Rabbits on the Run is unequivocally Carlton’s best effort yet; a beautiful culmination of years of soaring highs and devastating lows, rolled into an elegant, thoughtful collection of ten songs.
Deep inside an electronic jungle there lies a creature with a personality that is characterized by the unique sounds that it spews into the atmosphere. It’s those individualities that make up the sound of Swedish electro-jazz-pop quartet Little Dragon and the subtleties that keep their sound ever evolving within itself. The band, whose identity was discovered through creative frustration, returns with their third album on Peacefrog Records titled Ritual Union, an album that works within the structure of diverse beats, yet explores beyond those boundaries extensively.
The same year Tapestry appeared Carole King recorded a concert at Carnegie Hall, but it wasn’t released until 1996, when it came out on CD. Mobile Fidelity has now put out a remastered 2-LP version of the concert on 180-gram vinyl. As audiophile releases go, this is the flip side of such sonic spectaculars as Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt. Pepper’s or Close to the Edge.
When’s the last time you heard an album that was both familiar and refreshingly new? Buzz hip hop act Shabazz Palaces have just created exactly that.
This collection should please fans of revivalist music from bands like The Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Avett Brothers, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and hopefully serve as a light on the performers who originated the style on hundred years ago.
The Errant Charm, Vetiver’s fifth full-length album (and second with Sub Pop) continues a process that began with Tight Knit, moving the band away from this unorthodox folk into more traditionally structured California pop. Overall, most of the album has a subdued and gossamer mood, but to its credit, there is also an eclectic mix of breezy, sanguine arrangements combined with robust moments like “Ride, Ride, Ride that recalls an A.M.–era Wilco.
The first in a series of EP releases, Pro*Whoa! finds Nikka Costa cooing and screeching over six freaky funk tracks reminiscent of Prince and Stevie Wonder.
Sondre Lerche’s latest new self-titled release is a musical kaleidoscope filled with a plethora of stops, starts, and turns. Filtered through his trademark classical pop sensibilities, Lerche’s album will ring a few bells of familiarity to listeners. He pays homage to McCartney-esque Beatles: the dreamy “Coliseum Town”, Belle and Sebastian theatrical leanings: the lead single, “Private Caller”, and even hits a Chris Martin type falsetto on “Domino” before borrowing Wilco’s searing guitar squeal for the song’s ending.
Throughout the entirety of Ben Sollee’s second solo album, Inclusions, there’s a struggle waged between genre, between metaphor and the literal, between engaging and utterly distancing. Over the course of the album’s eleven tracks, Sollee presents music that jumps between traditional pop/folk and atonal structures with the ease and whimsy of a single chord, revealing Inclusions’ central investigation of aesthetic pollination. If anything, it appears that Sollee desires to question the experience of listening to and identifying with music.
News of their split took many by surprise, but like a number of talented and introspective songwriters that have come before them, Ivan and Kelly have taken their unfortunate circumstances and turned them into a work of great art, emotion, and perhaps even catharsis. The result is Loud Planes Fly Low, ten bouncy, yet emotionally stark tracks that acknowledge, critique, and examine the delicately affecting emotions that result from a relationship in crisis.
