James Elkington could sing a death notice and still garner applause. His voice is strong yet warm, and eloquent. Black Pompadour, the third album from Chicago’s The Zinc’s, finds Elkington delivering gloomy verse with a quaint, endearing touch.
From tranquil introspection of “Lifetime Ranger,” to the soaring crescendos of “Merit,” Law digs deep into emotion, and draws out a cycling soundscape of highs and lows; those peeks and valleys that are an inherent part of life.
Critical reviews of retrospectives and B-sides/rarity compilations often carry a common label: “For completists.” Gomez has managed to fit just within that context with Five Men in a Hut (Singles 1998-2004), a double disc exploration of the British band’s work spanning five albums and focusing largely on the singles released in the United Kingdom.
Arbouretum's Rites of Uncovering is an adventurous experiment built upon the organic musical tendencies of David Heumann; tendencies which contrast the more architectural and linear constructions often found in modern indie music.
To follow the success of We're Already Gone, The Beautiful Girls decided to move ahead by looking behind, filling in their new American audience with Water, a compilation of tracks pulled from those earlier releases between 2002 and 2004.
Vocal dramatics are the essence of Shearwater's forurth album, Palo Santo, with vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg consistently exposing a forever-fluctuating line between kitten purr and banshee wail.
Starless & Bible Black is guilty of meandering, oft-unfocused compositions; however, the innate ability to craft multi-layered textures which beg to be unraveled forgives most of these transgressions.
The tenacity of Daniel Hutchens makes little sense. Over the course of six albums with his band, Bloodkin, and two solo albums, he has skirted both critical and popular acknowledgement, despite writing some of the most prolific verse to grace southern rock in the last decade.
The Letting Go maintains Bonnie Prince Billy’s trademark style while giving those simple songs the opportunity to puff and billow with passionate, dusty bravado.
Adam Arcuragi is a 40-watt lightbulb in an otherwise dark room; his low-intensity glow isn
