The first time I saw Kevin Devine I was not impressed. He was without a backing band and he was wailing away over acoustic songs that nobody knew. It was over a decade ago so it was easy to dismiss him as a product of the time; capitalizing on a recent trend of sappy ex…
House of Blues Boston 11/12/14 The Final Tour? Sounds like something Gob Bluth put together, right? Come on! Heads up, this isn’t really going to be about Anberlin. Well, no more than anything else you can read here is about what we’re supposed to write about. What am I talking about? I’m the master of…
Why play in Harvard Square once when you can play it 3 times?! I haven’t seen a show at The Sinclair since it opened a couple years back, but it’s a pretty nice, intimate venue. It was a good setting for the tour opener, who was of course, Lucero! The By the Seat of Our…
Fig. 1 Aside from being what I wish I had majored in at college ‘Snake Oil Superscience‘ is an awesome album. It’s heavy, spooky, fuzzed out and it makes me feel like I’m surfing with the devil (see fig. 1). The Mad Doctors are from Brooklyn and they sound kind of like I imagine Sabbath…
Did you know the Counting Crows are still making music? Probably not, right? Don’t you lie to me. After bursting on the scene in 1993 with August and Everything After, their popularity has gradually decreased, not surprising since their first album, fueled by “Mr. Jones” (yeah that song is over 20 years old now) sold…
Every so often I flip to the back of a Rolling Stone to check out the Top 40 and I don’t know why because it never fails to disappoint me. Nearly everything on there is complete shit. It’s the same story with the vast majority of radio stations and MTV, as well. Sure you’ll…
Ryan Adams is back with his 14th solo album, this time a self -titled job, named after himself for no particular reason other than his inability to come up with anything better. His first solo album, Heartbreaker (named after a Mariah Carey poster), was released all the way back in 2000. Since then he’s averaged…
Two bands that I love. Two bands that I wrote about in a negative light within the past year. I was let down by The Gaslight Anthem’s Get Hurt for not meeting my admittedly high expectations while Against Me’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues, well, just wasn’t very good. But seeing them live wasn’t something that I…
I was going to keep writing about new albums, in this case Conor Oberst’s Upside Down Mountain, but part of the mission statement of Empty Bottle Evenings is bringing to our (imaginary) reader’s attention bands and albums that are underrated, overlooked, or just bitchin’ tunes. Don’t worry, I’m even more uncomfortable using that last phrase…
Summer is almost over so before we’re all forced into pretending we like Pumpkin flavored everything, I decided to do some listening to one of my favorite summer bands, the Rx Bandits. I think of them at this time of year partly due to personal experiences (seeing them live multiple times in the summer, listening…
