The Southwestern atmospheres the band has been exploring have been shifted to a sound that evokes a wide, cloudy sky at dusk rather than the desert at night.
Hostile Cell’s music is pop-metal aimed at chart-topping, and as such, is as bland as they come.
Phantom Glue’s songs are low-end onslaughts of rage and aggression with a homeless lunatic shouting the vocals so loud and in your face that you can almost smell the booze and crack wafting from his breath.
Uncluttered, indelicate and immediately engaging, the 10 songs on the latest release by D&TW seem planted firmly in a My Bloody Valentine plot, yet their roots and branches extend widely and magnificently.
Not that prior records didn’t feature plenty of hooks, but on Kaputt Bejar’s really indulging himself in instantly appealing melodies and lyrics a shade less dense and enigmatic.
Drunkdriver’s eponymous final release is the soundtrack to being mugged by a guy who doesn’t need the money – rather he revels in the misery it causes.
While Stephen Ryan has long impressed me as one of the most promising Irish songwriters around, his new improved Windings now have the invention and punch to match him step for step.
Double Star is the sound of two old buddies expressing a different, equally valid side of their extraordinary talents.
Rather than being a mere side-project of three veterans of the Los Angeles underground noise scene, DDDD has its own sonic style that establishes the group as a separate entity.
These albums tend to be dismissed offhand by a lot of fans, but some diehards cite them as their favorites.
Totem Two would be the perfect soundtrack for a sex magic ceremony that ends in sacrifice and cannibalism.
This first piece of vinyl from fresh Nashville upstart DIY label Jeffery Drag is a really hot indication of the great things to come.
They play together like devils, and shake like “The American Ruse,” “The Human Being Lawnmower,” and “Sister Anne” are the bible, and they’re fire and brimstone preachers.
Introduction lays out in stark terms what we lost at knifepoint in an L.A. bathroom, October 21, 2003. The guy was so real he still hurts.
Phoenix five-some Lisa Savidge dig shoegaze/dreampop’s dense guitar majesty, offering intermittent, beautifully breathtaking, mountain-peak clusters of cascading cacophony—but those are mere passages.
Where most punk bands these days fall flat on their faces in cliches and poor musicianship, MCT happily drive over them in an out-of-control Mac truck heading downhill.
As with most concept albums, the tale is less important than the telling, and it’s far easier to simply enjoy the band’s dynamic arrangements and dramatic melodies than to follow the plot.
A mysterious vinyl-only release from a Texas electronic psych-rocking wizard that proves to be one of 2011’s more compelling releases.
The storyline gets lost in the singalong choruses and headlong rush of melody that has always been Hart’s forte, but that’s hardly a flaw here
The second release by fuzzy Olympia based K recs group The Curious Mystery slides out the gate with a slow, dark majesty.
CloverSeeds use the dramatic sweep of metal anthemry to provide character for their widescreen tunes.
What began as McBride’s solo project in the early aughts throughout small dives in Brooklyn has since grown into a massive crowd-pleasing pulse reverberating across the U.S. and Europe.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around it, but the *Jayhawks*’ Hollywood Town Hall is almost 20 years old.
More Sense Than Money is once again the kind of excellent record that leaves one wondering why Garfields Birthday aren’t legends in the power pop underground.
Lia Ices’ sophomore is, in a word, gorgeous. It glows warm, so bask in it.
Lonely Scientist arrives as silvery and hushed as its evocative cover art, peering through the windshield and wondering which came first, the big empty landscape or man’s bemused and lonely reaction to it via acoustic guitar.
Still rather blatantly under the sway of Porcupine Tree and Talk Talk, Duda uses keyboards, acoustic guitars and swaying grooves to create lush prog/pop tunes, with an even finer edge than on the first record.
The Junkies cover the late, great Vic Chesnutt in the second volume of four in their “Nomad Series”.
This fresh new group of misfit rockers have forged a sound entirely unique out of the sagging genres of punk, garage and metal.
It’s been nearly 30 years since GoF’s illustrious original catalog was released, and to think or desire that the band would simply ape its old self is unfair.
This collection, much of which (or all of which, perhaps) appeared on previous Released Emotions tributes to these three bands, is a hit and mostly miss affair.
Sit down for the whole hour and 18 songs and take in the charming, lightly perfumed, but soulful air.
Blindfolded, I’d not be certain that Mr. Sloane was not Bono, so much does he sing and sound like him.
Anyone out there miss the Libertines U.K.? One could slip this album into the player at your next party and easily convince all in attendance that this is their new third LP.
Though it’s surprising to see this 1972 smash hit record reissued on an indie, that says more about the state of the music business nowadays than about the quality of this recording or the band.
Their succinct, unerring taste has slipped big-time this time ‘round.
As someone who has known and enjoyed Mr. Steele’s work for 31 years now, it’s nevertheless hard to say what the point of this short, eight-song covers album is.
Horribly over-praised in its time, 1965’s September is an alpha male prematurely facing a far-off mortality, expressing an overly sentimental melancholy over lost youth.
I’ve been hearing this sort of lushly lulling female vocalist for a long time. Tired of it I’m not!
The lyrics are outrageously nutty, often embarrassingly frankly funny, and the post-punk attack is as herky-jerky, unpredictable, and sometimes as outright insane as the words.
Despite being a key member of three of the most important New Zealand bands ever, The Clean, Magick Heads, and his prime singer/songwriting vehicle The Bats, it’s safe to say that Scott is still one of the more underrated singer/songwriters of the last 30 years.
This young L.A. multi-instrumentalist jazz cat has cut chops working with various jazz legends, among them Bennie Maupin , Arthur Blythe , and Henry Grimes.
Rose is a striking-looking, brunette-haired L.A. newcomer with Chicago roots that needs little more than her chords and harmoniously honey voice to make her lyrics dig in on her debut, even on initial encounter.
If you’re looking for more punk rock from SideoneDummy, would you accept the kind that goes back 80 years instead of 35?
When one finally deals with what’s here as opposed to what one would truly love, Live on the Sunset Strip is a genuinely sweaty, hard-working, exciting sounding, wonderfully recorded, must-have.
Although this two-girl, one boy trio are from Brighton in the south coast of England, they sound more like something on Nebraska’s Saddle Creek label—not a zillion miles removed from Azure Ray and Mynabirds, et al.
As the decades pass, it’s amazing how each generation mints a new round of artists who remind of the early ‘70s Neil Young.
If the theme of 2010 was an absolute plethora of inspired albums by people who’d been making them for decades, not a handful of years, you can go ahead and add this one to that pleasant development.
Typically described as an alt-country star, her latest barely betrays such nomenclature, bearing up instead as a folk pop and soft singer-songwriter rock foray, with only minor country inflections.
On the Seattle trio’s second LP, they are trying to answer the question no one was asking, namely, “Does the world need an American Belle & Sebastian?”
