Nashville, Tennessee band Bad Cop ’s auspicious debut on the legendary ROIR label is an inoculating shot in the arm that acts as a sort of psychic painkiller. It’s an elevating, honest and transcendent album.
Blackshaw’s exchanged his acoustic 12-string for an electric, and the instrument’s trademark chime makes his circular melodies sparkle.
Gathering up everything the group recorded, including both EPs, the album, a pair of demos and a couple of live cuts, the disk makes the case for Carnival Season being a candidate for Great Lost Band of the 80s.
Nathan Williams channels his inner Jay Reatard along with Reatard’s rhythm section.
I don’t know how much Ragged and Right will do for Rose’s posthumous reputation, but it should alert discerning listeners to the potential of D. Charles Speer.
Last weekend I found a hidden gem for two bucks! For the price of this record I could have only downloaded the first two tracks from iTunes.
This two-disk edition collects all the recordings made during the three years leading up to the album’s release.
I spent a somber week falling under this album’s melancholy spell, and then found reason to rejoice. Melody, human emotion, a finely wrought story: all is right with the world.
Mylow both picks up where the Backsliders left off and begins a whole new chapter in the career of a songwriter some thought lost.
A crisp and bouncy release by this Montreal band.
One of the most genuine and exciting bands tearing shows up in the DIY scene right now.
If the EPs emanating from the Church‘s excellent Untitled #23 have proven anything, it’s that the band left many of the best tracks it had recorded off of what was already a strong collection.
With its timeless sound and excellent songs, Burning Like the Midnight Sun is not only a striking return to form but also a fine entry point to newcomers.
Devo is back with its best record in almost three decades.
San Francisco indie pop troop the Mommyheads had an illustrious if undernoticed career throughout the 90s, issuing half a dozen records treasured by enthusiasts and pretty much ignored by everyone else.
Straight outta Cleveland comes Back In The USSA, the debut disk from Prisoners.
Deerhunter and their friend Panda Bear release lovely new singles in advance of forthcoming albums. They dub these “7-inches,” though both are available digitally.
To call Best Coast lo-fi ’60s revival pop is putting it too simply. Imagine Liz Phair is the lead singer of the Vivian Girls and she’s been taking singing lessons from Neko Case and the album was written during heavy listening of Phil Spector-produced works.
The second album by British black metal troop A Forest of Stars, Opportunistic Thieves of Spring builds on the promise of its predecessor while also planting a foot more firmly in the traditions of its chosen genre.
Without playing for shock value, The Devil’s Blood weave a smoky cloak of cloven hoof and hook-driven rock ‘n’ roll.
Both a traditionalist and a restless soul, Paul Kopasz is an artist of enormous intelligence and keen insight, and he assumes his audience will understand his references and take his meaning.
Though the prospect of PETER MURPHY fronting NINE INCH NAILS is interesting on its own, what’s even more interesting is the song selection.
There’s simply something distinctly English about her songs and performances, a cultural thread that runs through The Quickening like a creek through a lush forest.
Acid King has always been one of the most consistently powerful beasts in the stoner rock biz, and that power was present from the beginning.
With his stalwart companions in D.O.A., singer/songwriter/guitarist Joe Shithead Keithley has stayed true to the never-say-die ethos of 70s punk rock, needing little more than three chords, an eye for social injustices and a bucket full of rage.
Best known to musical cognoscenti as the guitarist for the short-lived but much beloved Young Marble Giants, Stuart Moxham has 30 years of solo records to his name.
Presented in chronological order, the disks demonstrate that the work in the second half of his career is easily equal of that in the more celebrated first half.
The roots rocking sextet sometimes comes off as a marketing concept, but other times as possibly the most good-naturedly sincere band on the block.
Alejandro Escovedo has proven himself a true artist time and again, and continues to do so with his latest album Street Songs of Love.
Reality focuses on the band’s melodic pop side, with just enough acid glaze to keep the music firmly in the Cherry tradition.
The excellent Red Dissolving Rays of Light will be of interest to anyone who likes catchy, melodic rock & roll, not just 60s revivalists.
Tonight’s the Night is ragged, bleak, weird. It must have come as a complete shock to label executives hoping for more mellow classics along the lines of “Heart of Gold.” It sat unreleased for two years.
Now given a remaster and re-release, Medicine Show is finally given a chance to show its quality, minus the expectations heaped on it in the early 80s.
While the sound Religious to Damn create has aural antecents in Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, Fleetwood Mac and their ilk, there’s a more nuanced narrative playing out in the music.
Can the mastermind behind the seminal ghoulish hardcore and metal bands MISFITS and SAMHAIN still summon the demons like he once did?
Creager isn’t being weird for weirdness’ sake – she’s merely sharing her view of the world, inviting anyone with the desire to join her.
Gleason takes his inspiration directly from the Bakersfield sound of his West Coast home – this is country rock with a bigger debt to BUCK OWENS and MERLE HAGGARD than CROSBY, STILLS & NASH.
The Threshingfloor continues DAVID EUGENE EDWARDS‘ self-willed odyssey into the depths of his Nazarene Christianity.
Yes, Teenage Fanclub is incredibly consistent, but there’s a huge amount of sonic variety on this album; it’s easy to imagine the guys spending five years saying “how about if we add banjo here?”
Two things are immediately noticeable. One is the record’s sizeable debt to PORCUPINE TREE. Two is the larger amount of electronic textures that crop up frequently in the songs’ arrangements
This is a complete bonanza for STOOGES fans.
The Soft Hills revel in songcraft as much as sound, melody as much as atmosphere, beauty as much as melancholy.
The original material is practically irrelevant; what matters is that Maherr has crafted seductively dark and textured swathes of sound.
The nom de pop of songwriter/instrumentalist ERIC LINDLEY, CAREFUL is the latest entry in the bedroom pop sweepstakes.
Simone recasts ancient blues songs by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy to create the epic opening track “Levee/1927.”
he theme running through these songs is that the future is bright and we gotta wear shades, so the positive atmosphere makes sense – indeed, it’s arguably necessary.
The pace of the album, which veers constantly among pop songs, clips from what seem like 50s radio or TV broadcasts, and the band’s renditions of ad jingles, resembles a sugar high from eating too much cotton candy.
The Memphis-bred, Nashville-based Harrison has one foot in the jangly pop of hometown idols BIG STAR and one in the rootsy rock & roll of the ROLLING STONES.
The group tones down (but doesn’t eliminate) some of its more progressive and psychedelic rock tendencies and dials up the British folk rock that has been almost subliminal in its prior work.
BLACK PYRAMID would seem to epitomize the stoner rock dilemma, as the power trio’s debut album is as meat-and-potatoes as they come.
