Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book
Harper Collins
9/10
Beautifully illustrated, delightfully creepy, wonderfully written- Neil Gaiman has done it again. His love of the macabre has transcended into yet another novel depicting otherworldly happenings. The Graveyard Book is a tale of a boy, orphaned at a young age, and adopted by a graveyard. Gaiman uses his delectable talent to spin a coming of age tale in an unlikely place.
Nobody Owens doesn’t know where he came from, or why someone is out to get him. His adoptive parents found him in the graveyard as a …

In Flames
The Warfield
San Francisco, CA
November 21, 2008
In Flames is by far one of my favorite bands. I’ve liked their music for some time now, but never really got into them until I saw them live the first time at Sounds of the Underground in August ’08. Since then, I’ve seen them a total of 4 times, and their live performances have never really seized to amaze me. This show was different for me. Every time I’ve seen them, in the past, has been back at …

Powderfinger
Dream Days of the Hotel Existence
Universal Music Australia
8/10
The phrase “pop rock” is usually an oxymoron. There is nothing poppy or smooth about rock and roll. At least the kind that makes you tap your feet and scream from the bottom of your lungs. What passes for real rock and roll these days is a watered down, corporate version of music that was popular when our parents were still in college. Not Powderfinger. Despite what the album jacket of their new album Dream Days of the …

Twilight
4/10
It’s delightful and ridiculous, beautiful and stupid. Set in the town of Forks, Washington (and filmed in Oregon, the cheating bastards), Twilight is a love story both fantastical and utterly false. It’s a trap, made to make young women swoon and young men victims (I can hear the arguments- “Why can’t you be more like Edward Cullen?”). I both hate it and love it, and I find it hard to rate.
The rational side of me has one main problem with this movie- how can someone, a seventeen year …

Lustra
What You Want and What You Need
X Off Records
7/10
Some bands were made to rock. From the moment they walk on stage and strum a few chords, their deafening guitars silence the crowd and cow onlookers into submission like a beefy Greco-Roman wrestler. Lustra is one of those bands. Rising from relative obscurity in Boston, they have managed to carve a niche for themselves as one of the few ’00 groups willing to bring their A-game to the rock and roll party. But even as they release …

The Lobby, an up-and-coming local comedy troupe, will be celebrating their three year anniversary this weekend at the Stages Theater in Fullerton! The Lobby is a six man comedy team and has been performing and wowing audiences all over Orange county and the Inland Empire. In honor of this awesome occasion, Saturday’s show will also be featuring prize giveaways and competitions, as well as a special guest. Aside from their live shows, the Lobby also offers a pod-cast style free-form talk show for free on their web-site. I haven’t listened …

I’ve become very fond of the quote “Be the change you want to see in the world” (Ghandi!). It seems as relevant now as it ever did. While the time for voting is over, and the word seems to be an ever-increasing cliché, change is still something that is constant and necessary. Each and every day people speak of unthinkable horrors in the world- poverty, famine, economic downturns (I kid). And yet, what is done?
Certainly not nothing (egad, a double negative)- there is a multitude of people worldwide who …

Ane Brun and Tobias Froberg
October 30th
Hotel Café, Los Angeles, CA
It was more café, less hotel on a brisk October night. The drink of choice after-dark at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles appeared to be alcoholic, instead of the usual café ambiance of a cup of coffee. Beers started lining the walls and people were ready for some music.
Tobias Froberg, the Swedish sensation kicked off the night which I could imagine sounded like a throw-back acoustic introduction into the wonderful world of mellow rock. I say imagine because …

Kenneth Ishak
Silver Lightning from a Black Sky
5/10
This album by Norwegian Kenneth Ishak is both lush and beautiful. It is filled with layers of dreamy soundscapes on each folksy number. It’s also dreadfully boring. Did I listen to the entire album? No, couldn’t stand to. I did listen to half of it, and what I heard gives me the impression of someone trying way too hard. From the album cover, to the title, to the contrived poetry of the lyrics, I get the sense that …

Friends don’t let friends tour without each other. After exchanging demos back in the day, these musical buddies from Europe pride themselves in making good music and performing in front of live audience on their own terms.
Racket Gail: I saw you guys’ show last night, it was really good.
Ane: Oh, thank you.
RG: So how you think it went last night?
Tobias: Bad.
Ane: [Laughs] it went really well.
RG: What was your favorite part of night? I mean, when people were part of the show? What do you remember most from …

Everyone wants a vampire lover… it’s not just me. With a movie coming out following the hit book series of Twilight, I thought I could fill you in on the obsessive trend I’m depressingly a part of. The release of the final book, Breaking Dawn, brought hundreds of thousands of women to bookstore release parties and long lines within the first 24 hours of the release, which also seemed to bring huge publicity to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, which includes three other books- Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse.
The first …

Since forming as a band in 2001, Two Cow Garage has developed a reputation as one of the hardest working–and partying–bands in the nation, having logged over 300,000 miles on the road in their search for rock and roll success. Now that they’ve cracked the Billboard Top New Artist chart, the quintet (Micah Schabel, Shane Sweeney, Chris Flint, Andy Schell, and Cody Smith) are poised to take their brand of alt-country riffs and blue-collar lyrics mainstream. In a phone interview, I sat down with the band and discussed …

XXTeens
Welcome to Goon Island
Mute Corporation
7/10
For some, the XXTeens are yet another experimental band looking for airplay and a write-up in the local alt-weekly newspaper. But it could just as easily be argued that they are possibly, one of the best up-and-coming bands in the Western World, certainly miles apart from the popular bands that get airplay on cable and satellite. Granted, that is big claim, and not one that should be made lightly. But with their debut album, Welcome to Goon Island, they prove that they have the cajones to …