Album Reviews

When Liars emerged in 2001 with their scorching debut LP They Threw Us In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, it was a caustic wad of spit in the mascaraed eyeball of everything trendy, vapid and annoying about hipster New York City in the turn of the century

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti values style over substance, but that isn’t a bad thing. The band’s new project, Mature Themes, contains many of elements found on its successful 2010 release Before Today—creative collages of 1970’s pop themes suffused with vocal and keyboard-driven atmosphere.

The cinematic, vintage appeal of The Glorious Dead is what makes The Heavy's latest offering worth digging into, but it's also a record with too many missed opportunities to make it a great offering.

Keep an eye on the horizon for this rising talent who is increasingly gaining momentum, she might just be “pretty much what you’re lookin’ for.”

Yeasayer’s music typically demands patience and repeated listens, elements that lack a bit from this release as the songs don’t reveal many hidden layers.  With Fragrant World, they miss the mark a little bit, but it’s still a noble enough attempt to keep people interested in following their career arc. It will be fun to watch which direction they embark upon next and decipher what chapter of their evolvement this release falls under.

Saint Saviour is the stage name of Becky Jones who first came into the spotlight as a vocalist on Groove Armada’s 2010 album Black Light.  Her first full length solo release Union finds her mixing and mining soundscapes and various singer/songwriting frontiers over the course of 14 songs with various success. 

On Gossamer, Passion Pit is taking a step forward in craftsmanship, genre-bending experimentation and delivering once again a powerful and enjoyable album experience.

Their first recording in 18 years, Shoes' Ignition reaffirms both their status as unsung heroes of American power-pop even as it confirms how willfully they've embraced their self-styled insularity over the years. This vibrant studio project is the work of musicians capitalizing on their chemistry

Based on the full-throttle energy theybring forth on Ownerless, they have certainly earned their place warming up their mentor's massive Fender amps this time around.

While the name of the group may be an oxy-moron the trio that makes up Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band has produced some foot stomping tunes with their newest album Between The Ditches.  Coming from the southern foothills of Brown County, Indiana the players put fourth a mix of blues, country, rockabilly that’s meanders in an out of each other during these 14 songs.  

Researching the Blues is not, for better or worse, Neurotica, but in the most important ways, it is very connected to the spirit of what made its predecessor great even if it never quite digs deeper than the veneer of a generation raised on sugary cereal and Saturday morning cartoons.  It moves around its many 60s and 70s influences in a way that is peculiar and wonderful and thoroughly Redd Kross.

The 25th anniversary CD also features a number of alternate takes and demos, as well as an audio interview with Simon, that give further insight to the creative process behind Graceland, but the real accomplishment of the re-release is to remind everyone why they still care about this album all these years later. And if you don’t care, I challenge you to listen to it and still feel that way. 

Blonds come across loose- like they only care half as much as they should, but it works for them in some blasé, cool factor, lo-fi lovers, garage lust way. Their elongated vocals and slow beats create a sound similar to Beach House. There is also some modern ambition and grunge of the Dum Dum Girls. The past is a prominent influence in The Bad Ones. The duo draw on 1930's histrionics, '40's jazz, '50's poise, some old Southern backbone, and '60's motown. In short, Blonds is a pair of old souls living in a modern world making music for the artsy, the cynical lovers, and all those scheming dreamers.

On Peasant's new album, Bound For Glory, Damien DeRose puts together some solid acoustic folk pieces. Though the album as a whole, and in comparison to his previous ones, remains static, it is still able to provoke a feeling parallel to hot, lazy summer days, sepia colors, and tumble weeds.

More conventional fans of Mike Patton might want to wait until January of 2013 when the long-awaited new Tomahawk LP, Oddfellows, comes out, which the singer has described as "really heavy Beach Boys".

For a period of time The Smashing Pumpkins looked like they had the potential to be the next U2; Corgan shares Bono’s gift for creating over-the-top anthems that hit their mark, although the lyrical content is dark and mysterious instead of straightforward and earnest. For a variety of reasons The Smashing Pumpkins imploded before this could happen, and at this point it most likely never will, but “Oceania” is a strong return to form for a band that could do wonders to help revive a struggling rock n roll scene.

This is a throwback to the moment college rock wrapped earnest woe and anger into the sweetest of melodies. Delayed Reaction is an example of a band that is deeply in touch with what they do best. There are no curve balls here, just fire from the heart.

With the tragic passing of founding member Richie Hayward, Little Feat suffered what is undeniably the band's greatest loss since the untimely death of its mastermind Lowell George. But the venerable group has enlisted some redoubtable reinforcements for its 16th studio album Rooster Rag.

 Yet this stuff still sounds like it was recorded on a one-speaker Emerson boom box from 1984. And to remove that sense of scratchiness from the listening experience of material like "Secret Knowledge of Back Roads" and "Bar Scene from Star Wars" would be akin to sucking the soul from its historical importance entirely, not to mention usurping the fun of the challenge in peeling away the fuzz to reveal the true grit of these wonderfully scrappy pop songs.

When the band recorded and finished their third album this amorphous lack of center became self-evident and the band scrapped it, feeling as if they were on the verge of something. Founding members Stakee and Terry Wolfers hunkered down into the relationship that forms the core of Alberta Cross and edited, remixed, and wrote anew. Through the trials and tribulations comes the appropriately titled, Songs of Patience.