BACK IN THE SADDLE/WORLD SERIES OF ROCK/TOP TEN OF 2015

2015 wasn't a bad year for The Royal Basement, by any means. I've had some inspiring chats with some incredible folks. I've taken a "news" hiatus over the last few months due to busy times with various holidays, other projects (working on an album, playing drums with Ghost Pains) and a pretty intense trip to Kansas City for most of the month of October to catch a Boys Life reunion and ending with a Kansas City Royals World Series victory. I was lucky enough to watch all of the ALCS and World Series back in my hometown of Kansas City, surrounded by the absolutely insane and exhausting energy of playoff baseball and mounds of fantastic Kansas City barbecue. (I was in KC for 18 days, and I believe I had various forms of BBQ for 15 meals over the course of those 18 days, cholesterol be damned.) Basically, normal life stopped for a good portion of the month of October, and baseball took over. Tears were shed, and my beloved Royals won the World Series. Writing that still doesn't even feel real. 

2015 was a pretty grand year for musical output, as well. While I can't say that any records I've heard this year were life-defining records (those come fewer and farther between after your 20's), I'm thrilled with the wide range of things that fell into my ears this year. I found myself with a list of about 40 things that I had spent varying degrees of significant time with, trying to whittle them down to a nice round "top ten". Here's what I came up with. 

THE ROYAL BASEMENT'S TOP TEN RECORDS OF 2015
(in no particular order)

• 10. The Velvet Teen - All Is Illusory (Topshelf)

• 9. Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Style (Matador) 

• 8. Here We Go Magic - Be Small (Secretly Canadian)

• 7. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Multi-Love (Jagjaguwar)

• 6. Major Games - Major Games (self-released)

• 5. Swervedriver - I Wasn't Born To Lose You (Cobraside)

• 4. Swami John Reis & The Blind Shake - Modern Surf Classics (Swami)

• 3. Sam Cohen - Cool It (Easy Sound)

• 2. The Dodos - Individ (Polyvinyl)

• 1. Dungen - Allas Sak (Mexican Summer)

 

New podcast up with Trapper and Tanner Schoepp!

Catching up on some podcasts that I've recorded but needed to get published for a while. Milwaukee's best (Trapper Schoepp and The Shades) were in Seattle a couple times this year already, and I managed to win a coin toss and get them down in the basement for some late night chats and song-singin'. Head over to the podcast page to hear us talkin' baseball, big boots and just plain goin' bossanova. 

The Death Of The Ipod: WHY???

Pitchfork has an interesting article up now about the classic iPod experience and Apple's phasing out of the iPod. It's a pretty great read, in that it's calling Apple out on regressive thinking and essentially pulling the plug on the development of the iPod. I personally believed the iPod would continue to be developed over time, and would gain more storage (which is only getting smaller and cheaper as time goes by) to the point where we were carrying 1 TB drives in our pockets, stocked to the brim with music. When Apple stopped making the 160 GB iPod, we probably should've seen the writing on the wall, but I foolishly hoped they would make a move over to SSD storage and continue to build bigger devices. 

The death of the iPod only makes us miss out on a truly uninterrupted music experience. There are no notifications, no flashing/blinking/buzzing lights to call us away from the enjoyment. The distraction of moving on to a new album that's streaming somewhere isn't there. It's not a perfect music listening experience, by any means, but it's a lot closer to perfect than streaming something on a phone, both in terms of sound quality and in the beauty of that disconnected solitude.

Enjoy your iPods while they're still spinning, folks. 

New Releases: MONARCHS "Citizens" EP

Mike Gallacher is a man from Tacoma, Washington who currently resides in Detroit, Michigan. We've been friends for a good long time due to circumstance (weddings, road trips, happenstance and location have all factored in). Sometimes, friendship explodes out of nothing, and next thing you know, you've hit the ground running full speed with a new buddy who suddenly feels like family. Mike has been that sort of friend for me. (It also doesn't hurt that he's a wizard with all things guitar-related and my go-to guy for any sort of gear-related questions.)

So, Mike has been working in secret on a new EP for a good while, and finally has it released to the public. The band is called Monarchs, and the EP is called Citizens. I've asked to hear this stuff for months, and none of my requests have gone answered, so I'm thrilled to finally hear this monster he's been working on behind closed doors for so long. The songs are bombastic and leap out of the speakers with life, hovering wonderfully in that same hooky anthemic-but-angular territory that J. Robbins was mining with Burning Airlines, while vocally taking after a more maladjusted Bob Mould. 

Put your ears on the new Monarchs EP here. 

The Royal Basement Podcast Episode 3: Chris Murphy of SLOAN

We recently sat down (technically, stood up) and chatted with Chris Murphy of power-pop legends SLOAN before their show at the Tractor Tavern. 

Click here to go take a listen!

The Royal Pick for October 17, 2014: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. at The Tractor Tavern

I've never been a giant fan of bands who rely on laptops and synths as their musical foundation. Coming of age in a post-Nirvana world, it's been engrained in me to feel a great sense of distrust with any band who may have backing tracks or just a little too much polish. However,  put some incredibly tasteful songwriters at the head of the project (who also manage to produce giant, complex sounding songs whose layers compliment rather than compete), that red warning light in the back of my head flips off and it's a lot of fun. 

Detroit's Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. happen to be that exact beautiful combination, creating perfect plastic pop with legitimately moving/clever songs hidden beneath the sheen. On record, it's a giant, whirring machine that spits out post-millennial Pet Sounds harmonies atop glitchy loops. In a live setting, the band has an incredible polished live show with flashing "JR JR" lights across the stage and giant synchronized video projections, but they aren't afraid to light the fuse and let their songs blow up into bombastic rock and roll. The world of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. truly is a beautiful dream, melding progressive electronica with indie pop in wonderfully unpredictable, anthemic fashion. 

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. and Miniature Tigers play tonight, October 17, 2014, at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle. Tickets are $16.

Welcome! Vilkommen! Bienvenu

Greetings from The Royal Basement! Take your damn shoes off.

If you're wondering "what the heck is this", The Royal Basement is an audio zine/blog/podcast located in a basement in the Seattle, Washington area. It is the love child of one Greg Franklin (that's me), who has written for Seattle Weekly/Village Voice/The Pitch/a bunch of zines you've never heard of since the mid-90's. 

Things are a little dusty around these parts as we get up and running. We're currently archiving oodles of old content, working on new reviews and features, and trying to pay a healthy amount of attention to our beloved Kansas City Royals. 

We've got brand new podcasts up with Robb MacLean (Limbeck/The Young Dudes) and John Cobb. Go listen to them over here at the podcast page. Both Robb and John did some acoustic sessions for the podcast and played some of their favorite songs, as well as talking about their musical origins. They're a real hoot, and I'm thrilled that they could both be on. 

We've got more podcasts coming up really soon, as well as more concert reviews and record reviews and other good-feelings a-plenty. Keep in touch with us.