Listening to Empires and Milk is like breathing. It’s easy to forget that you’re even listening, so environmentally permeating is the sonic wash. That such an organic feel evolves from keyboards, computers, and sound loops, with very few acoustic instruments or unprocessed sounds…
There are enough claps and chorus singers on “Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth,” the first track of The Brunettes’ Structure and Cosmetics to make up for any failings on the rest of the album. That leads right into “Stereo (Mono Mono),” however, and the album’s true colors start to show…
The band Tempo No Tempo from Oakland, California, walks the line between rock music and dance music, which is a noble but tricky frontier. To me, being a fan much more so of the rock side of music, it just gets dangerous when the synthesizers start to take over. And adding to that, dance music lyrics…
I reviewed The Story Of’s 2006 EP, foothill highway appalachian road, falling in love with it while travelling in Europe last summer. The album fit perfectly with the wonderful freedom and self-awareness I was enjoying: I was living life, unrestrained by work or the real world, exploring my own giddiness…
Collusion, a recent six-cut EP from Dallas-based band 1000 Miles From Home, features Zac Carrington (lead vocals/guitar), Jeff Widman (guitar/vocals), Eddie Castillo (lead guitar), Chris Bender (bass), and Keith Mitchell (drums). The bandmates originally hail from different US cities in all geographical directions…
On this single, Austin space-rock band My Education takes a piece of music originally written for piano and strings in the late 1970s and puts their own, updated — albeit somewhat traditional — spin on it. The result, “Spiegel im Spiegel,” is a peaceful, melodic song that ignores the traditional quiet-loud-quiet formula…
Okay, so this is going to be a little weird. I’m sitting here reviewing three CDs that you’re not real likely to ever be able to hear or find, in spite of how good they are, because, well, they were released in super-limited-edition sets of 13 (I think?) and only sold for a week apiece…
By calling his album Rhymes and Beats, Gnotes sets himself to a higher standard by putting the emphasis on the musical material of the album. (If he’d called the album Dollaz and Hos, for example, he might be able to slack off a bit…)
Caalma is the stage name of Mark Steven McCraw, a one-man show from our very own Pasadena, Texas. Even if you change your mind is his first full-length release, and he also has some acoustic stuff available on the Caalma Website. He’s currently recruiting band members while working on his next album…
Between their last record and their new one, co-songwriter Mat Brooke left Band of Horses. This left guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell with the challenge of continuing the band on his own. On their new record, Cease to Begin, the overall sound of the band hasn’t changed…
Fresh off the heels of recently winning Best International Rock EP from Toronto Exclusive Magazine, New York-based rock group Moment Theory and their self-titled mini-collection of original songs was truly an award-winning listen in my book…
Jon Fritz’s When It’s Over begins with relaxing acoustic melodies and flows into pieces that have a bit of a soft rock feel mixed with a country flavor and a coffeehouse aftertaste. The first song might pack a little more punch if it were a bit shorter, as it’s very enjoyable but doesn’t quite end in time…
Okay, so I caught an abridged version of Copeland this fall when they opened for The Rentals, and I could’ve sworn frontman/songwriter/main guy Aaron Marsh said the band would have a new album out very soon. Now that I’ve got Dressed Up & In Line in hand, I’m not sure this is it…
Can you believe all the amazing bands these two little labels have? I mean, just on this comp alone you can find: Antony and the Johnsons, Danielson, Okkervil River, Magnolia Electric Co., Jens Lekman, and Black Mountain. These two little labels are turning into the Sub Pop of new Americana indie-rock…
Calgary’s The Cape May is part of the current Canadian Invasion that’s sweeping the US, and their sound on Glass Mountain Roads is like Slint or Rex fronted by Will Oldham. They have an interesting combination of songwriterly melodies and indie-rock backbone…
I guess in this age of everything-anytime, I shouldn’t be real surprised that a band from deep-rural Georgia (Acworth, according to the Myspace) sounds so, well, urban. Moros Eros’s Jealous Me Was Killed By Curiousity betrays only a teeny-tiny hint…
Ah. Thank God for that occasional compulsion I get to do at least a little bit of research, ’cause now all the pieces have fallen into place in my head. I knew the four guys in H-town’s Stadium — guitarist/vocalist Jeff Stilwell, bassist Stephen Henderson…
The Mad Caddies play ska and reggae with a Clash-style punk core, and Keep It Going is their fifth album (although, if the world were fair, they wouldn’t have any). Their songs carry on the Fat Wreck tradition of irritating and sappy attempted-anthems…
Richard Hawley has been around for longer than you think. Richard’s been here the whole time, in the corner of your mind, in the corner of your room. It’s easy to see, though, why artists such as Hawley are quickly looked over are passed over. We’re not talking about some hunky white guy…
