What crossroads have we come upon? Where marks here?
The vangaurds of Now Wave pop culture, weary at their posts, find that extolls of ‘Lifer’ rolled easier from the finger tips 23, 26, 27. It screamed all or nothing, and right now. It occupied. It moderated brand consumption in exchange for indignant conformity with a beanie on top. Knowing better than thou.
Now it’s twice-baked-style. Brand new Wayne’s World inspired flannels from Urban instead of tattered all black garments, patches and safety pens, bacon instead of saitan, bringing red blooded sexy-back. Let’s do this!
Hard to the Core
Milwaukee had always been good at promoting free-falling indignation. Put that book down. Get destitute and paranoid. Keep dirt behind your ears and under your fingernails. Let’s dig with the underdogs. Sprial downward, or you ain’t trying.
Now it’s I can’t believe them. What are they doing here… in their own neighborhood. I’m discriminated against. What about my rights? The Police are out to get me.
The scene-confusion has been remade into a stale long-form cable series. Always rantworthy but hardly ever sneerworthy, has Bremen finally died the slow death of suburban stripmall mainstream?
New, Dirty Socks
Rebirth and regeneration of prior music movements keep gormadizers nibling on crumbs left from those note-tending minds shaving the edges off of music cycles.
These dudes Coyote Armada have a hand on that grindstone. They stopped through Milwaukee on the way to nowhere in particular, and ripped off a few chunks of their second EP How not to be Lonely, a medium long-cut shag.
Ballad of Edward Snowden, Coyote Armada
In a sly embrace of the period transitioning from hippie-folk to blues rock that the late 1960’s had to offer, Coyote Armada douses their amplifiers with heavy and emotionally sardonic drifts between past and present memories of historical scars our society had endured, and left its offspring to heal.
Extremely self-aware for a band of their stature (basically no albums in) they are curious and exploratory of how and why the perponderance of these happenings connect to their immediate circumstances: this madness where we exsist, the organization of duties and daily routines, the subterfuge of implanted expections, of appropriate thoughts not to question, the American life course.
Maybe here they’ve been bestowed too much credit. Even if accidental, they work steadily on attuned nerves just the same.
Slander, Coyote Armada
Coyote Armada’s brand of Americana reps Indy, running against that town’s typical lanes of traffic, known for having rather shallow and staid fumes emitting from its county lines. By no means a knock, they trancend that atmosphere easily.
How not to be Lonely holds the kind of harmonic and lyrical mixture that allows it to be played through repeatedly, its rinse leaving a day’s grim in soapy water running down the drain while taking you somewhere profound.
Strange Phase
Coyote Armada has a traditional rhythm guitar and solo guitar prodigy, bass, and drum outfit. Then they throw in a violin and a wood box for the drummer to sit on and wack the shit out of, rocking sounds, especially live.
Bob Barrick’s remarkable presence leans cordially on his songsmanship, which is a notable quality. It’s somewhere between kitchy, cool and karaoke and thats a good place to chill.
Coyote Armada is Barrick, Josh Turner, Craig Middleton, Reid Swenson, Phillip Janz, and Patterson Day.
Local Trolley 
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