When the old-school beats, dancefloor noise, and tribal-sounding, gorilla-like hoots come in at the start of “Blastoff,” the first track on Reptar’s Oblangle Fizz, Y’all EP (and before you ask: no, I have no idea what the title means)…
Filmmakers and story-tellers, especially the ones specifically targeting adolescent and pre-adolescent boys, love telling coming-of-age stories. They speak to self-belief and hidden power, making them potent vehicles for hanging personal power fantasy off of…
I’ve had some misgivings about this one for a while now. To be sure, The Stone Foxes’ Bears & Bulls is well-done — very well-done, in fact, and I’ll get to that in a sec — but… Well, there’s just something about it…
How old are these guys, again? That’s the thought that keeps replaying in my head, over and over again, as I listen to the Folk Family Revival’s debut full-length, Unfolding. It boggles my mind that at least a couple…
It was my sci-fi nerd-ness that suckered me into Charles The Osprey’s debut album Consider, believe it or not. I hadn’t really given the album a whole lot of thought, honestly — at first listen, it was just yet another prog-metal thing…
Rather than mine the pop-punk-y hooks that’ve become the template for the vast majority of punk bands lately, or even really hew close to the garage-rock that’s surged to the surface in recent years, on Deceiver, The Wrong Ones dive straight into the gutter…
To be honest, I feel a little weird here, attempting to coherently talk about pianist/keyboardist Kris Becker’s debut full-length, Inventions. This sounds a little strange, but I generally try to review stuff that I know…
Everybody comes of age some time or another, and if you haven’t learned that from personal experience yet, movies will take the burden off you, because every director makes a coming-of-age film at some time or another, too…
With a name like “Priory,” you could be forgiven for assuming this Portland quartet plays gloomy Goth-metal, or maybe somber, glacial chillwave or something, but you’d be pretty damn distant from the truth. What the band plays, instead…
When I first listened through The Case Files, the latest release from power-pop/Americana icon Peter Case, I did it blind, just listening to it without reading anything about it beforehand. And that first spin left me somewhat confused…
Everything Lil’ Randy touches turns psychedelic. This is true whether it’s a locally comissioned R&B mixtape or freestyles by local luminaries who come to the DJ Screw protege for his take on his mentor’s Screwtape tradition…
After getting drunk, getting drugged, and stealing a tiger, a police car, and a small Asian man — and misplacing their best friend in the process — you would think Phil, Stu, and Alan would have learned…
There is no easy way to describe the experience of listening to Holiday, the latest full-length by Winter Wallace (who, as their Facebook page is careful to note, is a band, not just a singer with backing musicians). On the one hand, there’s the music…
The short version is X-Men: First Class is an excellent return to form after several missteps, capturing everything that made the series great and jettisoning must of the unnecessary stuff. That’s all you really need to know, but if you need more, keep going…
Before you write Kontakte off for their Explosions-In-The-Sky-ish guitars, listen to what’s behind them. In the second track, “Hope…,” the glitchy textures and eerily distorted digital voices start painting a picture of a type of post-rock that’s obviously…
More than anything else, I find myself wanting to point over to fellow gentle indie-folksters Fleet Foxes each time I run through Pepper Rabbit’s debut release, Beauregard; the music made by both bands unfolds slowly and deliberately, warm as a blanket yet still seemingly fragile…
Cormac McCarthy once said the only thing he could ever imagine writing about was life and death, because nothing else would ever be important enough to waste time and words on. I imagine if someone were to ask Terrence Malick that question…
Welcome to the Wild New West, folks. Despite their English-derived name, with High Noon Moon, The Tyburn Jig have carved what sure seems to me like a brand-new little musical niche; they’ve wedged themselves in this strange, half-spooky corner…
It’s been a decade now since the last “real” release from California pop-punk icons Face to Face, since way back in 2002 with How to Ruin Everything, and y’know, I was nervous. It’s not a stretch to declare that discovering Face to Face’s Don’t Turn Away shaped…
I’ve been a fan of Greg Dulli for something like two decades now; it’s a little weird to read that line back, but yeah, it’s the truth. I’ve loved the guy’s work since I first heard The Afghan Whigs’ “Retarded,” way back in 1991 or so, followed his career with the Whigs…
