Recent Albums
The Decks - Breath and Bone
Cass
The Decks are a deliberately American band, but to me have acquired a very British sound. Evoking pure garage pop/British rock goodness, this album has its memorable moments but also includes some tracks that are far from outstanding. The Decks sound like a blend between the Arctic Monkeys, the Velvet Underground, and the Pixies. At times I find this album could be more polished and the guitar solos more thoughtful. The Decks have produced a handful of decent songs, but spinning distinct...
Dagon - In Desolationem Per Nefandum
Fire of Fire
Dagon makes some surprisingly polished metal. And I don’t mean that they are incredibly skilled musicians, which incidentally they are, but in the sense that this album sounds really slick. Which I find really weird for metal. Like usually I expect it to be unpolished and little dirty and gritty, but the production on this is clear as a bell. The guitars sound really clean and you can almost make out what the hell the singer is saying. And all the while it is this really fast gloomy d...
Pomegranates - Everybody, Come Outside
Lujo
Hand-clapping, uplifting, and invigoratingly imaginative, Pomegranates have mastered an exceptional art-pop album. This release is deserving of some substantial accolades. There is a blending of artful effects, bouncy hip-shaking drums, back-seat guitars laden with Interpol-esque effects and interesting lyrical melodies. There are even some surprising song structures that read like a saga, especially on “This Land Used To Be My Land, But Now I Hate This Land.” Long pauses and bold transi...
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz!
Interscope
That band with the gold lamé singer is back. Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ third studio album is glossier and more polished than their last two efforts but it manages to avoid feeling forced or contrived. A lyric from the track “Heads Will Roll” sums up the album perfectly: “Glitter on the west streets, silver over everything.”
With 2003’s Fever to Tell Karen O, Nicolas Zinner and Brian Chase established themselves as the avant-garde kids to watch. They were so avant-garde they were...
Gore - Hart Gore/Mean Man’s Dream
Southern Lord
Simply put, a re-issuing of the first two Gore albums made within 6 months of each other in 1986-87. With some added bonuses of live tracks. As far as I can see there were only 3 albums released, so I don’t really understand why they just didn’t throw that one in as well, but I guess I never will understand the point of these things. The Dutch band Gore, gained some notoriety being associated with Henry Rollins for a while, but tension within the band and their intensity burned them ...
Fol Chen - Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made
Asthmatic Kitty
Starting off with a dark and mechanical The Believers, the tone of Fol Chen’s anticipated album should not be assumed from its introduction. Uplifting and cheery, mixed with sporatic moments of sterile impartiality, Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made is a dichotomous release. There are two classes to the album: the mediocre and the exceptional. Judging solely by this album, Fol Chen appears to be a hit-or-miss group of song-writers. You’ll be happy to hear the ‘exceptional’ outnumbe...
Amanita Bloom - EP
Independent
Amanita Bloom do this sort of like folk-garage-rock. Which is pretty interesting, very pleasant. Makes me sort of think of the Band in some weird way. Maybe it’s the instrumentations, maybe it’s the harmonies, I’m not sure. There are some pretty great harmonies on here, with it hardly being overtaken by a single singer, a lot of singing in unions that sort of stuff.
And it’s very short only 4 songs, that’s right only 4. And they are all pretty great songs which makes for...
Tara Jane O’Neil - A Ways Away
K
Simple and hypnotic, subtle and sweet, Tara Jane O’Neil employs a dash of this and that to take her from being just a singer-songwriter to an artist in many realms.
A Ways Away is TJO’s fifth album and to me it seems to have an attitude of trying to be more than one thing. It’s eclectic fusion of worldly drones, sparkling chimes and Gamelan qualities only enhances it’s folk style.
What you get to hear mainly are guitar (electric and acoustic), vocals and su...
Vancougar - Canadian Tuxedo
Mint
Vancouver’s Vancougar, err… perhaps mentioning their hometown was unnecessary, eh? well, at any rate this girl-group packs a power-pop punch worthy of Van City twee/cuddlecore predecessors like Cub and Gaze. These ladies might actually beat me up in a seedy east-side Vancouver alley littered with heroin junkies if they heard me calling them twee though: They looked like more like tough but hot garage-rock chicks than withering indie-pop wallflowers when I saw them walking up and down...
Eleanoor Rosenholm - Älä kysy kuolleilta, he sanoivat
Fonal
Elenoora Rosenholm quickly followed up their Fonal debut with this second helping of mysterious, dark Finnnish synth pop. Unlike a lot of pop music, where you might actually benefit from not understanding the lyrics, here you really wonder what they’re singing about: the music indicates that the words are compelling. The brief bit of reading I have done on the band seems to indiciate that they may be inspired by horror movies, black metal and other typically dark subject matter. This would ma...
