WAIST DEEP IN THE BIG JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #356!

STOP THE PRESSES :: It’s a good thing I hack these columns out a week in advance, otherwise my last few all-nighters at the 25th Annual Folk Alliance Conference—spent under the knowledgeable wing of publicist extraordinaire Heather Kitching—would have had me too knock-kneed and knackered-out to be my usual alliterative run-on sentence self. So stay tuned in the weeks to come to as I tell you all about some of the best and brightest artists you’ll ever have the distinct pleasure of hearing. We now return you to our regularly scheduled column, which is joined already in progress:

nd that’s why this tepid piece of tripe is the worst record I’ve ever heard!

Bruce Willis – A Good Day To Die Hard (20th Century Fox) :: Best computer-assisted car chase since 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded. Coolest helicopter scenes since 1983’s Blue Thunder. Most obvious 3D stunts when viewed in 2D since 1953’s House Of Wax. Thank heaven for five buck Tuesdays!

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: My Gold Mask – Leave Me Midnight (Goldy Tapes) :: Word on the superhype street has it that MGM “singer Greta Rochelle has been compared to Siouxie Sioux and Courtney Love” and that “their sound has been called goth garage”—which is all well and good if you’re looking for a snappy press release pull-quote. Me, I dimly recall them saying similar things about Japnopop band Sandii And The Sunsetz back in the ’80s and they missed that refugee boat by a country mile as well.

That said, there’s no denying that MGM do have a distinct Banshees sheen to their dense echoing sound, but I’m here to tell ya that the proceedings ain’t all angsitified doom-laden gloom by a long shot because on tracks like “Burn Like The Sun” I hear an atmospheric power pop patina worthy of The Diodes just aching to break free. And “Lost In My Head” is nothing less than a subconscious tip of the Hatlo hat in the direction of above-noted Hula mistress Sandra O’Neale via the Sadistic Mika Band—not that they’d ever admit it, of course.

So forget what all the experts say and listen to me instead when I tell you that My Gold Mask’s Leave Me Midnight defies all expectations by taking you where you least expect to go along the most sonically scenic route your ears will ever hear—and if that’s not a snappy press release pull-quote, then I don’t know what is!

Be seeing you!