[rating=8.0] It’s been quite some time since Chris Flemmons fired up his Denton, TX collective The Baptist Generals. Ten long years, in fact, have passed since the critically acclaimed No
Folk singers like Marling are often called “storytellers” to the point that it has become a cliché, but if her previous releases were collections of short stories, Once I Was an Eagle is Marling’s debut novel.
[rating=7.0 ] Eisley has had a few years to purge their demons and have come out on the other side stronger. 2011’s comparatively angry and jaded The Valley was preceded
[rating=9.0] With The National’s last release High Violet, mid-life dread was floating everywhere; it was the perfect “hip white people’s problems” disk. The band apparently scrapped thousands of hours of
Listening to Promises from The Boxer Rebellion is like gorging yourself on chocolate for a bit before you start to get tired of it and suddenly remember that you can add some things to the chocolate to make it even better.
Coming from their hometown of New Orleans, Dumpstaphunk have steadily expanded their sound to achieve global funk success. Dirty Word is the latest from the band and shows off the professional funkateers in winning fashion.
Shooter fearlessly confronts the duality of man’s nature. Can Saturday night and Sunday morning learn to live side by side? Directly quoting one of his father’s songs, he asks, “Don’t y’all think this ‘outlaw’ bit done got outta hand?” As a lens through which to view and contemplate the finer points of man’s perplexing nature, The Other Life is not just Shooter’s birthright but a surprisingly fertile platform for hard-won philosophical insights.
At its core Modern Vampires of the City still has the clever hooks and effortless melodies that made the band blogosphere darlings in 2008, but underneath the gloss there's a less easy, more fatalistic worldview
There's a certain kind of heft to Wakin on a Pretty Daze that wasn't present on a Kurt Vile LP before. And not just with regards to the length of several of the songs that appear on this eleven-track collection bookended by the nine-and-a-half minute "Wakin on a Pretty Day" and the mesmerizing ten-plus minute comedown "Goldtone". What is more prevalent perhaps is the sense of ease by which the songs seem to just roll out of your headphones as Vile and his current primary Violators–multi-instrumentalists Jesse Trbovich and Rob Laakso–submerge the street cool of late-80s Lou Reed into that hazy psych-rock thing he's been doing since since his bedroom dubbing days, albeit less volatile from the sounds of such key tracks as "Was All Talk" and "Shame Chamber".
Signed since 2011 to the Kings of Leon helmed imprint, Serpents & Snakes, The Features have returned with their latest LP, an eleven track self-titled walk through their kaleidoscopic soundscape, offering both steady favorites and some new, interesting wrinkles.
