Despite having a fairly successful fifteen-year career, Kim Richey is still virtually unknown to the general public. While she's sung on albums by Shawn Colvin, Ryan Adams and Mary Chapin Carpenter, as well as writing hits for the likes of Trisha Yearwood and Brookes & Dunn, Richey continues to fly under the collective radar of both country and rock radio.
Auditorium is the brainchild of Spencer Berger of Los Angeles. With a music degree from Vassar, and a background in opera performance, screen writing, and acting Berger’s diversity of interests appears to have resulted in a distinctive vision for his own musical output. His debut album, Be Brave, was recorded in private over a period of three years using only his voice and his fingers on electric bass and acoustic guitar
When you listen to a record like Push, it’s almost like you’re feeling the live show right through the headphones. Definitely a band with a positive outlook, 40 Watt Hype is a rare breed of instrumental hip-hop soul and the Latin influence that is rooted within the music only gives off more energy.
It’s been done and will be done many times again but when artists decide to honor a classic rock album, it can end up being a stale, cheesy rehash or resulting in something truly strong. Thankfully, when it comes to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon the Easy Star All Stars can dub this album primarily fabulous.
It’s safe to say that, along with Faithless, Underworld created the soundtrack for the mid-90s for this writer, a time of club music and club going, of raves and dance parties and general electronic carrying on. To this day, their breakout hit “Born Slippy” can send shivers down my spine. So how does a duo who’s been playing together since 1979 (seriously, that long) fare releasing an album in 2010 that is remarkably true to that mid-90s sound, if slightly updated? Not badly at all.
Phair's new Funstyle CD is a weird accomplishment. It’s pure fluff. But because it comes from our darling Liz I wonder if we don’t reflexively apply an extra measure of serious scrutiny to it than we might for a new record by Christina Aguilera or Kylie Minogue
If Of Montreal’s over-sexed genre-hopping cast any doubt on Kevin Barnes’ commercial potential, False Priest puts them to rest. With his (at least) metaphorical muse found in the enigmatic Janelle Monae, Barnes reigns in the verbal-orgy-as-art attention deficit freakout, and paints a pretty graphic picture of love in the age of therapy and public discourse.
While old-schoolers bemoan the demise of the long-player in the iTunes era, Magnetic Island go back to the future on their debut EP, Out at Sea.
The debut from Tel Aviv guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Yair Yona attempts to bridge the vast span between atmospheric indie instrumentalism and Delta blues slide guitar, and while the result is undoubtedly original, it often comes to rest somewhere in the inter-genre no-man’s land reserved for smooth jazz and elevator music.
With their second full-length album, Distortionist, the Murdocks harness the raw power of grunge, the energy of punk and the hooks of indie pop while still remaining accessible enough for the modern mainstream.
