Were you as disappointed in the most recent Bruce Springsteen album, Wrecking Ball, as I was? I’m not saying that it was necessarily a bad album, but it just seemed to be so typical of Bruce Springsteen. It wasn’t what I would call the best…
Who doesn’t like giant robots? That is the deep, philosophical question at the heart of Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pacific Rim. If the answer that pops into your head is “nobody, obviously,” then this is definitely the movie for you…
Frankly, reviewing The Migration, the new album from Houston-based instro-metal shredders Scale The Summit, has prove to be a little trickier than I’d thought, primarily because the album’s not so much a collection…
These days, it’s no picnic being a rock band. Hey, quit laughing — I’m serious, dammit. It really isn’t an easy deal lately, I swear, and here’s why: because everybody wants to be in a rock band, and yet fewer and fewer people out there seem to…
First of all: it’s about damn time. I know The Suffers haven’t been around that long, it’s true, but ever since I first ran across ’em in 2011, I’ve been dying to get my hands on an actual, decent-sounding release. Call me paranoid if you want…
Obsidian isn’t Cerulean Part II. The cheerful awkwardness and simple enchantment of Baths’ Cerulean helped push Will Wiesenfeld to the forefront of the glitch-pop scene, and then a more atmospheric but slightly repetitive encore album, Pop Music/False B-sides…
With Bee Corpse Collector, The Ex-Optimists sound like a band resolutely out of time, out of step with anything that’s happening today. To which I have to say: awesome. More power to ’em. They’re not that far retro, of course, skipping…
“You can’t go home again”; that’s the adage, anyway. Apparently nobody told the guys in Austin indie-rock outfit Quiet Company, however, because they’ve done that very thing. Back in 2006, the band released their debut album…
I discovered The Milk Carton Kids in early 2012. As each year begins, I commence to researching the acts playing the SXSW festival coming up in March. One of my resources is a website called Operation Every Band, a blog written by a team of people…
Ah, the Born Liars. No matter what else is going on in life, I can always, always, always count on these four guys to bring the raw, sharp-edged, snarling/spitting garage-rock/punk, and to do it well. And just like always, on Show Some Couth Jimmy Sanchez…
There’s a strangely insectile feel to Oxford-bred trio TTNG’s newest album, 13.0.0.0.0, I think in part because the band (singer/guitarist Henry Tremain, guitarist Tim Collis, and drummer Chris Collis) never really stop moving…
That voice right there, that’s the voice of a man who’s crawled through hell and up out the other side, and now he’s standing back on his own two feet, albeit a little unsteadily. With Apologies, Austin’s David Ramirez chronicled his recovery…
Alright, so I’d liked Laura Stevenson when I’d heard her previously — the songs were good, her voice was stellar, and the whole thing had a nicely warm, friendly feel to it that I enjoyed. After hearing Wheel, though, I’m left with a far, far deeper…
Okay, this going to sound bad — potentially really bad — but I promise, if you bear with me, you’ll (hopefully) see that it’s not. See, as the two munchkins who live in my home get older and speak more, they tend to point out things that the larger beings in the household…
Right from the first menacing squall of feedback on opening track “E,” No Joy makes it clear that they don’t give a good goddamn about that whole “nu-gaze” tag. The Canadian trio (Jasamine White-Gluz, Laura Lloyd, and Garland Hastings) isn’t here to praise the legacy…
No, it’s not the movie version of the hit video game. That would be awesome. Instead, Oblivion is Joseph Kosinski‘s follow up to 2010’s Tron: Legacy, this time featuring Tom Cruise as one of the last survivors…
First things first: Adam Bricks is an unabashed, head-held-high folksinger, the kind of musician and songwriter that used to push music forwards but these days gets relegated to the dingy club while vapid electronic beats bounce plasticized pop mannequins around…
The crime film is a tricky beast; there are no two ways about it. On the one hand, the plot needs to be appropriately twisty, surprising the audience at every bend. On the other, even past masters like Raymond Chandler have discovered the ease of disappearing…
Alright, so I went into Mikey & The Drags’ official debut release pretty much figuring I’d like it; it just seemed like a foregone conclusion, given how much I already liked the stuff I’d heard from ’em so far, so why worry? And in the end, I definitely do like this 7″, although not for quite…
Step right up, folks; duck your head as you make your way inside the tent, then prepare yourself for Chase Hamblin & The Roustabouts as the roll and ramble through their long-awaited full-length, VAUdeVILLE… First things first: the band’s…
Given that The Postal Service will be headlining this year’s Free Press Summer Fest, it seems appropriate to revisit the album that brought together Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and producer Jimmy Tamborello. Long before the Iron and Wine cover and years before the fervor…
