An incredible slab of searing garage perfection that leaves you totally breathless and wanting a whole lot more!
K Recs continues their magnificently diverse output with a slice of neo-sludge and retrodelia with this burnt offering by Chain & The Gang. Sparse, hiss-laden soul hooks here adorned by poppy and understated male/female vocals.
Does Write About Love promise not just the status quo, does it slyly allude to a degree of revelation we’ve never seen in the work of Belle & Sebastian before?
Five years after the New Line album, the band has returned with its strongest effort yet.
From the sound of Legacy, the fifth album from Belgian ensemble Hypnos 69, leader Steve Houtmeyers has two albums in his collection: King Crimson‘s In the Court of the Crimson King and Pink Floyd‘s Wish You Were Here.
A remarkable debut from a woman who is just beginning to discover how much she has to say.
There are lots of young musicians trying to capture this kind of guitar-driven spike-pop sound and not doing it nearly as well.
In The Seven Dreams, the debut from Goldbug, jazz and experimental music weave themselves so closely together they don’t recognize their own limbs.
Excellent songs prove that there is more under Hewhocannotbenamed’s mask than the cartoon character he portrays with THE DWARVES.
The tracks collected on A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra Capsular Extraction represent the first recorded utterances of the entity known as Earth.
Thirty-five years after it ceased formal operations, The Beatles‘ Apple Records roster receives the proper retrospective it has so sorely deserved.
It plays this timeless mix of early 70s metal, prog and drone rock as it invented it – there’s not a whiff of nostalgia.
Everything that you love about completely over-driven garage punk is white hot on The Soupcans first release, a cleverly packaged casette on the tiny DIY Cramped Spaces Cassette Registry label.
Steampunk as a musical style is more difficult to define, as there are as many variations as in fiction and film.
Cheetah Chrome tell’s his “Dead Boy’s Tales” with his new autobiography.
Live in Europe showcases his mastery of the kind of soulful blues/bluesy soul that helped make BB King and Albert King legends.
This stuff is raw, in-your-face hardcore punk that also doesn’t skimp on the melody and catchiness to go along with its youthful energy.
Voltaire collects many of his funniest, most accessible tunes on Spooky Songs For Creepy Kids, the soundtrack to your kids’ next trick-or-treat walk.
These first seven singles are arguably Morrissey’s best; they hinted at a promise that his legacy of the Smiths would be equaled by a uniformly engaging solo career.
Having evolved from the With the Beatles-obsessed Poppees, you’d think Sorrows would have an equally fervent Fab Four jones.
Without a scrap of lyric, the songs manage to be incredibly lyrical, singing images pleasantly into the mind’s ear. The attentive listener is transported into splendid harbors of bright and comforting light and shade, to the point where the texture of the music is almost palpable to the touch.
Acid Mothers Temple continually release challenging music that is striking in its originality and integrity.
Had the album been released in this form, I would argue that it would had just as much of an impact upon the scene.
Walker concentrates on gritty blues and soul balladry, with a veneer of sophistication barely covering seething emotions.
Tea and Sympathy displays a band with a strong grasp on creamy melody and bittersweet romance, taking gentle guitar pop and giving it a more substantial weight than its soft, breezy veneer would at first lead one to believe.
After a four year break, Jay has returned with his best laundry list of ridiculous ways to kill him the last 50WTKM offering.
Lost in the Trees debut with an evocative album with folk and orchestral style that is both heartbreaking and glorious.
The point of Live at Roadburn 2007 isn’t so much the addition of any live energy – it’s to sum up the band’s recent era.
Descending is all about atmosphere and drift, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring.
Working a sort of sweet spot located between Doug Sahm and Rockpile, the Grasshoppers eschew trendy production/arrangement tricks for simple, straightforward writing and performances.
This is, amazingly, the first released music by former Jawbreaker and Jets to Brazil vocalist/singer/guitarist/songwriter Blake Schwarzenbach since 2002.
Key of K manages to pack some major dynamics into seemingly simple songs. A beautiful, mellifluous and dark recording that should hold most listeners happily rapt.
The deceptively loose, rambling rawness of The Demon’s Claws ‘ music wraps everything we love about spooky psych rock and roll and sets it all on fire.
NOFX packages up the last 20 years with a 30 song compilation.
If dreampop is the sound of one’s subconscious hallucinations during sleep, then lovelisecrushing is the ambient wash of those phantasms filtered through the waking light of day, the specific images slipping away, leaving only the vaguest of feelings.
Recorded between the dissolution of the Stooges and the ignition of Iggy Pop‘s solo career, Kill City was at the time an anomaly in Iggy’s catalog, a collection of demos with an odd (for the Ig) sound that has been accused of being exploitative of its singer’s uneven mental state at the time.
The Jett Black Heart Attack bring it all the way to the days of classic hard rock.
A ten-song album with five (mostly) unqualified successes, Hurley is, by this math, at least half fresh, maybe better.
The self-titled debut album from White Noise Sound is another example of an LP that makes it obvious what the band has in its record collection.
Back in the early 90s, when everyone else interested in underground rock music was singing its praises, I dismissed Superchunk as a third-rate Hüsker Dü wannabe after hearing a couple of songs, and never looked back.
I hope fans and newcomers alike can exercise some patience when hearing this. I think the average fan of No Age will be satisfied by the first half of the album but those who want something more will be pleasantly surprised by the second and plenty of Everything In Between.
Led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Ian Underwood, the quartet distilled the underground Australian rock & roll of the 70s and 80s down into a potent, guitars’ n’ melodies attack that’s catchy and exhilarating.
The first Swans album in nearly 15 years, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky encompasses all the original band’s many moods.
Tour-only vinyl single rocks out with covers of the Television Personalities and “The Boss”.
“Jesse Malin, isn’t he like Ryan Adams II?” someone asked me the other day.
In Malin’s defense, I offered a stumbling summary of his die-hard career…
As a music town, Austin is known for lots of things: blues, country, psychedelia, Spoon. What’s not usually celebrated is River City postpunk, of which there’s a lot.
Veteran New York rock & roller Kevin K teams with L.A. spitfire Texas Terri for eight songs of piss, vinegar and tattoos on Firestorm.
Mark Kozelek’s fourth album under the Sun Kil Moon moniker is by far the most sparsely arranged, but to call it simply a guitar-and-voice album is misleading, given the fullness of his singing and playing.
His debut with the Dead Peasants is slick, shiny roots pop, with easily accessible melodies, bright production and nothing even close to threatening.
Serrano/Faust creates a set of covers and originals in what’s essentially a tasteful, rootsy rock vein – excepting his ragged sing/speak, there’s nothing here that would sound out of place on your local triple-A radio station.
