a Welsh band that was primarily a studio project with a rotating cast of musicians giving voice to the fictional band members a la The Archies or, well, Gorillaz. Theirs was a shaggy sort of pop that had roots in the late ‘70s with multiple nods to other artists, and The Lilacs share some of that musical DNA, albeit with a more focused and organic approach.

It’s wickedly fun stuff.

“Monica” is the lead track off the new EP, and though the video was posted months ago I’m betting you, like me, never saw it. So check out the video below. Want more? Sadly the band seems to be avoiding my streaming player of choice (Bandcamp!) so there’s a Spotify stream below, though those are always wonky once you step outside the player. No matter, it’ll bring you to the EP one way or another … and you want to hear this!





The Lilacs will celebrate the release of The Lilacs Endure at Phyliss’ Musical Inn on October 19 at 9 p.m. The new EP is out now.

In the nighttime.

Photo by Dara

Chicago has been lucky this summer. We're closing in on the tail-end of August so I feel secure I'm not going to jinx us too thoroughly with this observation. While much of the U.S. has dealt with miserable heatwaves and storms, we've had lovely weather most of the time. It's my first time in a decade living somewhere without central air, and I've only had to turn on my window AC unit a handful of evenings this year.

Mostly I just sleep with all the windows of my apartment wide open, inviting in the soft late night breeze and oddly, the sounds of nature.

I live in the city proper, blocks away from both an expressway and an L station, yet if I close my eyes in the middle of the night all I hear is the steady buzz of nature punctuated by the occasional cricket chirps. The thrum of the cicadas is heaviest around dusk and melts away to a pleasant hum by total nightfall. But once I block out any visual stimuli I swear I could be lying in a tent in the middle of a forest in some remote location.

It's peaceful. It's soothing. At times if I really give into the aural quilt it's almost like floating in a sensory depravation tank with a new age soundtrack constructed from the fabric of the outdoors. My breathing slows. My heart rate drops. It's meditative. It balances out the uncertainty of the daylight hours and helps me recharge. So much so that I'm back to waking up at 5 a.m. every morning feeling fully refreshed and eager to make some coffee and bounce out of the door toward my gym as quickly as possible.

And I'm grateful.