On Granite, 14er haven’t quite figured things out yet. They sound too much like Hum, and their songs have that quality of formlessness, complication without complexity, that characterizes talented musicians who have little experience with songwriting…
The FM Bats pack in more action into their ten-minute EP, Everybody Out… Shark in the Water, than most bands pack into an entire album. Comprised of vocals, guitar, bass and drums, the FM Bats sound like a boiled-down, spastic Gang of Four…
Fluid Ounces is a Tennessee-based studio project/on-again, off-again live band, the brainchild of sweet-voiced popsmith by the name of Seth Timbs. The Whole Shebang is my first exposure to these folks, and it’s absolutely one of the most pleasant surprises…
Three-song EP from a Boston trio that sounds a bit like Queensryche and later King Crimson filtered through grindcore: weird, off-kilter time-signatures mashed in with dreamy little acoustic passages and topped with loutish bellowing that fades in and out of the mix…
Surprisingly, I kinda dug both songs on this two-track introduction to The Fire Still Burns. They play a unique blend of melodic punk/metal, with a tad of pop thrown in — it has the speed and style of punk, with occasional bits of metal heaviness stuck in between…
I received Irene’s 2004 offering, Constructing Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, wrapped in a letter that said the band was watching me and when I least expected it, they would chop my family members into little pieces, skin my dog alive, then come after me…
Fuzzed-out guitars and subdued vocals make up the majority of the songs on Louisville band Instant Camera’s latest album. And while the band does its best to rehash the underground punk aesthetic of the mid-’80s (bands like Public Image Limited and Pere Ubu come to mind)…
If you’ve ever seen one of the Infernal Bridegroom Productions plays, you know that one one of the things that makes a lot of the plays great is the live music that goes along with them. Instead of having canned music during or between scenes…
It’s hard to describe just what kind of music Immaculate Machine would be categorized under — that’s what makes them stand out from other indie bands out there right now. The sweet and innocent lyrics, along with energetic guitar riffs, are what make Ones and Zeroes…
Dexter Danger is a four-piece band from California that plays emo-ish punk rock. The band is tight, executing tempo changes and other obstacles well. Melodically, their specialty seems to be the anthem, but even with that, they get mixed results…
Playing the paranoid superego to the Black Lips’ unbridled id, Atlanta’s Deerhunter combine the bouncy, bass-driven disco-punk of the Liars’ first record with the creepy weirdness of the Residents or, um, the Liars’ second record, throwing in for good measure…
A glance at the liner notes of Deadly Weapon’s self-titled disc reveals much about the band’s aesthetic, as they feature emphatic thanks of GOD and their favorite pizza, hot dog, and gyro joints, and use up more valuable real estate to thank OUR TROOPS…
On Understanding a Guarantee, Maryland’s Downtown Singapore crosses the crunching guitars and pop sensibilities of the Foo Fighters with the emotional, thoughtful lyrics of Death Cab For Cutie. The result is an impressive six songs that sounds similar to many bands of the same genre…
DMBQ’s Essential Sounds From the Far East is the best record I’ve gotten in six months. By far. Yeah, some of them were free, but I paid for some, too, and we’re talking about sixty or more CDs, here. If you’re hard to impress, and you like hard music, seek out DMBQ, quick. I’d pay Best Buy prices…
Listed among Dine Alone’s influences on the press materials are Chevelle, Tool and Staind — that should give you a pretty solid idea of what the music should be like, except for that Staind reference there. Before even popping in the CD, I’m wondering which incarnation of Staind…
On Love + Rescue, her first album since 2000’s acclaimed Mary’s Daughter, singer/songwriter Cameron Dezen raises the stakes. Instead of opting for a traditional band and strings, like most singers in this genre would do, Dezen uses samples and electronics as the backdrop…
Yes, friends, the rumors are true. Indie-rock figurehead John Davis, formerly of Superdrag, has found God (rediscovered God, really, according to him) and now dedicates himself to praise music. I guess you could call that the bad news. What’s the good news, then? Well, the good news is that John’s…
After 20 years and 12 releases, this band is still the Greatest “Country Punk” band around. Recyclone goes through their collection and shows you how great they are — just when you think it’s going to slow down, they belt out an ever more powerful song than the last…
It’s the weirdest thing. Clem Snide’s End of Love has, against all odds, been the hardest damn CD to critique that I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s not that I think it’s bad, per se, or even that it’s good — bear with me, here — but that it’s both, just at different times…
Is this a playful, lighthearted industrial record or a gut-wrenching hurdy-gurdy E.P.? On Stories About Gods & Heroes, Doug Cheatwood doesn’t always sing, and he doesn’t exactly rap, although a lot of the time he speaks with the voice affectations of Biz Markie. He employs visual lyric patterns that seem well-crafted (like Beck)…
