Articles
When it comes to new music, reviewers and music lovers are fickle and faddish people. We love the “next new thing” - the record that changes the landscape, the band that goes out on a limb and comes back with something amazing. And well we should! But not every record can be game-changing: many albums, while they don’t necessarily break the mold,... Read more
More Articles - Reviews
By NoahBerlatsky on Aug 27, 2010 at 1:44pm in Reviews
Canadian trio Plants and Animals call their music “post-classic rock” and it’s a telling choice. In the first place, they are indeed trapped in days of boomers past. And in the second, as the phrase indicates, they are significantly less clever than they think they are.
Not that La La Land (a cloyingly stupid name, I’d add) is terrible. If when... Read more
The Toadies have been around forever — since 1989, at least, which at this point qualifies as forever. After breaking up in 2001, they reformed late in the decade; the newly released Feeler is the second album by Toadies 2.0. Originally recorded in 1997, Feeler was supposed to have been the follow-up album to 1994’s popular Rubberneck; however,... Read more
By michael_keefe on Aug 25, 2010 at 8:25am in Reviews
UK singer-songwriter Laura Marling doesn't constrain her folk songs to the influences of her homeland. Her sophomore album, I Speak Because I Can, betrays hints of rustic Americana as well. Since Appalachian folk music grew primarily from British and Irish ballads, jigs, and reels, Marling's blurring of traditional borders here actually brings... Read more
Look Mexico’s sophomore effort, To Bed To Battle, is a rock album filled with poppy, catchy songs that combine a melodic indie sound with tight songwriting and judicious instrumentation. Look Mexico does a good job of keeping simplicity in mind, drawing inspiration from pop-punk and emo-ey bands as well as more traditional rock. However, by... Read more
By ira_brooker on Aug 19, 2010 at 3:11pm in Reviews
Judging by the band name, album title and creepy cover art, it’s tough not to go into Dreamend’s So I Ate Myself, Bite By Bite expecting some manner of metal, or at least goth rock. That makes it a little jarring when the album opens with the delicate lilt of a tinkling piano on “Pink Cloud in the Woods” and continues down an increasingly eclectic... Read more
By ourillwills on Aug 17, 2010 at 9:07pm in Reviews
Every once in a while you stumble across a band with an odd name and a terse Wikipedia article that has managed to slip by your ever-increasing iTunes library.
Luckily with the internet at our side, more of these forgotten projects and local heroes have washed up on the analytical shores of music journalism, emerging for an audience they... Read more
By ourillwills on Aug 12, 2010 at 2:40pm in Reviews
Very little goes right for Best Coast mastermind Bethany Consentino on Crazy For You. She spends the entire record missing someone, wishing he’d pick up his phone or bump into her at a party. She doesn’t want to fuck him – no - she simply wants love, to be loved, to be “so very happy each and every day.”
Unfortunately, she can’t - after all, all... Read more
By ira_brooker on Jul 25, 2010 at 3:40pm in Reviews
It’s tough to put a band like Alps into any identifiable category. Is there a term for an instrumentally gifted, indie-rock-and-psychedelia-influenced group that eschews lyrics but doesn’t play jazz, electronica or new age? If so, that’s probably the genre they belong in, though they cover so much musical ground that even that definition is a... Read more
By adam_schragin on Jul 22, 2010 at 11:37am in Reviews
David Cross is unique in how he straddles both new and old comedy. Savvy kids in the nineties were well aware of Cross’s work on the seminal Mr. Show, and ten years later the same people were trumpeting his performance on Arrested Development, another show that maintained a cult appeal and not a more mainstream following. But given these... Read more
By NoahBerlatsky on Jul 16, 2010 at 12:15am in Reviews
You can tell this is going to be great from the songs. “Mount Sinai Moloch,” “Kain’s Countenance Fell”; “Arcane Pharmakon Messiah” — that is some fine religious/alchemical/demonic imagery there. And the album title! Any band could come up with Foul Semen of a Sheltered Elite, but adding the –est on there is brilliant. I mean, can’t you see the... Read more