Welcome to Review Revue, where every Thursday I dig through the KEXP stacks to share DJ reviews and comments written on the covers of LPs (and occasionally CDs) in the ’80s and ’90s, when the station was called KCMU, the DJs were volunteers, and people shared their opinions on little white labels i…
Welcome to Review Revue, where every Thursday I dig through the KEXP stacks to share DJ reviews and comments written on the covers of LPs (and occasionally CDs) in the '80s and '90s, when the station was called KCMU, the DJs were volunteers, and people shared their opinions on little white labels i…
Every time I look at this album cover I wonder if I should post it or not. Given the losses the Ramones suffered in the 21st century, the title and image takes on a new bittersweetness, and one or two of the 1984 KCMU DJs' comments take on a harsher edge than probably intended. That said, the stati…
Yet again I find myself stumbling in way over my head, with the "discovery" of a band that I'd really love to read a whole book about. Portland band Theatre of Sheep was quite the local phenomenon 30+ years ago but never quite made it, leaving behind some self-released, hand-packaged records, a lot…
Filigree & Shadow was the second album released by the loose 4AD collective This Mortal Coil. As with the third album, which I covered here eight years ago, label head Ivo Watts-Russel teamed up with some current 4AD artists (including members of Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and The Wolfgang …
This week's installment of Review Revue -- as is often the case -- finds me learning about all sorts of things I never knew existed, most of which are listed in the title of this very post. Bill Nelson and Daryl Runswick? Never heard of either. Scala? Brond? No idea. And yet due to the technologica…
Ah, it's time for another dip into the "Bands Levi Really Should Have Been Paying Attention to at the Time" file. I can't tell you how many Red Lorry Yellow Lorry records I flipped past in my teenaged record-store-digging days, and I'm sure I heard them on one of our fine local college radio statio…
There's not a lot out there in Internet-land about Third Circle - or even about their label, Rouska - despite the fact that pretty much everybody at KCMU in 1986 seemed to agree that their debut release was some version of "good." Discogs and this one other blog post agree that Third Circle was mos…
I've probably said this before, but this is kind of the perfect Review Revue album. Released on RR favorites Shimmy Disc (see also here and here and here and here and oh yes, over here), featuring members of Half Japanese, partially recorded at Inner Ear studios (okay, that's more of a me thing), b…
In 2018, KEXP celebrated the 30th anniversary of local record label Sub Pop with a four-month retrospective, "counting up" every catalog number in their vast discography of over 1,200 releases. Dig into the archives of our catalog coverage, featuring in-depth coverage on the history of their releases.
