It took me until a full minute into “Workin’ Hard” to get it. I’d been enjoying 2, the aptly-titled second album from Retribution Gospel Choir, definitely, right from the first ringing chords of “Hide It Away,” but I didn’t really get it…
Wow. It’s always a funny thing when you’ve heard a band before, liked the bits and pieces you’ve run across, and been curious to hear more, and then when you finally do get a glimpse of the full picture, as it were, you realize that you’d previously had no freaking idea what they were really about…
Deer Park boys The Gold Sounds know how to start off an album, that’s for damn sure. Opener “She Got Me Singin So Low” comes crashing in, so rambunctious and wild you can practically hear singer/bassist Sean Donnelly’s knowing smirk right through the speakers…
When I first heard The Eastern Sea, it was in a live setting, with all guns blazing, and the band turned the club into a grinning, sweaty hoedown/tent revival, ending by inviting everybody in the crowd up on the stage to dance and sing. And it was pretty amazing…
The Fiery Furnaces’s eighth album, I’m Going Away, is their rock album — it’s much more linear and stripped down than their previous records, with much less of the crazily proggy stuff. The record is for those people who wish they’d cut out that wanky prog stuff and just rock…
Of the four tracks on Female Demand’s self-titled EP, the one that hits the hardest is the opener, “Sweet Nothing” — it starts off with almost wah-wah-sounding bass and stuttering, barely-restrained drums, then stomps its way into two minutes and change of driving, thundering, bass-and-drums instrumental rawk…
Psychedelia-infused ’60s-retro rock-pop is still in full force. It seems that a new artist in this very creative genre comes out every other week with a good-to-great album. Drug Rug’s latest album, Paint the Fence Invisible, is a beam of sunlight…
When I first encountered Chase Hamblin, my instinct was to shrug and dismiss him as yet another Fab Four fan trying to keep the music he loves alive. While the characterization’s not wrong, though, the dismissal’s a big, big mistake. Rather than just rehash the Beatles for the umpteenth time…
Okay, I give: I’m not entirely sure what to make of Giant Battle Monster’s seven-track EP, Giant Battle Monster vs. The Man With a Gun for a Head. It’s a bewildering, chaotic listen, wedged halfway between mind-melting prog-metal, weird-ass pseudo-screamo…
One of the absolute best things about music, good music, is the connected-ness of it. If a band’s doing its job right, you’re able to grasp onto the feelings, the emotions behind the yelled/sung lyrics and roaring guitars; if there’s no connection going on, the guitars and yelling are just that…
I write music critiques. I listen to music, digest it, analyze it, and give my opinion in an abstract-yet-demonstrative manner that will hopefully steer you into the arms of sweet musical eargasms and save your ears from the irritability of listening to the crappy stuff…
They’re coming out of the woodwork. Like any genre, when something gets remotely popular, they come crawling out of the dark like roaches. Even the relatively minute movement known as neo-thrash has experienced the same phenomenon…
Okay, to be fair, I can see what this guy is going for. Entirely a cappella, echo-ey vocals, and nature sounds, Let Me Be Your Partner is like a very young Panda Bear with a more downbeat, minimalist sound. But please don’t tell Panda Bear that I compared him to this album…
In my later years, I have to confess that I’ve taken to cringing whenever a split release comes through my door. Which is sad, because I used to like that sort of thing, honestly; it was the DIY way to go, back in the day, pooling your money with your compatriots in another band…
I’ve listened to the album several times, but it still all kind of blends together — nothing really stands out to me. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a beautiful album worth listening to, and for the genre of music they play, I think they do it well. It’s just that nothing about it says “wow”…
Animals As Leaders is the solo project of seven- and eight-string guitarist Tosin Abasi, who has played with such bands as the now-defunct Washington, DC band Reflux and Born of Osiris; I was quite honestly very excited to be reviewing the guy’s debut album as Animals As Leaders…
Let’s get straight to the point: Blakroc is genius. It’s rap-rock as it should be. It fills a void that neither rock or rap can adequately address while simultaneously erasing the damage done by the Fred Dursts and Mike Shinodas of the rap-rock world…
Been trying to figure out a way to dance around this, but the more I try, the worse it sounds, so I’ll just come out with it: I’ve been sitting for a little while on The Factory Party’s latest, After Death There Is Nothing, I’ll admit it, partly because, frankly, I really wish I liked it more than I do…
On In the Belly of a Giant, the appeal — for me, anyway — lies less in the music than in the overall feel of the thing. The music is good, don’t worry, but it’s the downbeat, serious moodiness that really gets me…
