Labirinto weaves a tapestry of strings, clean and distorted guitars, a few drums, and an occasional banjo. Band leader and songwriter Erick Cruxen blends the most pure musical parts of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the plotting picking of Explosions In The Sky, and a few assaulting moments worthy of Russian Circles. This being their first full-length release also leads one to believe that the band has the potential to rank among these highly regarded groups.
American Hardcore- A Tribal History is the definitive book on Hardcore Punk Rock
Some tunes work better than others, naturally, but regardless of quality the cuts sound like they were recorded by a dozen different bands, instead of one band with diverse interests.
The TL3 channels its breadth of talent into 21 tracks of warm, melodic and vibrant rock & roll.
Nicholas Chapel, the songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who trades under the name Demians, need never seek therapy, if his band’s second album Mute is any indication.
Tangents unleash one of the better post- Radiohead rock albums in recent memory with its debut One Little Light Year.
This isn’t a dance or ambient album – the electronica forms more of a pulse behind the otherwise rocking music, giving the songs a driving groove.
The self-titled debut overfloweth with mountain-scaled melodies, pealing guitars, lung-filled vocals and song titles like “Forgiveness” and “Atone.”
Frank Turner releases the best album of 2010 with “Rock & Roll”
Legacy’s two-disc set spotlights two sides of Carole King’s career: solo artist and songwriter.
With the profile of Antibalas higher than ever thanks to the band providing the score for the award-winning musical Fela!, its former label takes the opportunity to reissue one of its seminal works.
Half of Forgive Yr. Blood could very easily fit on a soundtrack to a modern western, while other songs come across as soulful deconstructions of tunes from John Hughes teen flicks. There’s some folk, some indie pop, and what could have been a backing track from the Beastie Boys‘ Check Your Head. Even with all of these flavors, there is no hint of pretentiousness.
With an intimate approach featuring little more than his guitar and voice, Toth boils down decades of folk, country and blues stylings into his own personal artistry, comfortable with tradition but not constrained by it.
This Rare and Unseen entry on David Bowie isn’t essential, but Bowie die-hards will enjoy newly-surfaced interview clips featuring their hero.
Duveen’s versatile vocals slot right in like the musical settings were custom made.
These two disks collect 34 songs from across the band’s three decade career, and there’s barely a stinker in the bunch.
Produced by Englishman Peter Walsh, chosen by the band for his recent work with Simple Minds and Scott Walker, Heyday gives the quartet a brighter, more lush sound than ever before, with strings and horns enhancing a few tracks.
Love it or hate it, the sonics of Seance make it an album that’s one of the band’s most distinctive.
The Blurred Crusade takes the guitar-heavy new wave sound of its debut Of Skins and Heart and reshapes it, beginning the process of evolution into what would become the Church’s sonic signature.
It sounds like a young band with talent to burn eager to get its ideas down on vinyl as quickly and energetically as possible.
Former teen pop star Robyn should have been an also-ran, a one-hit wonder from the 1990s, but her talent and abilities prevented her from such a fate, and her new album is evidence that she is one of today’s best artists.
There’s no reason in the world that fans of the Elephant 6 crew, XTC, the Green Pajamas or Robyn Hitchcock wouldn’t clasp Barbeau to their bosoms, especially not after hearing the marvelous Psychedelic Mynde of Moses.
Thousand Watt Stare releases their debut ep
Maxos Le Gervoïde has found in his music both means of poeticizing and channeling his storytelling but also pulling towards something wider than the little slice of province he springs from. But for the language these songs should be universal, as the themes are accessible to anyone.
After nearly three decades in the music business, Steve Wynn once again reaffirms his mastery of straight-up rock & roll on Northern Aggression, his latest LP with the Miracle 3.
The Austin quintet hasn’t expanded the boundaries of its jangle-heavy garage pop sound, but it has sharpened its songwriting skills considerably.
Rising from the dank netherworld of Delaware, Ape! is an exciting new addition to the ever-expanding tree of Sabbath-genome metal. Any fan of mid-fi doom and deserty shred will love this release.
When guitarist/songwriter Kurt Bloch retired the Fastbacks, it didn’t lessen his commitment to witty punk/pop.
Did anybody really expect a band as intense and volatile as Killing Joke to last 30 years?
It has a big, fat bass sound that stands out on nearly every track, rivaling the guitars for dominance and giving the album coherence.
A merely good album that still manages to put me in greater awe of its creators, as it makes more apparent than ever the slippery and mercurial nature of their writing and recording process.
The record uses the terminology of stage magic to take the listener through the Transcendental Argument for God’s existence, with each song covering a different aspect of the philosophy.
Thirty-six years after its release, Paul McCartney & Wings masterpiece receives the deluxe edition treatment it so rightly deserved, and serves as the beginning of a reissue campaign of his 1970s solo work.
Husker Du: The Story Of The Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock is the first book to tell the tale of the legendary Punk Rock band.
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.
