Album Reviews

On first listen it’s completely devoid of hooks, and a second run-through would have been pure drudgery, really.

Finally an alt record that takes all the Franz Ferdinand Mini-Mes by the neck, rubs their faces in the lackluster heaps of discordant doodie they

As if the Crowes comparison wasn’t suitable, just take a listen to the swampy “Cry” that would give Chris and Rich Robinson a run for their money circa The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion.

The first couple songs,

Liz Durrett is doing what a lot of people have been doing for a long time, but her patience as a songwriter and her calculated decision to do more with little is what makes The Mezzanine phenomenal.

To say the Talking Heads were an original band is putting it mildly – they changed the landscape of music forever. Now with DVD-A, we can listen to their entire studio catalog which has just been reissued, along with bonus videos from the archives and alternate and unfinished takes of tracks you never heard before. It

Pentagram-festooned albums have been pouring out of the sky ever since Venom singer Cronos proved to the world that even a knob who pretends to worship Satan can get studio time (and maybe more, dude, nudge nudge nudge) with a painfully hot babe like Kate Bush.

30 Seconds to Mars combines the heartbreak and anguish of contemporary teen icons like Dashboard Confessional with all the sincerity of hair band power ballads, translating sunset strip fantasies to the 21st Century via self-doubt and impotence, and ending up blasting cock rock without the hard-on.

These are nice musical variations, and each artist retains their own style, but I Am The Resurrection isn

No Word From Tom, an album filled with B-sides, new material, covers, and live recordings, is Hem

As the fancy-pants voice of power pop kings the New Pornographers, Dan Bejar

Sing-Sing is not quite the musical equivalent of prison, but it

Security Screenings has arisen at the crest of a new (and probably the last) wave of activity for Heren under his Prefuse 73 moniker, and it feels especially frantic – if not like an afterthought then definitely a quick diversion before the next album.

Sun, Sun, Sun is a throwback record, chocked full of early 70s California rock – reminiscent of efforts of bands like Beachwood Sparks and The Thrills.

This may sound like your grandpa

The take on “Thunder Road” is particularly impressive in that Oldham manages to quickly make the song his own while not sacrificing the elements that made it great for the boss when Born to Run was topping the charts.

As a collective, the latest from The Minus 5 is summed up by “Cigarettes Coffee and Booze” and “Twilight Distillery,” two substance flavored tracks that toy with rockabilly, country and jangly pop. Sure, we’ve heard this all before with The Minus 5, but it’s the guests that keep you coming back. “The Gun Album” is no exception.

Wipe the slate clean. Ray Davies has dawned over rock’s new millennium. Davies, formerly of The Kinks, is a complicated, socially conscious musician, who delivers his message by drawing from a mount of musical styles.

Garrison Starr is single-minded in her songwriting. Not that there

Forty minutes of mostly forgettable, meandering soundscapes.