Posts by Gabriel Scheer

Are you looking for a great new American indie-folk singer? Look no further than… Faroe Islands native Marius Ziska. Following on the heels of Britons Mumford & Sons, whose songs have reinvented banjo-driven Americana, Ziska is making great American music – far from American shores.

"Best of” albums are always tough to review: if you already know you like the musicians in question, the album often serves a reminder of why you like them, probably through a replay of songs you know well. If you didn’t find them the first time around, well, are you any more likely now that they’ve been around so long they’re doing “best of” albums?

On the duo’s fifth studio album, Negotiations, The Helo Sequence continues to build on their sound of enthusiastically percussive, melodic tunes. Singer Brandon Summers’ vocals remain as dreamily light and airy as always, though still, as always, suffused with an emotive intensity that drives the listener forward.

Orbital has returned with Wonky,  their first album since 2004 (Blue Album)– that is imminently listenable, and very much Orbital. However, it also conveys interesting hints of past musical goodness.

Dntel is Jimmy Tamborello, a musician who burst most strongly onto collective consciousness through his collaboration with Ben Gibbard, under the moniker The Postal Service. However, under the moniker Dntel Tamborello has been responsible for leading the charge on modern glitchy electronica, first coming to the notice of this reviewer with the fantastic 2003 Kompact compilation, Triple R Friends, to which Tamborello contributed his 2001 song, “This is the Dream,” as remixed by Superpitcher.

Never before has this reviewer attended an arena rock show with the emotional power of Roger Waters' current The Wall tour. The show, which plays through the classic 1979 Pink Floyd album in its entirety, was an amazing visual and aural spectacle.

It’s not often one hears a new recording that immediately grabs the listener as something to which you’ll need to listen over and over. However, Norwegian Ane Brun’s new (and eighth) album, It All Starts With One, does exactly that.

Indigo Dreams is like many of the other BoDeans albums, and relies on the powerful combination of Llanas and Neumanns’ voices to buttress solid instrumental backing and a good folksy-rock sound. With Llanas now gone and replaced with Jake Owen, it remains to be seen whether the BoDeans will be able to carry forward with such power.

Peter Gabriel is in a class all his own as a musician. He has helped bring countless talented musicians to global attention, all the while also creating powerful music of his own. His latest outing, New Blood, is a re-imagined set of Gabriel’s classics set to a 46-piece orchestra, arranged by John Metcalfe (and, of course, lovely voices on various duets)

Do you like folk with a twangy country feel? If so, Dehlia Low will leave you feeling fulfilled. The album is a perfect blend of old timey, almost familiar tunes, presented with beautiful vocals, impressive instrumentation, and kickin’ rhythms. Starting with the songs: with song titles the likes of “State of Jefferson,” “Living is Easy,” “Drifting on a Lonesome Sea,” and “Cannonball Blues,” Dehlia Low has followed the traditional path of folksy, oft-depressed lyricism, a mirror of the Appalachia from which their musical tradition stems.

The show was very faithful to the recorded versions of their songs. Often, that can come across as lacking – if one merely wanted to hear album-perfect versions of songs, one could do so without paying for a $50, in this case) ticket. However, Portishead made those songs come alive through a combination of raw performance (particularly from Ms. Gibbons), as well as a powerful visual presentation.

Glitchy, techy, not too upbeat but not too down… this is a great album. It pulls together quality elements of the likes of Dntel and Royksopp while retaining a distinct enough sound to be interesting. Listening to it, one feels both comforted by its familiarity and yet uncertain of quite where it’s going next.

Thievery Corporation has a sixth album out called Culture of Fear. Surprising no one, it’s good. Sadly, though, it doesn’t really push the boundaries.

One could argue that trip hop as it stood in the mid-90s simply should stay in the past, and that Karmacoda is an evolution of that sound. However, other bands disprove that point: to wit Halou and arguably the Thievery Corporation, and others have beautifully picked up the trip hop banner, regardless whether they carry it explicitly.

The Prodigy have always had the sound of a band that should be captured live; they radiate an angry energy, wielding music seeping a hint of dangerous power. Their new live double DVD, World’s on Fire, filmed mostly at the Warrior's Dance festival, would seem to prove that those who haven’t seen The Prodigy live are missing the fulfillment of that livid promise. 

When’s the last time you heard an album that was both familiar and refreshingly new? Buzz hip hop act Shabazz Palaces have just created exactly that.

The Graduation Ceremony grabs the listener from the start with its emotional immediacy, the flow from one beautifully-crafted song to the next. It doesn’t break new ground, specifically; long-time appreciators of Joseph Arthur will find much here reminiscent of past work. For example, the album’s second track bears beautiful memory (and nearly a guitar riff) of his earlier work “Honey and the Moon,” from Redemption’s Son; that song, by this writer’s ear, is a true gem of melodic, folk-inspired pop, and “Horses” successfully follows in its footsteps.

It’s safe to say that, along with Faithless, Underworld created the soundtrack for the mid-90s for this writer, a time of club music and club going, of raves and dance parties and general electronic carrying on. To this day, their breakout hit “Born Slippy” can send shivers down my spine. So how does a duo who’s been playing together since 1979 (seriously, that long) fare releasing an album in 2010 that is remarkably true to that mid-90s sound, if slightly updated? Not badly at all.

Röyksopp's new album, Senior, essentially eliminates the upbeat, focusing instead on the duo’s more ambient explorations. It is meant as a complement to its predecessor, the upbeat Junior, and in that sense it serves wonderfully

Penny Sparkle's release date is perfectly timed, because in many ways this album is a perfectly reflective album for the transition to fall and winter; it is an album by which to contemplate things of heady nature over a glass of something dark and swirling, a fire in the background, the wind howling outside. It is an album that pushes the listener to find a mechanism for uplift in sonically-downbeat mining of the human experience.