Codes and Keys is the seventh studio album from Death Cab for Cutie and to say that it leaves something to be desired is an understatement. I don’t know what it is exactly, but this album has that newer Coldplay feel to it…
“You can make a masterpiece but that don’t mean you make a living” – Kyle Hubbard. I will be the first to admit that I stopped listening to hip-hop when Tupac died. Back in the day, when I thought I was cooler, I was blasting Tupac, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, and others from my stereo speakers. I also blasted them out of my car speakers, which I thought was cool because growing up in Connecticut, everyone is white…
When you hear the first three songs or so off Dominant Legs’ Invitation, you get the feeling that there exists this one guitar riff that this band really likes. It’s like that Weezer song about being on an island…
Wow. The two guys who make up Andrew Jackson Jihad, Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty, are quite possibly the angriest, orneriest, bitterest guys I’ve ever heard; after listening to the duo rampage their way through most recent album Knife Man…
Tarot Classics is a six-song EP from the most awesomely-named band Surfer Blood. Despite being about half the length of a normal album (you know, in terms of songs), this is quite possibly one of the finest pieces of music I have ever heard…
Animals as Leaders has really created something here that is hard to write about. The first thing that you need to know, perhaps, is that these songs are instrumental. Great, you think, this will be very easy to write about, since you don’t have a vocalist to love or hate…
Hearing — or watching, for that matter — Benjamin Wesley craft his music is somewhat akin to watching a sculptor work in reverse. He adds layer upon layer upon layer, building up rather than carving away, with sounds being introduced and stacked atop one another…
Once in a while I’ll come across a particular kind of album where I can admit that despite my overall not liking of a specific genre, this one could be the exception. Coming Out of the Pain, however, is not that exception…
This may not surprise readers who are already fans of L.A. band Seahaven, but I’m going to say it anyway: guitarist/singer Kyle Soto’s voice takes some getting used to. When “Goodnight,” the first track on Winter Forever, starts, it comes in like loud…
At a time when bands like Thrice, From Autumn to Ashes, and Atreyu took over the music scene, bands like Everyone Dies In Utah would have fit that old cliché “a dime a dozen” almost perfectly. Almost. However, at a time when music seems to be changing direction…
If you’ve heard one pop punk band that borders on dare-I-say-emo, then it seems like you’ve pretty much heard them all. So what sets Attaloss apart from all of the other seemingly countless bands out there that share a similar sound? I have no clue…
Listening to England In 1819’s Alma, I feel less like I’m hearing an album and more like I’m watching some tragic, heartrendingly beautiful play unfold on a stage off in the distance. The music is stately and beautiful, all melancholy…
Damn. Just…damn. Listening to “All Static,” the A-side of this split-7″ from now-departed post-rock trio Sharks and Sailors, I can’t help but tear up a little bit…
The funny thing about music is that if I had heard this CD any time over a year ago, I would have thought that it was cute and probably good for kids, but I wouldn’t have really known what else to say about it. Hearing this now, while having a two-month-old son…
Jeff (Jason Segel) lives at home, although that probably goes without saying. In an effort to get him to do something, anything besides smoking pot in the basement, his mother (Susan Sarandon) sends him out to get some glue…
Several times in the press release for this album, The Beach Boys are mentioned by name. It also says how The Explorers Club are influenced by bands of the 1960s. So, does this sound like The Beach Boys? No, not really. Songs like “Bluebird”…
Alright, so I’m feeling compelled to say something I never, ever thought I’d say, and I’m just going to come out and say it: thank God for Maroon 5. No, no, I mean it; I don’t give a crap about their more recent stuff, but look back at 2002’s Songs About Jane…
With their most recent EP, Prisoner, quirky post-shoegazers Eternal Summers ride a fine, fine line, and right when it’d be all too easy to fall off completely and go one way or the other, they yank the handlebars back in the opposite direction…
There’s a great, great looseness to The Fresh Sum, the debut EP from Washington, DC band Mittenfields; it’s the kind of laidback, everybody-does-their-thing kind of feel that I hear far, far too infrequently these days. Hell, since the late ’90s, in fact…
With Reports From the Threshold of Death, Junius prove themselves to be quite a strange, intriguing beast of a band. Right from the pseudo-Gregorian chanting at the start of “Betray The Grave,” which rapidly shifts over into thundering guitars and distant, echoey vocals…
