Reviews
Reviews
Lambchop – Mr. M (2012)
Mr. M is Lambchop’s first album since OH (Ohio), which is now four years old. They are one of the most consistently extraordinary bands currently producing music, so it comes as no surprise that their new record is entire...
Reviews
Explorers Club – Grand Hotel (2012)
It feels like decades since The Explorers Club released their stunning debut, Freedom Wind. Truth is, it only came out in 2008, but its timeless sound and remarkable consistency made the wait seem much longer than that. Until l...
Reviews
Silver Swans – Forever (2012)
Silver Swans are a duo from San Fran that excel in tightly constructed, electro-leaning pop gems. Despite the West Coast leanings, they sound like natives of the Swedish electro-pop scene, a highly versatile breeding ground for...
Reviews
Field Music – Plumb (2012)
Plumb, the fourth full-length from brotherly duo Field Music, sounds like one of their liveliest releases for two reasons. One is its clear and playful homage to traditional British rock greats like XTC, Pink Floyd, and even Qu...
Reviews
Karen Dalton – 1966
The selling point and historical significance of Karen Dalton has rested entirely on the uniquely haunting timbre of her voice and the restrained brilliance with which she employed it, bending melody and finding hidden meanings...
Reviews
Common – The Dreamer/The Believer (2011)
On his tenth studio album, nearly 20 years after he first hit the scene, Common is back with his best work since 2005’s Be. Some weak acting gigs and the abysmal Universal Mind Control in 2008 put Common out of most people’s mu...
Reviews
Human Switchboard – Who’s Landing in My Hangar? (2011)
Human Switchboard’s Who’s Landing in My Hangar? is one of the few tenuously Cleveland connected punk/new wave classics to lack a proper reissues. Bar/None Records thankfully rescues this great album from a future of...
Reviews
Wax Idols – No Future (2011)
Haven’t we all gotten tired of that generic tinny lo-fi garage guitar sound? Upward and onward to newer and more glorious fuzz, I say. Down with the old! Appreciate the garage records of yore only for what made them good,...
Reviews
Jules and the Polar Bears – Got No Breeding (1978)
New Wave before New Wave had really solidified. Sort of like Springsteen, but sort of not. Perhaps it’s most accurately described as an offering to bridge the Billy Joel-ers and the Rundgren-ites, a union which sounds fai...
Reviews
Drive-By Proposals – Fall Into Shadow (2005)
Ish Marquez is the hidden light at the end of the otherwise tedious anti-folk tunnel. He has the melodic gifts of Arthur Lee, but without any of the failed lyrical obtuseness. Someday there will be a compilation to sand over th...
