R.E.M. Live isn’t going to turn their naysayers to the R.E.M. sound, but it proves a better late that never live package, or at least a well needed hold-me over until their next studio release due in early 2008.
Straddling the indie/classic rock/roots line of My Morning Jacket and Wilco, while incorporating the sensitive harmonies and instrumental angst of Built to Spill and Neil Young, Band of Horses is pure critic ear porn.
A new Radiohead album came out today. You can download it at inrainbows.com. After you put it in your shopping cart, you can choose to pay whatever price you want. What else can you say?
On his third Iron and Wine full length, The Shepherd’s Dog, Beam sticks with his token formula of hushed melodies and moving lyrics as the ground-work, but goes in a whole new direction above. Like his flowing mane and beard, Beam grew out the production level on The Shepherd’s Dog, that includes African rhythms and expanded instrumentation of courtesy of Joey Burns and Paul Niehaus from Calexico, Califone’s Jim Becker and Tin Hat Trio’s Rob Burger.
With Neko Case and Dan Bejar playing live with The New Pornographers, artists that had two of 2006’s best albums (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and Destroyer’s Rubies), the evening’s performance in Tucson could have been billed as: The New Pornographers feat: Neko Case and Dan Bejar.
Like a good book, Kill to Get Crimson needs some time to get comfortable with, but it’s worth the effort.
it’s only fitting that with 2007 welcoming the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, that Christopher McCandless’ journey to a destination unknown made it to the big screen. McCandless’ two year adventure was documented in the 1996 best seller Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, and has since served as modern-day thesis for self-discovery.
This Danish duo Junior Senior creates a pop nightmare on Hey Hey My My Yo Yo incorporating enough sugary disco revival to make Scissor Sisters sound like Christian rock. Hard to believe this effort was partly recorded at Muscle Shoals Studios, as the only soul on it is the soul searching you’ll do if you listen to it more than once.
Say what you want about the Dave Matthews Band, and their rah rah “Ants Marching,” frat rock clap-a-longs. Stripped to the bone, you’ve got one of the best singer-songwriters around. Live at Radio City is further proof.
if Elliott Smith was the front-man for your band, they’d surely sound like Earlimart’s bag of introspective indie pop bliss. On their follow-up to 2004’s critically acclaimed Treble & Tremble, L.A.’s Earlimart revamp their ELO meets west coast indie on Mentor Tormentor.
