In the current climate of ruthless blog scrutiny, good records can easily disappear with little or no press and supposedly major albums are forgotten within weeks of release. With that in mind, we bring you Second Spin, where we’ll take a look at records that have either slipped between the hype cracks or re-evaluate albums after the press cycle has left them for dead. (The occasional just-released rave may sneak in there, too.) This time a compilation provides a look at the current crop of “pop-punk” bands escaping the attention of both the radio and the blogosphere.
Recently, I wrote a piece attempting to link various poppy, punkish bands like Be Your Own Pet and Times New Viking into some kind of subaltern united front for 2008. After finishing, I realized I had unconsciously slighted a large swathe of underground-ish pop-punk that’s already all but been written off by my music hack peers, that I snubbed an entire scene to focus on a few semi-pop faves with a decent press push. I should have known better. Somewhere, 16-year-old Jess was drumming his fingers on a study hall desk in irritation that his grown self had seemingly forgotten these catchy, sweetly sardonic, seven-inch-friendly songs about girls, boys, and the dumb things they routinely do to one another, songs that made high school tolerable for many bespectacled kids left cursing the fates come prom time. MORE »
In the current climate of ruthless blog scrutiny, good records can easily disappear with little or no press and supposedly major albums are forgotten within weeks of release. With that in mind, we bring you Second Spin, where we’ll take a look at records that have either slipped between the hype cracks or re-evaluate albums after the press cycle has left them for dead. (The occasional just-released rave may sneak in there, too.) This time we look at 51 tracks of “grindpop” from some Brooklyn art-punks, 20 tracks of grind minus the pop from two Seattle misanthropes, and 25 tracks of hardcore hip-hop from an ATLien with a very different definition of “grind.” 
Until the end of the year–hey, that’s only four posting days!–we’ll be devoting our Second Spin column to running down albums from 2007 that somehow slipped through the blog posts, great records that we never got to mention until now. If you’re looking for something to spend that iTunes gift card or record store certificate (do they still do that?) on, consider these our late-breaking recommendations. We start with three underground dance LPs, two of them full of up-to-date club cuts and one that dropped 25 years ago and may out-groove (and definitely out-freak) them both. 
In the current climate of ruthless blog scrutiny, good records can easily disappear with little or no press and supposedly major albums are forgotten within weeks of release. With that in mind, we bring you Second Spin, where we’ll take a look at records that have either slipped between the hype cracks or re-evaluate albums after the press cycle has left them for dead. In this installment, Michaelangelo Matos gets into trouble with a classic rock and roll songwriting team, surveys the current “cosmic disco” trend, and is introduced to an eight-member Kenyan rhythm machine. 
In the current climate of ruthless blog scrutiny, good records can easily disappear with little or no press and supposedly major albums are forgotten within weeks of release. With that in mind, we bring youSecond Spin, where we’ll take a look at records that have either slipped between the hype cracks or re-evaluate albums after the press cycle has left them for dead. In the first installment, Michaelangelo Matos chills in the superclub’s VIP lounge, vacations in a soul motel, and gurgles and boings to a minimal techno soundtrack. 