It’s all about who you know.

I got my advanced copy of the new Mousetrap 4-song 12-inch 45 rpm EP, Attica, yesterday in all its blood-red vinyl glory. The story again — the four songs by this ’90s-era seminal Omaha indie punk band were recorded sometime in 1997 and have sat locked in a vault (or stashed in a cardboard box under bass player Craig Crawford’s bed) all these years only to be remaster by Bob Weston of Shellac in 2020 and released for this limited run of 500 copies. It is scorching, classic Mousetrap at its most angry and acidic. Check out the lead track below and pre-order the vinyl before the Dec. 16 release via the Mousetrap Bandcamp page.

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The last time we saw indie band Lodgings they were opening for Criteria at The Waiting Room last Dec. 28 for the annual holiday show. Alas, with COVID, there won’t be any holiday shows this year.

Well earlier this week, the band released the first video from its 2019 Albini-engineered LP Water Works for the song “Emu,” directed by Amélie Raoul. Check it out below and go to their Bandcamp page to buy the album!

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I’ve been meaning to mention this for awhile but it keeps slipping off my screen: Back at the end of November Pitchfork reviewed David Nance’s latest album, Staunch Honey (2020, Trouble in Mind), and gave it a very respectable 7.7 rating, saying “The Nebraska guitarist and songwriter strips his music to its raw, noisy core, revealing how his favorite records might have sounded when still being hammered out in rehearsal.”

It’s mostly a rave wherein critic Sam Sodomsky seems to revel in the idea of underproduction, pointing out numerous times the stripped down, recorded-from-scratch nature of this album. He concludes with: “While the songs on Staunch Honey feel like breakthroughs, it’s living proof that their real journey is just beginning.” Not sure what that’s supposed to mean…

At any rate, it’s great to see Pitchfork review Nance (or any Nebraska artist, for that matter). Twas a time when a Pitchfork review was a “big deal.” It’s hard to gauge a Pitchfork effect these days when no one is touring, but even when they were, the Pitchfork effect was very limited as far as its impact on the local show draw — I can’t count the number of times I went to see a band with an 8.0+ Pitchfork review at O’Leaver’s or The Waiting Room expecting an SRO crowd only to be met with 20 or so people.

That said, Pitchfork remains a go-to website for indie reviews (though there has to be something else out there)…

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily (if there’s news) at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.