My first notes regarding listening to this album included: “Probably won’t like this, it’s kind of indie country.” After listening to this album several times, I have not changed my stance on that at all. If Scout could pick a musical sound on this album, then perhaps I might be able to give it a better review. I’m not saying that I’d like it…
There’s something about Bang Bangz’s Red City — the band’s music in general, really — that makes me want to get out. I feel like I need to just to get up and walk out the door into the darkness, and just keep walking until something…
Fans of ’90s indie-prog, rejoice, for The Littlest Viking has come to save your collective soul. With their new self-titled album, the duo of Ruben Cortez and Christopher Gregory (with occasional additional vocal help from an unnamed…)
I don’t know Christian Kidd, not really; we’ve exchanged emails a few times, sure, but we’ve never met in person, never had a conversation longer than a sentence or two. I think the closest I’ve come to introducing myself to the guy — who over the many…
Once upon a time there was a talented director known for taking what could just be pop fantasy, looking it over with a mature eye, and producing entertaining films that didn’t insult anyone to get to a mass audience. Then his popular acclaim started to wane, and he faded…
With Past to Present, The Wheel Workers attempt a truly delicate balancing act, one that’s impressive to witness. See, the album takes a big, big risk, in that it’s essentially two things at the same time: a pitch-perfect orchestral pop-rock album and a strident, intensely political call to arms. There are bands that can do those things, to be sure, but very few can do both at the same time and succeed…
As with any niche, there’s a caricature about world cinema. It is slow, it is minimalist, and it tends away from straightforward entertainment and more towards naturalism, to the point of distraction. Basically, it’s Tokyo Story on and on…
Mediocre movies are all alike; bad movies are each bad in their own unique way. The bad movies come from people who just don’t know what they’re doing, or have had tremendously bad luck. The mediocre movies, more often, are from the talented who have lost the plot completely…
Oftentimes I feel like music is judged too harshly based upon what it sounds like, rather than how it actually sounds. On one hand, you could have a band that sounds like The Beatles and think of that however you choose — good or bad…
The two guys who make up Foxygen, believe it or not, are kids. No, they really, seriously are; despite all appearances to the contrary, Sam France and Jonathan Rado graduated from high school just a handful of years ago. And trust me, I get why that’s…
Don’t be fooled by the gentle, quietly-smiling, lull-you-to-sleep vibe of Ramona Falls’ second album, Prophet: this isn’t music to fall asleep to. At least, not unless you want to dream of singularities and confluences and galaxies…
There’s something to Through the Glass, the debut EP from Aussie duo Atlas Genius, that definitely feels like a warning shot, a quick burst to say, “hey, look over here!” It’s good — and yeah, I’ll get back to that, don’t worry — but it feels a little abrupt…
At first I wasn’t clear why both the A- and B-sides of the Tontons’ latest 7″, Bones, are both titled, um, “Bones” (“Bones 1” and “Bones 2,” to be specific), but after hearing one roll straight into the other, yeah, I’m starting to get it. I couldn’t tell you if it’s intentional or not, but the two tracks flow together beautifully…
Here’s how the whole band-life-trajectory thing is supposed to work: start a band just for the hell of it, at first; then realize hey, maybe this is a pretty cool deal, and begin earnestly working at it; work your way onwards and upwards, honing your skills…
It’s hard to overvalue the role of Sub Pop in developing my musical tastes. Whether it was Sunny Day Real Estate’s How It Feels to Be Something On or Washed Out’s Within and Without, my musical journey is lined with more than a few Sub Pop…
In case you’ve never tried to read it, Les Misérables is really, really long; one of the longest books ever written. So, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, “there is too much, let me sum up.” In post-Napoleonic France, money is scarce…
I’m not trying to take credit; honest, I swear to God I’m not. But when I first put on emo-throwback band Square and Compass’s new full-length, How to Escape, I couldn’t help but give myself a little smile and think, “yes; they listened!”…
The Escatones make perfect sense for where they’re from. They’re surf-rock, yes, but they’re not surf-rock in the way that bands from places with clear-blue, crystalline water are surf-rock; instead, they’re dirty and messy and weird and a little bit scary…
After the searing portrait of the French crime world and the lurid look at a life corrupted in 2010’s A Prophet, it seemed only natural that writer-director Jacques Audiard would follow up with a relationship drama about an underground MMA fighter (Matthias Schoenaerts) and a killer whale trainer (Marion Cotillard), so it should surprise no one…
