The staccato sound of struck typewriter keys on opening track “Nickels and Dimes” sets a tone of nostalgia for San Francisco's Scissors for Lefty. the latest in a line of West Coast bands with a penchant for Pulp.
ith a title like Viva Las Vegas, I suspect many people's expectations are very low, associating this with the lounge lizard Elvis. However, that turns out to be an off-base assumption. The truth is this album captures Elvis during his second-wind. True, the young, hungry singer from the days before the Army and the movies is gone, but he still had an awful lot of performance left in him and these 16 tracks, all but one recorded live between 1970 and 1972, find his great voice backed by a much bigger sound.
There are songs of the summer, albums that make you recall springtime or the falling of leaves; Reichenbach Falls, the debut from Ravens and Chimes is most certainly a winter album. Its snowy soundscapes and brushed wind chime keyboards slide into icicle coated glockenspiel, combined with the isolated frailty and indie-yearning of vocalist Asher Lack, the operatic movements play as New York City’s response to the Arcade Fire.
When most first heard of Okkervil River through their breakthrough 2005 release Black Sheep Boy, they nodded, but it was soon to be tossed aside The National's Alligator and forgotten by 2007. However, Okkervil front-man Will Sheff wants to be remembered long-term when he ambitiously created his band’s fourth full-length – The Stage Names.
“I don’t want to waste your time with music you don’t need,” Karin Bergquist, lead singer of Over the Rhine, declares at the start of The Trumpet Child, the Cincinnati-based band’s 18th full-length album. She’s not joking, either. Bergquist has never really been a shy singer, but up until recent years, she wouldn’t be classified as what she is now: confident.
Bolstered with an impressive arsenal of instrumentation—piano, strings, banjo, harp, flute, French horn, harmonica and more—Challengers, the much-anticipated fourth album from The New Pornographers, is a positive step forward in the development of a band that has continued to evolve with each subsequent record.
Reggae is the primary ingredient of Street Gospels, but by no means the only one. With punk running generally under the covers and surfacing occasionally on tracks like "Walls Fall Down" and even more so on "Gunships," soul is more overt. Soulful vocals, especially in the harmonies, roots each song without exception in something genuine, so much so that the album doesn't miss a beat on the a capella "Hush." In fact, the song is essential to Street Gospel’s flow.
Like a 90 minute comedy film, its been argued that a ten song album is the perfect length. If you oppose, give Kid A, Loaded, The Queen is Dead or Sticky Fingers a spin. Spoon front-man Britt Daniel, a notorious perfectionist, went full stride with ten songs on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon's six full-lenghth. Although there’s no argument about the dreadful album title, Daniel nailed Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s inner contents: ten songs of confident style shifting and melody.
As amazing as the British indie music scene has been in the past, how is anyone supposed to decide between The Futureheads, Arctic Monkeys, Art Brut, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, and The Cribs? As much as I listened carefully to every note to The Cribs' major label debut Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever, I honestly cannot tell this group's album apart from any of the other condescending, menacing, and assertive post-punk cock rock band's output that sensationalist UK music journalists try to persuade London hipsters to buy.
The latest album from the now-quartet—soul/reggae vocalist Toussaint joins the trio of Eric Krasno (guitar), Alan Evans (drums) and Neal Evans (keys)—No Place Like Soul, the first recorded with a vocalist since, is a fitting launching pad for the new Stax. Over the course of 13 new tracks, Soulive delivers the goods with typical style and attitude, expanding on their vigorous instrumentals with deeper harmonies and tighter song structures.
