The lead single “Breaking Through The Walls” is a strutting, flashy blast of sleazy glam, influenced by bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Arctic Monkeys.
If there is a theme driving Wading The River, it can possibly be said to simply be a love of rock and roll, and a celebration of Stormy Mondays’ influences.
If this single’s A-side is any indication, Atlanta-based quartet Love Letter displays more streamlined focus and ferocity than singer Carrie Hodge’s former band, Parade.
By the time she released her fourth album in October 1965, Françoise Hardy had grown into a full-fledged pop icon.
Osaka, Japan’s premiere ex-pat improvisers, Out of Dust, continue pushing the boundaries of jazz on their sixth release of new material.
There is a wonderful homespun feel to the record, and it plays like a private invitation to a day at his house listening to him sing his little hymns to you and you alone.
In the mid-‘70s, Animals founder and former keyboardist, Alan Price, basked in the glow of his own successful solo career.
“chilly but lush music, refining it to jagged, lacy points of light streamed through the darkness.”
New American Century is a fantastic debut record from a duo whose chemistry has obviously been long cemented.
Burns’ wonderfully poetic lyrics just hang like a ghost over a slowly revolving storm of guitars and pianos playing themselves beneath it, sucking you in against your will.
Not many can do what The Chills make sound so effortless. Silver Bullets was worth the wait.
“Shoegaze is a term that came into general use around 1990 to describe a new breed of UK indie guitar bands inspired by the likes of 4AD Records and My Bloody Valentine. Bands such as Ride, Moose, Lush, Pale Saints, Swervedriver, Slowdive, Catherine Wheel, Chapterhouse, and The Telescopes married dreamy, off-kilter melodies, skewed, heavily effects-laden guitar riffs and psychedelic production values.”
It’s so difficult to stand out from the crowd in indie pop these days, but Joseph Sant has cast himself a defiantly original voice.
Melbourne singer-songwriter Bill Botting captures the hangover of the holiday season in this shambling homespun EP.
“It is perhaps their loudest and boldest album, yet it is populated with intricate patterns and delicate passages linking it all together.”
“a trippy, head-spinning deep dive into the world of dark psychedelia.”
Brooklyn-based psychedelic improvisers, Rhyton, return with a fourth album of mind-expanding spacerock fit for the Winter Solstice.
“a fine, mature album from one of the 60s greatest songwriters, and it’s mighty good to have him back.”
It could be said that Alan Lomax did more for folk music, both at home and abroad, than anyone else.
The entire record has the potential to become a minor lo-fi classic, and for a debut, Sabo’s vision is incredibly concise and focused.
“This outing is three disks and 33 songs chock full of gorgeous dream pop, shoegaze, and atmospheric soundscapes.”
Rise may not be especially unique or original, but its poise, consistency, and drive make it very fetching anyway.
San Francisco’s CommunionUnion59 are back and this time with a little present just in time for the holiday season.
This Paris quartet’s superb 2014 debut EP Our Romance Ghost summoned the ‘90s U.K. Britpop scene so succinctly, it silenced skeptics. But My Electric surpasses it.
This Milan, Italy trio’s claim that their music “[pursues] a classic punk sound” with “alternative rock’s reminiscences” is spot-on.
The Golden Boy_ will have fans of bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure recognizing familiar traces in MPTHY’s sound.
New York City-based experimental jazz trio, Premature Burial, deliver a mind bending debut that serves as a wormhole to the other side of the universe.
French experimentalist Delphine Dora teams up with Northern England’s Sophie Cooper for an album of dank, murky improvisations recorded in Todmorden Unitarian Church in West Yorkshire, UK.
She multitasks while decked out in impossibly cool street fashion and maintains an aura of self-possession rivaling Prince and Bowie at their most whacked out.
In the early ’90s, Swans released two albums that would provide the sonic blueprint for their 2010 reemergence.
Plum seamlessly bridges the gap between Cream and The Stooges, who are not as far apart from each other as one would immediately think
In early December 1994, Suicide’s Alan Vega, Big Star’s Alex Chilton and singer-songwriter Ben Vaughn crammed into a lower Manhattan studio for two nights to record with no boundaries, structured songs or preconceived notions of what they were supposed to do.
In a cybernetic bizarro universe, Baltimore’s Drew Owen, aka one-man garage punk band Sick Thoughts, teams up with NYC synth pop composer Don Seun for twenty minutes of teeth-gnarling lo-fi industrial punk as Cellulite.
“it’s a delightful trek through the musical histories of these two veteran performers. And while it’s undoubtedly stuffed full of hits, these songs are indelible. And believe me, this is the highest praise from someone who as a rule doesn’t care for live albums. If you buy one live recording, make it this one.”
Songs like “Killed4Profit,” and “The Game” are slick and stylized R&B, but synthetic and feel eerily sterile—like a choir of robotic computers composing soul music.
California noisemongers, +DOG+ end the year with forty-eight minutes of depressive industrial sludge.
For part time musicians, Chickenpox Party have created a wonderfully focused and conceptually solid release.
In the 1950s, renowned sculptor/furniture designer, Harry Bertoia, had an epiphany when he realized the possibilities of sonic resonance that lived within his creations.
In 1964, France’s Françoise Hardy fully hit her stride on her third album, having somehow convinced her label, Disques Vogues, to send her across the Channel to record with London-based Joe Meek protégé, Charles Blackwell.
As Antlered Aunt Lord, Tunabunny drummer, Jesse Stinnard, serves up his solo debut of odd, incongruent lo-fi recordings that somehow make sense as an album.
DC/Philly-based improvisers, Kohoutek, add to their legacy with two sides of mind-expanding psychedelia.
Kurt Stenzel’s heady electronic soundtrack for Frank Pavich’s 2013 film, Jodorowsky’s Dune, finally sees an official release that stands on its own as a classic of electronic music.
Los Angeles-based composer, Mark Van Hoen, has delved into electronic music for nearly thirty-five years with records running the spectrum from Berlin school pulses to throbbing EDM, all of which influence his latest ethereal synth-driven release.
Long Island’s Neorev finally returns to the physical format after six years with bona fide “best of” that collects collaborative highlights from his now out of print Bandcamp EPs with some stunning new material, proving, once and for all, that he is the best electronic artist you’ve never heard of.
Osaka, Japan’s genre bending jazz maestros, Out of Dust, team up with controversial saxophonist, Gilad Atzmon, once again, this time in the studio for another eclectic collection of music.
Second in a series of reissues following “Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles”, Françoise Hardy’s sophomore French-language LP receives its first proper domestic release, restored to the original mono mixes.
Brooklyn-based heavy blues power trio, Courtesy Tier, showcase their talent for solid songwriting with an edge on their new three-song release.
Long before it was a US state, Hawaii was revered as an exotic, mysterious paradise of relaxation and cool in mainland popular culture.