I hate this album. Seriously. Since the first time I listened to it, anything else I attempt to listen to pales in comparison, and I have to switch back. It’s becoming annoying. I blew a $100 gift certificate on iTunes in January but have yet to even make it through two songs…
You want unctuous? Budapest One can give you unctuous in spades. The four-piece band kicks off This town just gave you a dreamer. with “Signal For The Assassins,” which sounds like the sleaziest accountant in town singing “Besame Mucho” at the bar from Ally McBeal, and it all goes downhill…
Any band that opens its album with an obvious Rush rip (“YYZ”) deserves credit, so here goes: Brookfield are talented musicians. Unfortunately, their choice of music (think 311 covering Sublime — no, really) leaves a lot to be desired, and lyrically, it doesn’t get much better…
There’s a lot to be proud of on David Brake & That Damn Band’s Lean, Mean Texas Machine (most notably, “101 Tattoos”). But listen to songs like the title track (“Pick your jaw up off the floor / You’d think you never seen a woman before / Now put your tongue back in your mouth…”
Punk-pop bands are a dime a dozen these days, and it takes a special brand of talent to stand out among the seemingly endless glut of mainstream bands like Sum 41, Blink-182, and New Found Glory. With The Measure of All Things…, Amazing Transparent Man breathe new life…
I really like Armor For Sleep — they manage to incorporate some of my favorite musical elements (infectious melodies, huge metallic guitars, and dark, introspective, sometimes morbid imagery) into a cohesive whole that works…
I’m nowhere near an authority on the noisier, dirtier end of the post-punk spectrum, I have to admit. I own no Gang of Four CDs, never much liked the Melvins, and couldn’t tell you which Jesus Lizard CDs I’ve actually listened (there were a few, back in college, but I have no clue which they […]
If there were any way I could think of to most easily give you a sense of Matt Boroff’s music, it’d be this: Quentin Tarantino. When I listen to Boroff’s self-titled CD, it strikes me just how perfectly it’d fit into one of Quentin’s movies — just a little dark and moody…
Bone Simple has about two really interesting slow songs on their new disc, What Was Her Name? And then, unfortunately, there are literally seventeen other really bad songs. Various levels of folk-rock, and mainly below-average bar band stuff. There is no focus to this…
Blood Meridian’s We almost made it home… reminds me of the Young Guns 2 soundtrack — meaning, it’s country music made by Yankees, and plus, it’s cinematic much of the time. It starts with slow, haunting, rising action, builds to a lagging second act…
Blind Jackson probably could have cleaned up in 1990. The London band has the feel of Britpop in the days before it was stadium-sized by Oasis, and the three songs on Stop The Clock have a neatly kicky punch. “Keep On Running” and the garage-y “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”…
Agents of the Sun are pretty lucky — they never had to languish in the local scene for years, jockeying with Creed wannabes for a remote chance to make it big…
This is some garage rock shit from NY, not to be confused with the Fucking AM, or AM 60 (also from New York). I had no idea what this band was about before pushing “play,” but my reaction about 20 seconds into it was to hit “stop.” Being a fan of many bands/albums that took […]
Man, anybody who picks up a copy of Arcade’s Into The Light expecting to hear the early-’90s hard rock band formed by Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy is gonna be pissed. Of course, since the abovementioned group of music fans is probably outnumbered…
There are two songs that make the Alice Despard Group’s Thinning Of The Veil worth your attention and ten that more or less succeed only to the degree to which they remind you of the other two. The keepers are the hooky title track, which resonates like Barbara Manning…
Here’s a keyboard-based trio, in the Depeche Mode fashion — moody pop with lots of hooks. Haven’t heard this kind of stuff in awhile, but I like the attitude. The “drums” seem pretty synthesized, and there’s a whole lot of what one would expect in this particular style…
The press release claims that “The Adventures of Jet’s Muscle is, at its core, a concept album…the songs on Muscle follow a central theme; in this case, muscle cars and the idea that with the newfound freedom that comes along with owning a set of wheels…
So, I popped in Antiseen’s latest, The Boys from Brutalsville, with absolutely no expectations. And it turns out that the supposed “Scourge of the Carolinas” has created a decent metal disc, which, coming from me, is really saying something…
What do you do when you make a critically-acclaimed, fanboy-approved and generally bad-ass epic concept album? If you’re The Appleseed Cast, you follow that puppy up with an even more epic (epic-er?) double concept album and hope that you pull it off…
Anti-Pop has become one of the most interesting new hip-hop groups — the members of the Anti-Pop Consortium started the group with the intention of doing anything but the expected in hip-hop. With that kind of goal, it would be easy to lapse into pretense…
