Tales of the Salty Bag

 I am not an expert on Nomeansno, but I can tell you this..their music can be quite difficult to get on physical media (LP, CD or otherwise [unless you want to spend somewhat spicy money]) in Canada. Luckily, Alternative Tentacles reissued Wrong. Now, cross border shipping is still muy caliente, but enough distros picked it up in Canada to allow me to put Wrong into my record collection this year. Nomeansno (since 1979) played (ended 2016) chaotic punk rock that I want to say fell into hardcore, but they were far more than a single genre. Wrong is unconventional for a punk band to say the least. The bass is lively as hell, with a tone that's absolutely perfect. The drums know when to get weird and when to kick it into overdrive. I don't know if it's jazz or funk, but there's something in the mix that if Nomeansno wasn't so aggressive it might feel pretentious..instead they're just odd and make me wish I had the opportunity to seem them live. Lyrics are talk sung...

 Uglies chips are funny. Their marketing is (and this is paraphrasing) that they take the unusable/waste chips and produce their chips out of those leftovers. "Reducing waste and helping fight hunger". To me, their potato selection is pretty on par with other smaller scale/independent brands... so I'm not quite sure who's throwing out the potatoes that they make their chips with, IMO the potatoes/waste they use are the good ones. So yes, Uglies, 170g bag (nice size, not too small, not too large). Thin chip but crunchy. Oh, by the way this is about Uglies Salt and Vinegar flavored (yes, no u, these are imports that in Canada are usually found at Winners [at least when I've seen them]). So yes, decent amount of skin on these little kettle cooked chips... fairly white in colour chips. They have a nice white vinegar tartness. I picked up a somewhat granular salt texture when I was consuming. I feel Uglies are no more janky than your average bag of kettle cooked (good...

 I came home one day to find a bag of Nosh & Co Buffalo Wings & Blue Cheese flavoured potato chips on my countertop. F'in eh. I've been thinking about them for a while, but didn't crack the bag because I didn't want to go off phone notes for the review. So it's finally time. They smell like buffalo sauce. The ridged mid weight chips have a nice crunch. The first chip I had I felt the seasoning was pretty weak so I was sort of disappointed. But as the saying goes, it gets better. The first one appears to have just been a dud while the remainder have relatively generous seasoning. The flavour is your standard buffalo wing and blue cheese; a bit of buffalo hot sauce bite, slight sweetness and a relatively good dose of blue cheese (like 66% hot sauce, 33% blue cheese [+/- 10%]). These chips are quite fine, and at a 130g bag they're looking out for your health, hah. I'm one chapter away from finishing Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime  by Dan Hancox...

 At the end of 2023 I saw Quit It! play in Winnipeg at the Handsome Daughter. I typically try to catch the opening bands, because I like being introduced to new music. One of the opening bands was Leon's Getting Larger, LGL (not sure if they ever abbreviate their band name like that [it reminds me of LWL, the Jersey pop punk band from the late 90s early 2000s, I'll Always Remember the 6th is such a banger {LGL doesn't really sound much like LWL, other than a bit of off center pop sounding...where was I going with this}]) were really fun to watch and they produce a sound that I don't hear very often coming out of Manitoba (maybe I just typically run in a different musical circle?). Anyway, Leon's Getting Larger put out their first album late last year, You Be Good Now ...which saw a vinyl release earlier this month (February 2025). I ordered a copy and it came to my door late last week. This album's great. Leon's Getting Larger has a couple singin' voices...

 About a week ago a friend at work gifted me a bag of Neal Brothers Original corn chips, "so good together" and organic (thanks J.). There's a few bags waiting in the bullpen, but I let these jump to the front of the queue since they were a recommendation. Not much for fragrance. The corn chips look as shown on the bag, sort of thick chips in shellish shapes. They're a good few mm thick. I threw one into my mouth and was met with the crunch that I anticipated, an airy but crunchy corn chip. The yellow corn flavour is there and quite pleasant. They tasted salty, good salty (not overly salty, but salty enough that I thought I'd be looking at a high teens to low 20% per 50g when I looked to the back I was quite pleased to see that they're only 10% (25% fat) per 50g. Fluffy (not like cotton candy, but like, not as dense as say a Doritos [or most corn] chip), salty, corny. These chips do bang. Now lets see how they go with salsa. Forbidden Beat Distro had been oper...

It happened. I started wondering if it ever would. It's been 16 years. People who were born after 4:13 Dream became teenagers and started driving between 4:13 and Songs Of A Lost World. Am I complaining that The Cure took 16 years to put out another album? No. They don't owe me anything. If Lost World never came out that would have been perfectly fine. Mr. Smith and his cohorts provided the world with hours and hours of fantastic music. In 2024 they added 49 minutes and 16 seconds into their absolutely amazing catalogue. A lot of the lead-up to Lost World spoke of the darkness of the album, the very few reviews that I've glanced at have mentioned the darkness as well. Like, I sort of see it, but to me, it's more of a heavy album (not like metal heavy, more so that there's some serious weight to this piece of art) and sonically epic soundscapes. There's a lot of brightness in the music and vocal melodies. Don't get me wrong, the lyrics are super bleak and if ...