Land of Kush - Against The Day
Constellation
Featuring a star-studded Montreal cast, Sam Shalabi’s Land of Kush includes of some of the city’s finest musicians from a number of different genres. Their latest Constellation release Against The Day, features typically beautiful Constellation packaging, this time out with wonderful neon and metallic silkscreened artwork. The album was apparently inspired and based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name.
The music starts slow, a swampy, stewing, brewing primordial affair wi...
Allez Allez - Best Of
Eskimo
One thing I love finding is best ofs from bands that you have never heard of before. Why do I like this? Well I find it is really interesting that something out that is popular or prolific enough to have a best of, yet to have no recognition in general popular knowledge. And I don’t mean that because I haven’t heard of it, that it’s not popular just that something can be so hidden in plain sight. I feel that if something has a best of it really should be either pretty popular or have l...
Loney Dear - Dear John
Polyvinyl
Heavy instrumentals and electrifying themes that you can’t knock out of your ears. This is Loney Dear. A Swedish quintet of sultry soft pop++++. This group has the same energy levels and aural similarities to the group “Air” but Loney Dear has a bit more of a retrospective glow like Depeche Mode tied with the European electronic poise of Kraftwerk while employing traditional folk and jazz forms to the songwriting. These songs seem like heart cries that are thick in texture with lots of p...
Alligators - Piggy and Cups
Independent
I am put to the challenge to try and somehow describe this music to you. Let’s start with saying it’s very inventive. It starts off sounding like a mixture of Stereolab and Yo La Tengo then it the song somehow gears to a super pop feeling in a quick Radiohead-esque way until it morphs into this new wave sound that goes to a r&b groove on the electric guitar to kind of take you to the end of the song. I am FASCINATED! Oh, I should tell you who I am listening to… Alligators’ albu...
Paul Bryan - Listen Of
Sonar Kollektiv
An album of gentle uplifting seventies singer/songwriter pop/folk/rock originally released in 1973 on the Top Tape label. Though the songs are sung in English by Bryan, the interesting truth is that Paul Bryan was the pseudonym of blind Brazillian musician Sérgio Sá. This has apparently been ultra-rare up until now, basically impossible to obtain. Someone associated with the Sonar Kollektiv label stumbled the original vinyl in Brazil about ten years ago and fell in love with the album. Und...
The New Up - Broken Machine
Independent
The New Up are trying to do this hippie/new wave/Pretenders thing, which actually ends up being interesting. Almost like they took a grab bag of 80s sounds and threw it into a blender. Like in their music I hear some shoe gazer, the Pretenders, a sort of Talking Heads thing, and a few others, maybe a hint of madchester there, or the psychedelic. And it does all work pretty well together.
Maybe the thing to do would be to call this new wave rehashed or something. As that s...
Team Genius - Team Genius
Independent
I’ll give this to Team Genius, they are eclectic. Their sounds jump up and down and all over the place and never seem to really want to remain sitting too long in any one genre. From the sea shanty like call and response of “Sing Song”, to the gospel like earnestness of “Run Gun Run” to folk simplicity of “Speak Softly” and the arena rock out of “ABC”.
Even through this eclectic mess ,however, the album does maintain a certain consistent feel and style to it. Like the songs ...
Escape Mechanism - Emphasis Added
Independent
I think to not compare Escape Mechanism to Negativland would be very unfair. Unfair to who I am not sure. But yeah basically think Negativland with this and that’s about right. And I don’t mean this in a bad or critical way, just that the resemblance is uncanny. Now if this doesn’t make any sense to you basically what it mean is that (Emphasis Added) is made up of disparate samples from a range of sound sources thrown together to make songs. And not just in terms of music, but spoken...
T.Raumschmiere - I Tank U
Shitkatapult
I Tank U is pretty badass. I suppose I should have suspected that from the title I mean that’s a pretty hardcore title. Okay it really isn’t and this really isn’t a good way to describe it, but I don’t really know what else to say about T. Raumschmeire. I Tank U is an album of fairly hard techno tracks with just a great danceable groove to it. Like very hard hitting, but still danceable. Sort of techno verging on the edge of industrial, which is pretty interestin...
DD/MM/YYYY - Black Square
We Are Busy Bodies
The latest DD/MM/YYYY reserves no room for silence. The album arts says it all: it’s chaotic, high energy bliss and has an individual sound that is both polished by performance, but also sublimely tarnished or gritty in sound choices. For a 12 track disc, it’s pretty overwhelmingly addictive.
If you’re looking for one of those relentless albums that will have you hooked for a long term infatuation, this is the CD for you. This band uses nostalgic sound choice...
Displaying albums 141 - 160 of 1056 in total
