Toronto based sexy shoe gaze four piece release their sweltering and gracefully textured second album The House Built around your voice. This follows their debut titled Endless Water which was released in 2007. Both albums are stylized, fresh, yet completely independent from one another. These are each qualities to be applauded with a young band that carry the weight of ancient men. The title track on The House Built around Your Voice is the only other example of music that [...]
Archive for Category: "Reviews"
Das Racist is da best
All I can say about Das Racist (actually, I could talk for days about them) is they are dope. What I mean by dope is that they are the wittiest, swaggerlicious, intelligent, entertaining and raddest cats in NYC. The group played in their stomping grounds at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, this being their last show of their U.S. tour before they head overseas. It’s always enjoyable seeing artists who are playing in their home town because there’s always a [...]
Tender Mercies – Tender Mercies review
An album that’s been 20 years in the making, Tender Mercies’ debut has finally come to fruition. Consisting of Counting Crows members Jim Bogios and Dan Vickrey, along with Patrick Winningham and Kurt Stevenson, the Tender Mercies have released an alt/country album that is rich in both substance and style. Actually formed before his time with the Crows, Tender Mercies took a backseat after guitarist Dan Vickrey was recruited to play alongside Duritz and co., and even though the seeds [...]
Zola Jesus – Conatus review
“Conatus” is a term used by the Dutch philosopher Spinoza, most famous for his work “Ethics,” to describe the drive in all animals to stay alive. So it makes sense that Nika Roza Danilova, the one woman driving force behind Zola Jesus, who grew up in the Merrill, Wisconsin woods eating wild game, should choose that as the title of her latest album. There is a dire chilliness to the tracks on “Conatus” which reminded me of Ayn Rand, of [...]
Still Corners – Creatures of an Hour review
I first heard ”Cuckoo” while casually listening to my favorite college radio station, and, needless to say, I was instantly hooked. Creatures of an Hour is a very alluring album: it’s beautiful, haunting, gorgeous and enticing all at once. The reverb and echo that is persistent throughout bring to mind some old, mossy, 14th century cathedral; with its rusty pipe organs, a beautiful-yet typical stain-glass Madonna and child, and of course the old, venerable, and admittedly scary Catholic Priest. Best described as a [...]
Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo review
This publication missed Kurt Vile’s excellent Smoke Ring for My Halo when it came out in March. But now that Kurt’s got an EP coming out, I figure it’s as good a time as any to review the album. The cover of the forthcoming EP, So Outta Reach, shows a bunch of different shots of an unkempt Kurt Vile asleep sitting up in a big armchair at some party, and in each picture somebody has their arm around him and [...]
Chromeo at NYC’s Terminal 5
Chrom-e-o, ooh-oh.. Chrom-e-o, ooh-oh. Those three syllables strike a chord in my soul the moment I hear them because it will forever bring me back to the other night, when I saw the incredible Canadian superstars. The anxious crowd was waiting with an unsurmountable suspense for the duo to take the stage. Then, the famous ritual chant began, blue rays of light flooded the crowd, and everyone loudly screamed ’til their lungs got sore. Welcome to the night of 11/5/11 [...]
PG Six – Starry Mind review
Electric folk with subtly complicated jams. Doesn’t really sound of this era, which is part of what makes it interesting–it’s refreshing to listen to an old-sounding record and know that it’s from today. One song is called “Wrong Side of Yesterday.” True, this record sounds more 1960s than 2010s, but it also sounds more San Francisco than New York, which is where he’s from. “January” is an Irish traditional, but the way they jam on it sounds very much like the [...]
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaur’s new single, “Trouble”
Opening with long drawn-out sounds of horn followed by a simple, mellow, and steady beat, is the opening to UK’s finest (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaur’s) new single “Trouble.” Followed with a smooth sounding voice of TEED’s natural hymns, he serenades about the trouble of infatuation. In the midst of the story lies light retro-infused beats with serious echoes and harmonization. If this track doesn’t make you move and motivate you to sing along, I don’t know what would. His voice [...]
Big Troubles – Romantic Comedy review
What will Big Troubles sound like five years from now? Ten years? Fifteen? With bands that have logged decades in the business it’s easy now for all involved to look back and understand how each one came about in the context of a particular era in music, how each influenced, and was influenced by, its contemporaries, and how each cultivated its own identity across time and genres. Big Troubles have committed two years so far. A drop in the bucket, [...]
