WIB Listening Party #67: Electric Church for the Spiritually Misguided

featuring…

Dean Zucchero: Electric Church for the Spiritually Misguided

🍺 Voodoo Ranger Juicy Haze IPA

Words & photos: Vincent Abbate

OK, so what’s it’s been? Around four months? My previous Listening Party post was a farewell of sorts – my attempt to neatly wrap up the first 66 entries before going on hiatus indefinitely. Didn’t know when or if I’d be back at it. Even now I’m hesitant, as I can no longer knock these out at the steady pace I established in the Listening Party’s first year-plus of existence. 

But with summer now in the rear-view mirror and only some lingering warmth and sunlight keeping fall and winter at bay, it feels like the time has come. June to September often feels scattered and hectic, while the onset of autumn and gradually darkening days tends to guide me back to my desk and keyboard (where I write) and to my living room armchair or the rear balcony of my apartment (my preferred listening spots).

It’s a good time to contemplate an album and a beer.

We’ll leap back in with Electric Church for the Spiritually Misguided, a 2023 project spearheaded by New York native Dean Zucchero and featuring a cavalcade of guest artists.

To wash it down, we have an alluring 19.2-ounce tallboy of Voodoo Ranger Juicy Haze IPA.

I’m feeling pretty good about this combination.

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WIB Listening Party #56: Set It On Blast!!

featuring…

Stevie Salas, Set It On Blast!!

🍺 Unverhopft Galactic Splash Milkshake IPA

Words & photos: Vincent Abbate

Sometimes you’ve got to roll out the big guns. The heavy artillery.

Remember how last time around I was feeling down and how a few timeless blues songs seemed to lift me out of the hole I was in? I didn’t quite make it.

Maybe it’s the change of seasons, a case of the fall blahs as each day grows a few minutes darker than the one before it. Maybe it’s the exhaustion brought on by the rigors of parenting – presiding over a vicious fifteen-round fight between a pair of rival siblings can take a lot out of you. Maybe it’s just how fucking sick and stupid and depressing the world is sometimes. All of it is adding to a sense of heaviness and loss that hangs stubbornly in the air, weighing me down.

So I’ve been looking for a stronger and more muscular musical drug to keep me moving forward. One that kicks me squarely in the keister and says – snap out of it, man, get out there and get busy living. The record I’ve gone to most often these past few weeks is Stevie Salas’s Set It On Blast!!, a brash explosion of funk and guitars and conquer-the-world attitude. In name and in spirit, it pairs beautifully with Galactic Splash, a Milkshake New England IPA from Berlin’s Unverhopft brewery.

If this high-octane dream team doesn’t get it done, I may be a hopeless case.

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