Everybody, whether they’re interested in him or not, recognizes the name of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ signature creation: Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. But except for a few hardcore fans, the public at large is less well-acquainted with his other great creation…
Some albums — the best ones, generally — have personalities, just like people. Even though they may swing wildly between different styles, they’re tied together somehow by this overarching thread that runs throughout. They step beyond, “hey, this isn’t bad,” to pull you along with them on their emotional journey, wherever it happens to lead…
This one, I have to admit, has taken some time to get under my skin. After 2009’s Regular Dreams, I was psyched to see where swooning, post-New Wave pop outfit The Fox Derby might be headed next, hoping they’d build on the sharp-edged…
Laura Gibson’s latest album, La Grande, is wonderfully rural-sounding, and not in a big belt buckle kind of way. Rather, it’s an album that evokes back roads and wooded hideaways and distant campfires, with the music drifting through the trees…
Unlike a lot of albums I’ve heard lately, the Southern Backtones’ La Vie En Noir doesn’t barrel into the room with a crash, grabbing hold of you and forcing you to listen. Rather, they’re like a sneakily low-key band that’s already there, already playing…
The Maybe Laser is not an easily quantifiable album, and this is a very good thing. Lead vocalist Jef “With One F” and his beat-making cohort Gorilla Bill appear to be truly disturbed, maladjusted, talented psychopaths…
The first time I listened to Ume’s most recent full-length, Phantoms, I was driving through a lightning storm, with big, bulging raindrops smacking the windshield while bright sparks danced across the sky faster than my eyes could follow…
There’s an incredible feeling of serenity throughout Nothing Here Seems Strange, the latest full-length from La Porte heroes Buxton. It’s this weird calmness, a kind of resignation, almost, that things are changing and there’s nothing that can be done about it…
According to Q, if you break down a narrative you will find at its heart seven essential conflicts: man against man; man against nature; man against himself; man against God; man against Society; man and woman; and man caught in the middle. Any one of these is more than enough grist for a storyteller’s mill…
Okay, so it makes perfect sense when you know the history. Back in 2009, now-icons Kings of Leon started up their own label, Serpents & Snakes, with the intention of releasing music by bands they themselves liked and wanted to give more exposure…
First, we set the stage. Pina Bausch was one of the giants of, not just German dance, but modern dance as a whole, helping to usher in the wave of dance theater — Tanztheater — into the modern dance oeuvre since the 1970s. Combining acting with intricate set design, score, and other hallmarks…
It’s like they never left the club. It may’ve been more than a decade since died-and-resurrected punks Latch Key Kids last released any new music, but listening to the new Democracy: The Art of Maintaining a State of Fear EP…
I’ll say it straight out: this is a truly remarkable album. I’ll admit that when I first listened to Quiet Company’s We Are All Where We Belong, I didn’t have particularly high hopes — at first glance, it seemed like yet another disc’s worth of well-crafted, shiny-sweet indie-pop, good but in no way unique…
Sometimes, the time and care you put into something shows right through its skin. And when that happens, it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. When I put on Finnegan’s five-years-in-the-making debut album, What Happened To Jacqueline?, that’s exactly how it feels…
Back when I was first introduced to hardcore, one of the most crucial elements of the scene — one of the things that most set it apart from what felt like a big, muddy puddle of emotionless, purposeless rock or punk — was the focus on making things better…
There’s a great, great, unassuming warmth and charm to Harts of Oak’s recent EP Birds & Bees; it’s almost like a kind of innocence, really, where the band thinks they’re okay but aren’t really sure beyond that…
There is nothing new under the sun. The circular, self-consuming nature of musical inspiration has renewed the heavy synths, minimalistic vocals, and ornately layered sound of the early ’80s. Despite a myriad of names (neo-wave, chillwave, nu-gaze, etc.)…
It should go without saying that no adaptation is going to please everyone; it’s impossible to encompass all the nuances of one medium across the transition to another. Which makes comparisons not exactly a waste of time but certainly counterproductive…
Despite an influx of New Wave-inspired dance-pop, indie-rock continues to fight for relevance as Maritime releases its fourth album, Human Hearts. For those unfamiliar with the band, Maritime was formed from the ashes…
I’m humble enough to admit that while I am many things, sadly, “timely” isn’t always one of ’em. There’ve been a few times in recent years when kindly folks have handed me the fruits of their hard work and talent, and I’ve dropped the ball…
