Anthemic is a word that is thrown around a lot when describing rock music, but there is no doubt that The Hold Steady’s latest effort, Heaven is Whenever, qualifies for this special adjective.

While the band is now based in Brooklyn, vocalist Craig Finn grew up in Minnesota — and echoes of Minnesotan influences such as The Replacements and Hüsker Dü are certainly found on this record. However, the band has most definitely carved their own path of punk-derived catchiness, with Finn’s narrative ramblings garnering most of the well-deserved attention. It’s hard not to sing along to songs like “The Sweet Part of the City,” “The Weekenders” and “Touchless.” Infectious and anthemic indeed.
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Let’s face it. There is quite a bit of saxophone on this 1982 release, the third album from Australia’s INXS. And much like that piece of fruit you left too long in the refrigerator drawer, not all of the sax solos have, uh… aged particularly well. However, such is the case with many of my favorite bands from the 80s (The Psychedelic Furs come directly to mind) — therefore let us not judge a work too harshly outside its own time. Because there are certain hits that transcend, timeless and undeniable regardless of instrumentation, and such is very much the case on Shabooh Shoobah. Thanks in part to the current 80s revival in some indie circles, tracks such as “The One Thing” and “Don’t Change” are as fresh as ever on what many consider to be a lost record of the decade.
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This album pretty much changed my life. Shortly before the beginning of my sophomore year in high school, my friend Jason came over to spend the night at my house. We were both skaters, we both loved music, and our friendship was really starting to click.

Aside from being a much better skater, Jason seemed to know more about, well, pretty much everything. In particular, dude put me on to a lot of music. That night, he brought over three cassettes for me to copy, A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels … and two fIREHOSE tapes, if’n and Ragin’, Full-On.
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Geoff Peveto Editor’s Note: We are very honored to have Geoff Peveto of The Decoder Ring Design Concern as our very first guest contributor. In addition to his duties as president of Decoder Prints, he currently serves as President of the American Poster Institute and runs the international Flatstock poster convention — even curating the forthcoming Rock Paper Show book about Flatstock. Recently he decided sleep was overrated and opened Frank, a sorely-needed artisan porkhouse in Austin specializing in hot dogs and cold beer. This is where we would normally insert a bunch of legalese about Geoff’s views and commentary not representing Rock That Font and what have you, but our lawyer is on vacation.

So Les posted an excellent entry about Cooper Black… it’s so good I almost wrote Shawn to tell him I missed my window to contribute. You see when Shawn asked me to be a part of RTF, the first LP design that came to mind wasn’t anything from the thousands of records and CDs I have. It happened to be a new release that wasn’t even out yet. However, the art (leaked or otherwise) was online and it was typeset with Cooper Black. And man I fucking LOVE Cooper Black.
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It’s very difficult for me to separate Cooper Black from my childhood.

I will confess to you all now, I was a huge Garfield fan. Huge. I’m talking 1978 original Garfield huge. I collected all the books. For years, I begged each Christmas for the new Garfield calendar, my most anticipated gift. I cursed Mondays and made lasagna my favorite food.

This went on for a long, long time. Much too long, honestly. Even to this day, I take a few moments every June 19 to acknowledge his birthday, a loving salute from one sardonic young Gemini to another.
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