Fresh off their much buzzed about sold out, two-night stand at MSG in New York, Montreal-based act the Arcade Fire have announced the details for their West Coast heavy fall
With the list of musicians taking a stand against Arizona’s recently passed controversial immigration law SB 1070 by participating in The Sound Strike growing, two of the more vocal opponents
After months of delays The Roots will finally drop their ninth studio album, How I Got Over, tomorrow via Def Jam. Last week the Philly hip-hop group, pulled double duty
While we may never seen a full-on Pink Floyd reunion again, the band’s bassist – Roger Waters – hasn’t been shy about touring behind the group’s most well-known material. It’s
As we eagerly await My Morning Jacket’s return from a year-plus hiatus, Jim James has kept himself busy during the downtime. First as a member of Monsters Of Folk and
This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.
To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.
Let’s check out numbers 15 through 11 and see what made the cut…
15) Elvis Perkins In Dearland – Elvis Perkins in Dearland
Key Tracks: Hey, Chains Chains Chains, Doomsday
Sounds Like: Part marching band, Part Dylan-esque folk-rock
Skinny: Perkins sophomore effort is more of a complete representation of what he and his band In Dearland sound like. The combo’s “antique music” can best be summed up as equal parts ramshackle folk and Sousa marching band, making it virtually impossible at times to keep you from from tapping your feet along to songs like Hey, I Heard Your Voice In The Dresden and Doomsday with Perkins’ vivid lyrics as the guide.
READ ON for the next four albums in our week long countdown…
As we continue our year end house cleaning around these parts, I thought I’d chime in once again with a list of my own. As has become the half yearly tradition around these parts, in lieu of a traditional top ten list we opt to do something a little different with our Top 6 of both halves of the year.
While my Top 6 Of The First 6 seemed to have some pretty obvious choices, the second half of the year’s list is mostly dominated by debut records – so let’s get on with it…
I’ve had Fanfarlo’s debut album for so long, that I almost forgot that it officially got released this September. Loaded with orchestral folk-rock that has become all the rage in recent years, the album features everything from saws and clarinets to cellos and ukuleles to melodicas and thermins that all combine with lead singers Simon Balthazar’s booming vocals to produce a cacophony of melodic noise that doesn’t fall far from the Neutral Milk Hotel/Arcade Fire tree.
READ ON for the rest of my Top 6 Of The Last 6…
On their recently wrapped world tour, indie-rock supergroup Monsters Of Folk treated fans to three-hour, 30+ song shows mixing material from their self-titled debut with selections from the members various
Earlier this year Chali 2na, the former front man for the much beloved – but now defunct – hip hop act Jurassic 5, released his long awaited solo debut, Fish
Jambands aren’t the only acts that can have fun on Halloween, as the members of the indie-folk super-group the Monsters Of Folk upped the ante on Saturday night in Louisville
