n 1999, A New Found Glory released Nothing Gold Can Stay, a sappy pop punk album that made me feel the pain of being 17 again. Sure, some of the lyrics were over-dramatic and the vocals were whiny, but the album connected with me even though it was written for kids ten or so years my junior. T
Eat Me, Drink Me is fairly classic Manson, if perhaps lightened up a bit. His voice is every bit as crusty, dark, and angry as ever, and the synths, bass and drums pound out their usual aggressive anger, but the guitar work, in particular, seems to have lightened up, with occasional riffs that don’t sway too far from slack guitar while other guitar lines are straight-up rock ‘n roll.
Under the Blacklight is fun and catchy, yet for a band renowned for intricate songcraft and interesting melodies, they have made themselves sound unoriginal and contrived.
On From the Corner to the Block, the funksters take a definitive step forward by tackling hip-hop for the first time. Though the band’s sound has always worked well with guest hip-hop emcees—they’ve shared the stage with The Roots, Juvenile and Jurassic 5—this album fully embraces the tradition with collaborations from a veritable who’s-who list of hip-hop artists and turntablists: Juvenile, Lyrics Born, Mr. Lif, Boots Riley, Gift of Gab, Lateef the Truthspeaker, Ohmega Watts, Chali 2na, Ladybug Mecca and DJ Z-Trip.
One would have thought only Joanna Newsom could sound like Joanna Newsom…yet somehow, Anais Mitchell manages to sound like her. Or at least, to take elements of her childlike, nasal voice, and combine them with the much more classically beautiful, neo-folk sounds of Edie Carey or perhaps a more robust Rosie Thomas.
As the liner notes describe, all across the country on a Saturday night music and good times go hand in hand and always have. American roots music, from bluegrass to zydeco, has been an influence on modern music as well as a vital part of life for many, many people. It's the latter that this compilation tries to capture.
This album, recorded at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, NJ in the summer of 1990, finds Johnny Cash on his way back up. He was working with Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings on the Highwaymen's second album during this time and this was not the shell of Johnny Cash that did variety shows in the 70s, but a very vital artist. All of this points in one direction: a fine performance. And that's just what was uncovered here.
Atlanta cow-punks The Black Lips are a refreshing breath of new weird air.
The staccato sound of struck typewriter keys on opening track “Nickels and Dimes” sets a tone of nostalgia for San Francisco's Scissors for Lefty. the latest in a line of West Coast bands with a penchant for Pulp.
ith a title like Viva Las Vegas, I suspect many people's expectations are very low, associating this with the lounge lizard Elvis. However, that turns out to be an off-base assumption. The truth is this album captures Elvis during his second-wind. True, the young, hungry singer from the days before the Army and the movies is gone, but he still had an awful lot of performance left in him and these 16 tracks, all but one recorded live between 1970 and 1972, find his great voice backed by a much bigger sound.
