Author: paulsbrizzi

The advent of streaming music gifted me the amazing world of shuffling, where an unseen force plays DJ and on a good day magically comes up with a perfect playlist of earhole joy. iTunes and Spotify have pulled me ever-further from sitting down with a full album, and I do miss vinyl’s sense of pageantry,…… Continue reading March ’22

Mercury and Venus both finished their tiresome retrogrades, so early in the month, before a new wave of death and destruction was unleashed, it was finally OK to get back to ordering cute things from Amazon, and to go on dates. And there were dates… a few of them actually. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y1BAPr-oBZA I’ve been fixing up…… Continue reading February ’22

As COVID adopted a business strategy of watering down its mission to attract a wider customer base, I walked back my personal going-out boundaries. I had packed in Hovvdy at Golddiggers, Art Feynman at the Echo, Roosevelt at the Fonda and Gel Set at Zebulon in my last quarter of ‘21, but Mrs. Omicron made…… Continue reading January ’22

Pick a month, sailor.

I made the trek to Westwood to see Licorice Pizza and listen, I’m no hater, I adored Phantom Thread so damn hard, but I need to know what kind of entitlement PTA was snorting and what the fuck is up with all those gushing reviews, cause this was just straight up a super messy, unfocused,…… Continue reading December ’21

I’m pretty sure the first record I ever bought was “S.O.S.” on 45, with “Mamma Mia” (which I didn’t rate at all) on the B-side. https://www.youtube.com/embed/cvChjHcABPA Abba were the epitome of my adolescent taste for driving melody and sentiment (“If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago was on that team too). I bought “Fernando,” but…… Continue reading November ’21

If Satomimagae got AOTY, Hovvdy deserved a mini-career retrospective after releasing True Love, another sweet and intimate album with an uncanny ear for simple, rapturous chord changes. They’re two guys from unsexy Dallas, they’re both married, to women no less, and they’ve released four albums of blissful slowcore guitar rock since 2017. “Around Again,” “Joy,”…… Continue reading October ’21

During COVID quarantine I got into weekly routines and rituals, for example scanning my weekly Release Radar on Spotify every Friday, taking an edible on Saturday around 5pm, and followingmy Italian nonna’s recipe for spaghetti alla Bolognese using vegan meat, as my new favorite songs blossomed into five dimensions. I got my last pandemic unemployment…… Continue reading September ’21

Back in Y2K GusGus totally ruled my world: This Is Normal and Attention were dark, sweet, twisted, sexy, druggy, ecstatic dance diaries of urban pleasure and pain. They mostly fell of my radar as the century moved on, although I do remember playing “Add This Song” as my takeoff song on a plane in ‘09,…… Continue reading August ’21

When Roosevelt dropped new track “About U” it didn’t grab me right away, maybe because it was missing his trademark Lord Byron meets Mentos commercial lyrics. But over time its simplicity and propulsive energy made it a contender for Sbrizzi Song of the Year; it revealed itself as a hypnotic dance imperative, a soaring personal…… Continue reading July ’21