Now firmly within the grasp of bandleader Josh Dobbs, The RunnAmuckS have produced their finest album to date, an epic reflection on aging, relationships and punk rock frustration that is as honest as it is succinct.
Tanzmusik is a reissue of Projekt mastermind Sam Rosenthal’s 1985 recordings, and is a fascinating portrait of an artist as a young man.
What truly makes Our House On The Hill a special album is its ever present and overwhelming sense of push and pull between two very different ideas.
Unsurprisingly, given the title image of a lonely soul contemplating life at 2:00 in the morning, the record revolves around ballads and low-volume tunes, all infused with warm soul.
The first question that comes to mind when listening to a new Neorev release is, “How in the hell does Michael Matteo keep getting better?”
Taken as an album, “Sparcity Blues” does not smack you about the face with immediate gratification, but instead invites the patient, the worthy and the intrepid among us into it’s heady, sensual and darkly shaded world of wonders.
While not really a black metal band per se, York, PA’s Night successfully conjure the dark atmospheric quality of the genre, creating post-rock atmospheric tracks that draw as much from Mogwai as they do from Burzum.
Drag City gives the world another lost gem of an album, this time a proto-New Age 1970s recording by a mysteriously anonymous force known only as Mad Music.
Reissue of jazz master Gil Evans’ tribute to Jimi Hendrix fulfills a collaboration that was meant to happen but never came to pass, due to Hendrix’s sudden death.
A new album (and band) that’s a marvel of pop hooks and acidic twinkle.
A fair and intelligent appropriation of mainstream pop’s reliable gestures and phrases, by a man who has legitimate use for them.
So what happens when you have a wife, a kid, a house in the suburbs, a steady job, you’re living the American dream, but still full of the angst that drew you to punk rock when you were young?
A work of singular beauty that triumphs in it’s ability to evoke deeply archetypal allegories out of relatively simple imagery and opening perception in it’s glyph-laden but still easily epistemological view of the “natural” world as it scrapes trippily across our human need for compartmentalization and supreme control.
With Fuck Faced Failures, leader Steve Davis delivers an album so quietly frightening that nightmares seem preferable.
Being an outsider in a Norman Rockell-esque town would certainly lead to psychosis, channeled here in musical form by three unbalanced individuals whose true calling was probably a circus sideshow.
Brutal Poodle are incomprehensible.
At under 7 minutes of running time, you’d be surprised at how much time you’ll want to spend listening to it.
Rather than recasting the whole project, it’s as if she decided the best way to complete the political record she first set out to make was to turn it as personal, intimate, apolitical as possible.
There is so much to love on this tape, it bursts with bright and diverse color and a totally original and exuberant take on psychedelic roads previously traveled by similar visionary heavies.
The improved picture quality, fresh remaster and new surround sound mixes are worth hearing, even if you played the live album as much as I did eighteen years ago. The extras are icing on the cake. For the newly curious, Secret World Live provides a compelling overview from Peter Gabriel’s heyday.
R_Ring is Kelly Deal’s first new solo project in nearly a decade, and this debut single is a promising blast of rock and roll.
Just when you though noise was getting all wussy, Medicine Cabinet’s Marc Schneider releases his second album in a successful effort to make your ears bleed.
Downtown Boys , one of Providence’s most exciting bands emerging from an already rich scene has just dropped a raw piece of timelessly intense and exuberant punk in their debut, self-titled release.
The seventh solo album from former Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci leader Euros Childs finds him doing what he does best: writing simple, sweetly-sung pop songs.
On this rare 12” outing, Merzbow joins forces with San Pedro’s premier black-grind-noisemongers for an epic release that will be a worthy addition to any noise fan’s collection.
Matthew Cooper steps away from behind his Eluvium project—for a new, dance-oriented electronica project. It was a bold gambit, and it pays off.
The band could have just done properly recorded versions of these songs and fans would have just ate them up but they fleshed out and perfected these sought after tracks.
Fanciful acoustic guitar passages, a wealth of sonic detail on songs that could have been rendered bare, the sense that we’ve caught the artist at a turning point, in his moment of greatest aloneness. Is this Rebo’s Workbook?
James Iha’s second solo album in 14 years picks up where his lovely debut left off, while enlisting friends to help him explore slightly more uptempo songs, resulting in one of this year’s loveliest listens.
This Scottish group’s self-titled debut offers up a plethora of songs that blend retro and modern sounds for a trippy, groove-laden pop that satisfies.
While it contains elements of harsh noise, Conscious Summary’s 7” effectively departs from the mold, bringing more music than power electronics.
Newman takes a wide left turn from the expected.
loscil’s latest album is a collection of gentle, delicate ambient compositions.
Sir Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny team up once again for a loud, raucous jam session that they call Rangda. Expect noisy, trippy things.
After a couple cassette EPs, founding Zs member, Sam Hillmer, finally delivers his solo album, an introspective journey that successfully expresses Hillmer’s starkly unique vision.
Jimmy LaValle’s latest Album Leaf record is a mini-album that finds him revisiting the instrumental style that made his early records so satisfying.
This trio is also capable of top notch quirky indie pop.
Mount Eerie’s second album of the year, a counterpart to the beautiful Clear Moon, stands in stark contrast to that beautiful record, while exuding a dark, dank beauty all its own.
The third LP since the iconic alt.rock trio’s mid-aughties reunion, I Bet On Sky moves to clear the clouds of overwhelming distortion that is the band’s usual raison d’etre and let the songs themselves shine through.
Sure enough, a certain maturity has set it. The bratty bursts of energy and snotty asides are kept in reserve these days, used when necessary, rather than scattered like dandelion seeds across a field.
One of the very best 7” singles this year, Nones’ debut LP should be impatiently awaited.
This transcendent double album is studded with stellar compositions that push you to a higher plane.
All in all, I think this may be Dum Dum Girls’ finest moment up to this point.
She is touted as the comedown queen, or the late night/Sunday morning pick me up for others, but the beauty of her work is that she can be whatever you want her to be.
Australian indie-popper Bart Cummings’ infrequent Bart and Friends releases two lovely little EPs that add up to a dozen sunny, heartfelt indie-pop tunes. Pam Berry guests.
A crawl through the crunch of synthetic insects underfoot and tomblike echoes of the claustrophobic deep, My Little Droney is an uneasy portrait of subtle horror.
Once again, Neorev returns with music so astonishingly excellent that one truly has to wonder why Michael Matteo isn’t one of the top electronic producers of the moment.
Long-running atmospheric rock band Lights Out Asia’s fifth album finds the band honing their sound even further, creating a sound that’s moody yet accessible.
The band is almost exactly the abandoned love child of My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus And Mary Chain and that is awesome.
