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Johnny Polygon — The Nothing

<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal;mso-outline-level:1″><span style=" Times New Roman” ,”serif”;mso-fareast-times=”” new=”” roman”;=”” mso-font-kerning:18.0pt;mso-fareast-language:es-bo”=””> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal”> The Nothing is a smart, subtle and cohesive album that suits Polygon’s always formidable flow. He clearly has bought into the Clams Casino mode of hazy hip-hop production, and it’s a smart choice; his voice has always moved like […]

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Mac ’n’ cheese

Photo: Brad Elterman Things can move pretty fast — faster than you want, sometimes. Just 22, Canadian garage rocker Mac DeMarco recorded his 2012 debut EP, Rock and Roll Nightclub, as a personal, private experiment of Ramones-influenced power pop slowed to a creep, and brandished the cover with a lipstick-smearing selfie. An unexpected hit, it […]

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Samantha Crain — Kid Face

Likewise, her music sounds like the kind of earthy Americana that could have emerged from any of the last five decades. Both her vocal efficacy and reverential know-how have been and remain a testament to the uncommon maturity of her skill set. But if anything was holding the Shawnee native back, it was her aversion […]

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Cave in

“They say no news is good news,” sing The Caves, and given the six-year gap between the Kansas City, Mo., band’s loose formation and the release of its first record, Duplexiaville, maybe they’re right. The Caves find its players abandoning their earlier ties to harder rock, instead spending their lengthy off-season honing sweet harmonies, subtle […]

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Listen up

1. Parker Millsap and Michael RosePalisadeWhile it’s been another great year of quality Oklahoma releases, no one had quite the star-making performance that Millsap did with Palisade. The humble, 19-year-old Purcell native went from unknown to local favorite in less than half a year, thanks to his Tom Waits howl of a voice tearing through […]

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Classic Albums: Peter Gabriel: So

To Classic Albums newcomers, the franchise delivers the “definitive authorised story” of a culture-shaking disc in feature-length form, relying on video clips, concert footage and many a talking-head interview from the talents who were there, on both sides of the studio glass. In this case, that includes Gabriel, other musicians, members of the tech team […]

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Toby Keith — Hope on the Rocks

For many years, on my late, lamented Colorado-based radio show, Damaged Hearing, whenever I felt like especially annoying the decidedly unpatriotic community-radio audience, I would sing along, loud and proud, to Oklahoma-born Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” Of course, the more I would sing along to the song, the more I […]

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Happy Record Store Day Black Friday!

But they, too, can participate in the nation’s annual orgy of mass consumerism by heading to their local indie record store Friday for extremely exclusive musical goodies that will probably go for three times as much on eBay the next day. An offshoot of the popular Record Store Day event, this Black Friday addendum includes […]

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