Skip to main content

Phantom Limbs

What do Sprouts Potato Co Kettle Style Chips..Truffle Flavor Number 10, "Sweet Tangy" "Crispy Crunch" chips taste like you ask? Well, I'd say that one of their parents was in the sour cream and onion family while their other parent was in the (mesquite) barbecue family. When you take a whiff of the freshly cracked bag there's no real seasoning fragrance, just chips and oil. How crunchy are they? Well, previous bags of Sprouts that I've had came off as a more airy kettle cooked chip..for some reason this bag comes off as your standard mid weight kettle cooked (I find this odd, maybe my previous tastings of other flavours tainted me and gave me unachievable expectations with regards to actual chip [either way the chips are still good, not too greasy with some crunch]). The seasoning for the most part is on the light side..which is when I taste more of a SC&O than mesquite..but the odd chip is fairly well seasoned and the mesquite barbeque is more at the forefront. I don't believe I've ever had a truffle and I'm not exactly sure what it's supposed to taste like...but I would have not guessed these chips. They're a decent bag of chips, nothing to write home about (though apparently sufficient for a blog) but good for a salt fix with inoffensive flavour.

The Slow Death are a fantastic band. Their 2011 debut album Born Ugly, Got Worse is catchy as hell and was one of my favourite albums of 2012 (it kept popping up on peoples top 5 lists in late 2011..early 2012 so I figured I'd check it out and was more than pleasantly surprised [yes it came out in 2011, but it's 2012 to me dammit]). There's something about Jesse Pretty Boy Thorson's delivery/songwriting that lends it a country influenced sound without really sounding like country. Slow Death are a (midwestern..Minneapolis) punk (think pints of beer and gruff vocals) band with rock, country, blues influences. They consistently deliver mid to up tempo bangers. Although Born Ugly is still my favourite (and IMO the catchiest) of their three albums, No Heaven (2013) and 2017's Punishers are nothing to turn your nose up at (they're just slightly darker [the lack of Annie Sparrows vocals on Punishers may have contributed to that.). Outside of Jesse Thorson, band membership hasn't been all that consistent (He's the only consistent member [Annie Sparrows was on the first 2 albums {I'm not sure if I had forgotten or just didn't know, but yet another Mikey Erg contribution on Born Ugly..Zack Gontard was also on that album}]) but since Jesse has been the driving force behind the band the sound has been fairly consistent. (Now that I think about it, due to the band lineup, it's not much of a surprise that Born Ugly's my favourite). Well, go check out The Slow Death and..

Stay hydrated,
Marc

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stairway to heaven 2

Dear Diary, I was in Dollarama last week picking up some last minute..well it doesn't really matter why I was there. Anyway, as I was in the line for the checkout and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a blue bag that I'd seen a million times before. For some reason this time, it's unassuming blue on blue top with stock photo potato chip bottom intrigued me (that in addition to it being 280g for $2). I thought, to myself, 'hey, they carry Covered Bridge..maybe these Made in Canada "D Gourmet" potato chips are some other high end chip that just happens to be carried in dollar stores.'. I proceeded to take the $2 leap and threw them in my basket. Within an hour of getting home I had cracked the bag and was happily consuming. These D Gourmet Salt & Vinegar potato chips were for lack of better term, pretty run-of-the-mill. The chips are somewhat sterile, no well done chips and no skins, and fairly lightweight. The seasoning is faint but fairly well di...

The End of All Things

 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...

Antoinette

 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...