“Where did you go when I needed you most?” — it’s a fitting lyric from The Challenger Deep, a post-punk/sludge band from San Diego who recently released their self-titled debut EP but then had to split up when family responsibilities called their guitarist/vocalist back home to the East coast…
Camarada should be charged with the crime of Attempted Emo. Or maybe Assault with a Deadly Weapon, ’cause listening to it nearly killed me. On King in the Dark, the band’s debut album, the singer thinks everything is a big power ballad and sings accordingly…
I’ve fought with it and I’ve fought with it, so now I’m just gonna say it: Bottomless Pit sound a heck of a lot like Silkworm. And I mean, seriously, how could they avoid it? With two out of four ex-members of that band onboard, Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen…
Something To Cry About begins and ends with what sound like European cowbells; ocean sounds, city soundscapes, and nocturnal insects float in and out, connecting the songs. Auralift’s co-founder Ben Hargrove suggests that there is no overarching theme…
Damn. I’ll admit it: I may’ve been a bit hard on the Linus Pauling crew over the years. I’ve always liked the guys, definitely, they’ve always seemed nice and friendly and all that, and they’ve been supportive of the Houston scene since before I even came here…
With most artists, as they develop, their subject matter and the tone of their songs usually becomes more serious. Sam Beam, on the other hand, has taken the opposite path. The new Iron and Wine album, The Shepherd’s Dog, is actually less serious in tone than previous albums…
On Genuine Sense of Outrage, Oxnard, California’s The Warriors have let the Rage Against The Machine-isms drop (for the most part; there’re occasional throwbacks, like “Life Grows Cold”) by the wayside and have instead focused on straight-ahead metalcore a la Snapcase…
First off, let’s agree that it’s dangerous to build a full-length album around a joke. Even when it’s a good one. Given that, then, it’s bound to be four freakin’ times as dangerous to build a four-CD box set (five, if you count the bonus Unplugged disc, which, ah, you really shouldn’t)…
Somebody somewhere is in their room with mt.st.helens’ latest CD Of Others just playing on repeat, and they’re thinking, “mt.st.helens is the greatest,” in typical cult follower, rabid fan fashion. And then they’re scratching their heads and wondering why the rest of the world isn’t getting it…
Tom Alford’s Second Foundation combines great beats and catchy lyrics with a rockabilly twist. This man definitely understands the meaning of a hook and doesn’t hesitate to use that knowledge. Alford gets our head bopping right from the start with “Yes It’s You”…
Okay, I’m impressed. With their second effort, Austin’s Meryll have created an album that serves pretty damn effectively as the soundtrack for an ’80s childhood, back when life still seemed innocent and free (to us kids, anyway) and you could roam the neighborhoods…
The Alaskan youths of What Remains have put together some impressive songs on their debut full-length album Destroys All Monsters!. All DIY and recorded in one of the band member’s studio/bedroom, the CD shows promising music…
One of the reasons people buy music is to listen to it over and over, because it provokes an emotional response. Often that emotion isn’t even related to the song and is, instead, something that was attached to the song during a particular time and the sense memory of hearing the same sounds again…
The Flatliners are a Canadian group that plays ’80s-style punk, with some hardcore and reggae thrown in to change things up and the singer using that standard punk-style shout. They try to write big catchy melodies, but they fail more than they succeed, unfortunately…
Recorded in Brooklyn, Via is the only album The Wails will ever make, since they are no longer a band. Now, this is a relatively everyday occurrence in music. People get together, they mash up their ideas into a solidified medium…
Based on a cursory pass through Laced Up Tightly, it’d be easy to dismiss Schmaltz as just another indie-folkie left high and dry in the post-Lilith Fair America, but that’d be a mistake. Beyond the easy labeling, Schmaltz is a fine, emotive, heart-on-the-sleeve songwriter…
On their debut album, Epic Fits, PRE plays an abrasive strain of noise-rock that nonetheless still rocks. They play songs in post-Daydream Nation fashion, but with the energy of a hardcore band. The band uses two basses in addition to guitar, drums, and a woman having a fit…
It’s a weird thing to say, I know, but maybe it’s the throwback sound that shrouds all of Audio Postcard that keeps it afloat. I mean, if I looked at these songs as coming from just some random mid-tempo rock…
The school of “Quiet is the new loud” has become increasingly popular lately, having started with Nick Drake and continued through Elliot Smith to today’s artists like Jose Gonzales, but the genre unfortunately suffers from a lack of innovation — or, at least, the ability to make one song distinguishable from the last…
Verona Grove’s new EP of songs included on the recently released full length The Story Thought Over is pretty typical of recent releases in the modern radio-ready rock genre: it sounds great, great engineer, great mix, mastering, the songs are comprehensively written…
You can’t compare Sleeping in the Aviary to anyone, really. You could try, but by the time you explain yourself, a new song has started, and SitA sounds like something else. Oh, This Old Thing? is primarily a punk rock album, given to us in short bursts of uneven tempos…