Okay, so here’s a funny thing: I know from the band’s bio that these songs began life as folky, singer/songwriter compositions, with frontwoman/guitarist Sarah Hirsch belting ’em out to subdued crowds at coffee houses and whatnot between here and Austin…
Honestly, Asobi Seksu’s Fluorescence hits so many damn touchstones — and seemingly throws in more with every subsequent listen — that I feel like I can barely keep hold of it. Right when I think I’ve got James Hanna and Yuki Chikudate pegged…
The life of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of the Opus Dei movement, seems ripe for dramatization, regardless of what you may think of his accomplishments. Founded during the Spanish Civil War, Escrivá’s order…
This review isn’t so much about Colour Revolt insomuch as it’s about how much I dislike indie music. Listen, don’t get all defensive if you find indie music the second coming; all it means is that I have different tastes than you…
In 1994, three French explorers delved into the reaches of what became known as the Chauvet Cave in southern France and found one of the world’s great archeological treasures: a group of the oldest, best-preserved…
Listening to Scale The Summit’s latest full-length, The Collective, is less like hearing a band play, honestly, and more like watching some insanely-skilled team of weavers create a tapestry out of laser beams or quantum strings or something…
The realization that “The David Mayfield Parade” band was just David Mayfield hit me harder than when I found out that Soylent Green was people. I first saw David when he was playing bass for his amazing little sister Jessica Lea Mayfield at Walter’s on Washington…
It’s been 14 years since Young Team was released, announcing the debut of post-rock’s then-newest practitioners, Mogwai. Since 1997, the genre has garnered quite a bit of attention in the film and television industry…
When I heard Rind Stars’ 2007 electro-folk debut, Sounds of Fire and Light, I couldn’t wait for the follow up. And when the bass player had a breakdown and left the band, city, and state, I still thought they’d record soon…
There’s an oddly back-of-the-bar vibe to Art Institute’s Second Audio Demon; by that I mean that it comes off like it’s music that’s meant for the crowd of twenty or so afficionados gathered in the dimly-lit space rather than the partiers up front…
I know I can tend to be overly effusive when it comes to reviewing music, especially from local musicians, so I’ve made a vow to be more exacting, more harsh — less Fresh Prince and more Samuel L. Jackson. And that’s going to happen right after this review…
There’s a nicely sludgy, grungy (or rather, grunge-y) feel to Mind Your Mind, the debut full-length from RIVERS; like a lot of bands from a decade or two ago, the band rides the line between bluesy rock and bass-heavy, Sabbath-y metal…
One of the problems with being a critic is watching the same stories over and over and over again, and however well told they might be, the lack of freshness can’t help but be a strike against them. This is especially true of light summer entertainment…
Those Tijerina boys just don’t quit, do they? They never seem to stop moving, always making music with one band or another — Charlie was in The Factory Party before this, while Pete was in Program, and Springfield Riots after that…
2006’s Food and Liquor prophetically announced the arrival of “the hip-hop generation’s next great vanguard”: Lupe Fiasco. While the rest of the world drenched themselves in the intoxicating and trite gibberish noisily spat of the mouths of Dem Franchize Boyz and Chamillionaire…
Yeah, I know I’m way, way behind on this one… For some reason, the debut 7″ from metal dudes Venomous Maximus has just taken a little while to grow on me. I’m not entirely sure why — this stuff is really and truly up my alley, especially lately…
I know I really should be fairly used to it by now, but for some reason, it still makes me scratch my head a little to hear sounds like this coming out of ultra-urban Brooklyn — sounds that are warm and rootsy and homespun, the kind that’d sound more at home heard through the swinging door of some rural honky-tonky outside of Huntsville…
Talk about a transformation. Back when I reviewed The Sour Notes’ Hot Pink Flares 7″, I noted that the band I was listening to was a far cry from the band I’d heard the first time I saw the Notes live, not even a full year before. They’d shifted directions…
Right from the faux-crowd noise intro of “Live in Ruin,” The Energy seem determined to live up to their name, in a big way — they literally barely stop for a breath throughout the rest of second full-length Get Split. The band operates less like an actual band…
New York City synth-pop, New Wave band Cold Cave returned this month with Cherish the Light Years, the follow-up to the band’s debut release Love Comes Close, both out on Matador Records…
