With June shaping up as an excellent month for new album releases, I’m in between jotting together a few potential reviews at the moment. As these albums require more detailed listening and examination for the sake of an informative dissection, I’m often lacking the time to hear many other 2015 releases at the same time. What I often do in this case is stockpile a handful of EPs, for the obvious reasons that they take less time to listen to. By pure coincidence, I came across 3 consecutive EPs last week that were all acoustic based. For the record, I enjoyed all three, which were recorded by Pvris, Brigades and State Champs.

I recall looking at the track-listing for the State Champs EP (titled ‘The Acoustic Things’) and being disappointed that only one of my highlights from their album ‘The Finer Things’ was included. Yet, upon listening to the 7 included tracks, I found that the tune ‘Simple Existence’ stood out. I wondered why I had not included that as an LP highlight, so I went back and listened to the electric version. The answer was simple? The acoustic version was better!

Without harping on the pop-punk goes acoustic factor, it reminded me of a couple of years back when I was listening to the discography of (arguably middling) Massachusetts quintet A Loss For Words. Sure, they have a knack for a catchy hook, but so does 90% of pop-punk bands. The…

It’s been a while since a Davey-moderated ‘Sputnik Discusses’ went interactive and took a look at the best album art of all time, but fear not; I’m still sitting in a dark room somewhere thinking up discussion topics. Filling the breach for one of my missing weeks was our very own Lord of Brostep, Sir. Will Robinson, with his blog concerning life in college and a lot of cursing. I kid, I kid. Thanks to Will for stepping in, and if you are yet to read his thought-provoking discussion on hip-hop lyrics, I urge you to do so by clicking here

Today’s topic is a genuinely tough one for me to write about. I mean, I’m never wrong… So how the hell can I personally convey any situation where I was incorrect on anything? I guess that if I had reached school-age yet, I would have been wrong on Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson, but even the statute of limitations would have forgiven me for that one by now. Plus, this is a music website.

I guess the closest time that such a music-related phenomena occurred was back in the mid-2000s when I heard Toronto punk rockers Billy Talent for the first time. Call me narrow-minded, but I just felt that it would be near impossible to overcome such negative first impressions of a band. Owning a voice that will be despised much more than it is liked, it’s an…

Hello, wonderful users/contribs/staff/mods/lurkers/mx, and welcome to another edition of Sputnik Discusses! Davey’s MIA this week (my money’s on him having to stave off Australia’s terrifying wildlife), so I’ll be doing whatever I can to prompt and moderate the discussion this time around. I’m in the midst of our school’s “reading period,” which is essentially the lull before the maelstrom of finals in which we study as frantically as we can and/or procrastinate as frantically as we can, so I’ll hopefully have some time to respond to as many of you as I can in the comments section. Don’t be surprised if Davey manages to poke his head in here or there, though.

I’d like to broach the topic of potentially offensive or hurtful lyrics in hip-hop because that’s been a topic of contention on my school’s campus as of the past few weeks. A bit of context: Princeton University’s Undergraduate Student Government (USG) hosts a day-long festival called Lawnparties every fall and every spring, in which various campus organizations invite about a dozen artists to perform on a certain part of campus known as Prospect Ave. This past iteration of Lawnparties, held on Sunday, featured Detroit rapper Big Sean as the headliner. The choice was a divisive one. Almost immediately, a small but significant portion of the student body began to protest his selection, calling on our USG to “take down Big Sean.” According to Duncan Hosie, a junior and one of the students who spearheaded the protests,…

Fear not; ‘Sputnik Discusses’ has not been retired just yet. This blog’s absence over the past fortnight was simply due to the most deadliest of all diseases: the dreaded man-flu. Let me tell you folks: It got me good and proper this time around. You know that a music lover is sick when they’re just lying there for days on end doing nothing at all, yet can’t muster the energy to throw on an album or ten as background music. The dreaded lurgy isn’t completely gone either, so I had to think of a way to turn my lack of writing – and thinking – energy into a positive. What I’ve decided to do is write on a topic that I have no real strong feelings on, thus leaving the majority of the discussion up to you! It’s therefore fitting that the topic at hand actually came from one of you… So much thanks to elcrawfodor for the suggestion.

More than that however, ‘Sputnik Discusses’ is going even more interactive than it already is. It’s simply not enough that you get to write what you want in the comments section. In this discussion’s case, some of your responses will actually make the blog itself, since I will update it (most likely on a daily basis) as the discussion heightens.

So what is the topic of discussion at hand? Well, as the title suggests; It concerns album art. Even back in my purchasing…

Fear not everybody, your second favorite weekly blog (Dev does run a mean ‘New Releases’ post, after all) has returned following a week’s rest over Easter. In its place was the staff’s quarterly mixtape (brilliantly compiled by Jom), which can still be listened to in all of its glory by clicking here.

Today, I thought I would chat about something that is very dear to my heart: Guilty pleasures. In all honesty, I dislike the term… Mainly because no-one should really feel guilty for liking any kind of music. If you like it, you like it… And it should be as simple as that. But, of course, life doesn’t usually work out that way, and there’s always someone just around the corner laughing at you for listening to a certain song, before they abruptly snap that “Your taste in music sux”. Sometimes, this so-called fact comes as a shocking revelation, but most of the time we are actually in on the joke and are listening to something purely because we enjoy it.

Over the past couple of weeks, I posted twenty videos from the Soundwave festival which I attended last month. While I probably wouldn’t say that they were the best act I saw, the one which gave me the most enjoyment may well have been Papa Roach. Now I know that some of their releases are just plain crap (see my two star review of their sixth LP ‘Metamorphosis’), but…

Before I begin today’s column, a huge thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s discussion concerning “favourite lyrics”. It was by far the most popular ‘Sputnik Discusses’ thus far and I’m certain that many readers found it as enlightening as I did. Also, an apology if this particular column comes off a little half-hearted in comparison. In between reading all of those fantastic lyrics, writing 4 reviews and putting together a literal smorgasbord of live videos from Australia’s recent Soundwave Festival, it’s fair to state that my spare time has been scarce of late. Oh well, let’s see how it goes, shall we?

As per my usual orderly want to link my blogs, I’d like to point your attention towards last weekend’s Soundwave Festival post, which included ten live videos from Day-1 of the annual Australian event (My Day-2 wrap will be posted by this weekend). Just attending the festival got me to thinking: If given the choice of only one, would I prefer to get my dose of live music by way of (a) festivals or (b) headline gigs (with one or two support acts)? In all honesty, my decision on this has wavered from year to year… And there are more factors that go into the choice than one might initially think.

Now, a musical purist might feel that there is no competition in this debate. Surely it’s all about the music and a band’s “true”…