***"You know it and I know it: there’s more trouble coming every day. So what are you hoping for in a record? Escape? Encouragement? Endurance? How about a grinning shrug, a wordlessly shared cigarette, a song that says, 'Wow you’ve had a rough year, huh?' This is Poking a Hole in a Bag of Tears by Columbus, Ohio’s Son of Dribble. It’s worn in and memorable, insistent but at a respectful distance. There is so much trouble in these songs: unexplained scars, mistakes repeated, sickness. And sure, Son of Dribble aren’t quite able to repel the despair, but they are very good company in the rain. It has to do with the dogged stomp of the drumming, the lingering melody of the guitars, the buzz and the momentum. And it has to do with that faded croon, a kind of singing that makes the slightest kindness feel life-altering, a kind of singing that makes the worst story you ever heard just kind of drift past you. Poking a Hole really thrives in this push/pull. There’s plenty of space for wallowing and jostling both on this record, but it doesn’t actually do either. The effect is maybe most like a good old dog? That companionable trotting right at your hip, that sense of not quite understanding the details but very clear on the mood. And then every once in a while it can’t resist, it takes off running, eating up ground with such speed you almost feel like you don’t know...
LP $27.35
02/07/2025
***On only their second full-length album, Son of Dribble make the case for IMMEDIATE induction into the Columbus, OH Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Not any easy feat when you’re following acts like Cheater Slicks, Great Plains, New Bomb Turks, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Times New Viking, etc. etc. Like their Columbus forefathers, SoD effortlessly take the guts of classic American garage rock and rearrange ‘em inside the body of the darker side of UK post-punk. No one would call The Birthday Party a “blues band”, but it’s there. Beat Happening wasn’t a ‘60s girl group, but that’s there too. It’s all there in SoD. The skeleton holding everything together is SoD’s ability to take all of those moods and create sounds completely unique and their own. The same knack for pure rock’n’roll melody the Strokes were figuring out in 2001 is the same sorta thing you’ll hear from SoD, but with more of a penchant for warped pop weirdness. Recorded mid-pandemic in 2021 by the band and engineer Zac Szymusiak at “Heartbroke Rij” (an abandoned house with no electricity or running water that the band converted into a practice space/studio), “Son of Drib Against the Wind” sees the trio of vocalist Andy Clager, guitarist Darren Latanick and drummer Vicky Mahnke art-garage-rocking through 12 tracks in just under 44 minutes. After welcoming second guitarist Mike Nosan into the band permanently, Son of Dribble begins 2023 with a string of live shows and plans to record new material as a...
LP $23.50
02/17/2023