I’m betting the folks in mr. Gnome don’t really care too much for boundaries, which goes some way towards explaining the patchwork quilt that is their overall “sound,” grafting together heavy, skullcrushing metal to delicate folkiness to freakout-inducing psych-rock to bent hillbilly rock…
To not know of A dream Asleep means that you are either not completely tapped into Houston’s music scene or you’ve been living in a sulphur glacier on one of Jupiter’s farthest moons eating vegan Taco Bell. They’ve been tearing up the underground circuit…
Whoa. What the hell? I knew quirky/cool singer-songwriter guy Arthur Yoria was mixing things up a bit on his latest release, (281), but honestly, when lead-in track “No Messin’ With My Rectum If You Like My Erection” hit the chorus…
Philip Vandermost’s Automatic August offers the world another collection of sunny songs from a singer/songwriter. The music is uplifting, for the most part with happy words, but the tunes are always jolly and in a major key…
The Spanish Armada is a five-piece noise-rock band from Boston. On The Spanish Armada, their debut album, their sound borrows heavily from Sonic Youth, and the singer even sounds a little like Thurston Moore…
To get it out of the way first, the long title to all-male Danish trio Mew’s fifth album comes from their song “Hawaii Dream.” The CD contains two short “intermission” songs between several electronic, optimistic-sounding wonders…
The Life and Times continues in a similar direction as Shiner, frontman Allen Epley’s previous band, combining the tautness of Slint with strangely Beatlesesque anthems. For Tragic Boogie, though, The Life and Times’ second album, the band decided to expand its palette…
When you hear that a band is from Japan, you usually think of an indie-pop girl act getting way too much press. What you don’t expect is Grief of War and their full-on metal assault. While they may be another in a growing list of neo-thrash acts, don’t dismiss these guys…
All those who labeled L.A.’s fresh, ambient pop group Foreign Born a toss-off anthem band (think: U2, Arcade Fire) are surely biting their presumptive tongues right now. Released as a 7″ add-on to the band’s latest LP, Person to Person…
We’ve been waiting for the end of the world for a long time. Frequently polls will suggest that a large percentage of people believe we are living at the end times at any given moment. Books and magazine articles will appear explaining why the Apocalypse is nigh…
Tortoise wasn’t the first band to receive the “post-rock” tag, but over time they’ve become its most lauded and recognized practitioner. As the term becomes increasingly associated with the crest-and-valley dynamics and soporific emotional outpourings of guitar-based bands…
The DVD begins with a short film, The Start to This May Be the End to Another, which acts as a documentary of Moneen, showing the band traveling in their tour bus, enduring the typical trials of losing the signal during business calls, excessive gas pumping, and unloading all the heavy gear…
Natural Forces is Lyle Lovett’s great western road record, the theme of which might be “The Grand Ole Opry on Texas Swing Night.” The song progression suggests a concept album about the life of a traveling musician. Lovett’s songs are sung by strong, if sad, cowboy characters…
As soon as the first rough-edged, blues-rock guitar lick of “That Mountain Yonder” comes in, after a sneakily low-key verse, it’s pretty clear that for their second album, Ocean, Meet The Valley, The Literary Greats weren’t content to keep meandering along the same path…
It’s kinda odd describing the San Franciscan band Death Sentence: PANDA! I remember when I was living in L.A. we used to drive past Panda Express and scream, “Stop eating Pandas!” I guess it’s sort of like that, or maybe post-punk, free-jazz, noise-folk…
The big problem with all adaptations into film is “why do them at all?” Oh, it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint — it’s a known quantity that can ameliorate some of the gigantic risk that is studio feature filmmaking. But just in and of itself…
Baby Gut’s Kissing Disease is a fresh new outlook on the standard garage-punk band of today, seriously. While most people might disagree with their approach — meaning that yeah, some of the songs are kiddish and yes, lacking substanial deep meaning, etc…
Springfield Riots’ debut EP, Say When, is a bit of an odd duck of an album, in that it rides a line between sweet, Pet Sounds-esque melodies and murky, downcast melancholy; you’ll get a track like opener “Hope and Envy,” which is sweet and languid…
At the end of the day, Art Brut just wouldn’t work without Eddie Argos. I mean no disrespect to the other members of the band, because they’re all fine musicians, and Art Brut vs. Satan is musically a finely-crafted pastiche of everything I love about Britpop…
When you name your band “Unholy,” you have something to live up to. People are going to expect the most demonic, violent, wretched, and evil sound ever. Or, at least, a really good metal band. This quintet from Syracuse, though, is sadly neither…
Depending on who’s singing, And The Moneynotes sounds like two different bands. Their EP On The Town, On The Vine consists of four songs, half of which were written by each of their two singer-songwriters. Half of the album, therefore, sounds like an acoustic Gogol Bordello…
