New Found Glory not only dropped that charmingly awkward "A" from their name, but they also dropped everything else that appealed to me. Their self-titled album did include "Hit or Miss" and wasn't completely devoid of their special ability to make silly emo and pop-punk songs seem real, but it was waning.
De Novo Dahl find themselves in the difficult position of following up their amazing Shout EP with a full-length release. Even if they were able to reproduce the exuberance of "Shout" (the best musical expression of joy since U2's "Beautiful Day") over the course of the entire album, I think it may well have killed me (albeit with happiness).
Tad is the forgotten band of Seattle's grunge explosion, but there is a case to be made for them being among the scene's most important artists. In Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears, it is said that in 1989 "Yeah, I'm friends with Kurt," meant Tad bassist Kurt Danielson, not Cobain. They were perhaps the loudest and rawest of the bunch, giving even Mudhoney a run for their money.
Ceilings is an album that relies more on piano and layers of ambient noise than it does on the brash guitar, bass and drums of a typical rock band. The first reaction is that they've tapped into OK Computer-era Radiohead, but the deeper influence is perhaps The Church who created a similar ebb and flow of soothing yet moving noise surrounding an almost folky organic center.
This is the story of The Smiths through the eyes of Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke. Who you ask? The guys who sued Morrissey and Johnny Marr a few years back. Oh yeah, they were also the rhythm section of The Smiths.
In a nutshell, Lafcadio could be described as King Crimson meets Dillinger Escape Plan meets Black Flag meets Black Sabbath meets Shel Silverstein.
I wasn't sure what to expect of the audience at a New York Dolls show in 2008. Would it be mostly an older crowd who'd known the Dolls from their earliest days?
We Brave Bee Stings and All begins and ends like it may be a simple twee pop album. Both songs have a thin, light pop sound that could be mistaken for a novelty. What happens between those two songs, however, is anything but.
Can Ringo Starr do anything without seeming like a goof? He was the comic relief for The Beatles and he's continued in that role during his solo career, including his latest release, Liverpool 8. It's a bit of a sentimental journey for Ringo it seems, but not one with a lot of depth.
When I first saw Kimya Dawson several years ago opening for They Might Be Giants, there was nothing that made me think that her music would eventually be the soundtrack to a successful movie. Don't get me wrong, I liked her…a lot. She can't sing, she can't play, her songs are simple, yet she has an undeniable charm that comes from a bizarre off-color and childlike innocence. As such, she is perhaps the perfect person to make the music for Juno, a film with characters whose innocence isn't candy-coated.
