The News Review:
- Gogol Bordello: Concerts and Music Events on washingtonpost.com’s…
- Business EP Jet Lag Gemini
- For Blood and Empire
- My Musical Life: A Chronology
Gogol Bordello: Concerts and Music Events on washingtonpost.com’s…
Washington Post – Jul 14, 2007
NWWashingtonDC202-265-0930Music Type: RockInformation:202-265-0930Price:$28OverviewAll-over-the-place Gypsy-punk from a New York group with ties to Eastern Europe and a penchant for accordion. Read Editorial Review.
Business EP Jet Lag Gemini
Aversion – Jul 14, 2007
It?s not really the band?s fault. Business just doesn?t have enough perspective to do anything but parade the same attitude riffs and energy as the last five or six years of pop-punk favorites. For Jet Lag Gemini and its peers pop punk is music: These dudes were barely out of diapers when Green Day released its first album and only aware of the pop-cultural wars in a limited primary-school way when Dookie made it big. A world without pop punk isn?t in Jet Lag Gemini?s memory banks. Nonetheless it could have dug a little deeper than pop punk Gold Records and Weezer wananbes to form this EP. Jet Lag Gemini mines the airwaves and the buzz-bin for its inspiration coming off as yet another third-rate pop-punk outfit here to stretch a tiny bit of life out of the style?s twilight years; in fact Business is just business as usual in the pop-punk front. ?Geared for Action? builds a shaky bridge between metal-obsessing pop punk acts like Finch and gummy punk-lite with big rhythm guitars and smokin? leads only to coat it in enough production-side sugar to turn it into a breakfast cereal.
For Blood and Empire
Aversion – Jul 14, 2007
Forget about the contradictory notions of an avidly leftist unabashedly anti-corporate punk band throwing its lot in with Sony BMG a multinational company that cares more about keeping investors happy than fighting the good fight. Put aside the label and scene politics and look at For Blood and Empire?s music. Does Anti-Flag deliver the music and social commentary that it did on its past couple albums for Fat?You better believe it does. The Pittsburgh band returns with a 13-track dose of melodic punk and an uncompromising political agenda. While the band?s melodic side gleaned from a huge stack of So-Cal skate punk and Berkeley pop acts keep For Blood and Empire relatively user-friendly they conceal some of mainstream punk?s most pointed lyrics. Think Crass or Conflict coated with a little skate-park sugar and some East Coast pepper and you?re most of the way there. Even if you?re a confused Christian pseudo-punk more in tune with praise-punk acts like Reliant K Anti-Flag?s pop-punk energy and melodies ought to be strong enough to carry this album in tunes like ?The Press Corpse? with its bopping rhythms and sing-song vocals and ?One Trillion Dollars? with its acoustic intro and pure-sugar vocals.
My Musical Life: A Chronology
Filter Magazine – Jul 14, 2007
” She lets me touch her vagina under an Afghan while we watch Sid and Nancy. I am four months away from smoking my first joint. Twelfth Grade (four months later): My friend Raye gets me stoned and we listen to Led Zeppelin III over and over again. It gets “too real. ” I am thirteen years away from quitting marijuana. Twelfth Grade (two months later): Raye discovers the Sex Pistols and Pixies records I borrowed from Erin… 2002: A wave of Patriotic fervor sweeps the nation. Like in Nazi Germany sixty-five years before country music tops the charts. Then the inevitable happens: Larry the Cable Guy becomes popular. 2003: I eat a hash brownie at a World War IX show. Guided by Voices break up. I never touch pot again.