Post Tagged with: "New Album"
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, [...]
James Morrison – The Awakening review
Looking like Chris Martin and with a voice like Ray LaMontagne, English folk/soul rocker James Morrison writes songs about new love, lost love and everything in between. “You Give Me Something,” the only track from his debut album, Undiscovered, to go on the charts in this country, was an incredibly soulful power ballad reminiscent of fellow Brit Adele’s “Chasing Pavements,” with its symphonic backdrop. Two years later, Morrison’s sophomore effort, Songs for You, Truths for Me, featured an epic duet [...]
Blink-182 – Neighborhoods review
My appreciation of Blink 182′s music has been hit-or-miss, fluctuating on an album-by-album, or even a song-by-song basis. For example, I could, at one time, wholly relate to the inner turmoil expressed in a song like, “Wasting Time.” I still find the sheer, crazy energy of “Josie” irresistible. A couple years later, though, I couldn’t wait until Enema of the State’s singles finally stopped getting airplay, although “Adam’s Song,” had a certain appeal. The Mark, Tom and Travis Show didn’t [...]
Bush – Sea of Memories review
Having never been much of a fan of Bush, it was challenging to approach the band’s new album from a critical standpoint, rather than dismissing it out of hand as I’d done with its other albums. It wasn’t a question of disliking the music. The sound Bush presented in the context of grunge rock wasn’t better or worse than any of it’s contemporaries. It was a question of what I felt was needless and deliberate lyrical obscurity. A verse like, [...]
Bush – The Sea of Memories review
Coming out after an eight-year hiatus, “grunge” rock band Bush, is making a statement with their new album, The Sea of Memories. Bush, which was originally formed in London around 1992, returns only two of its original members, adding Corey Britz and Chris Traynor to its line-up. A lot can change in eight years, but this didn’t shy lead vocalist, Gavin Rossdale, away from trying to make a comeback. Formerly called, Everything Always Now, this call for redemption album still [...]
Prurient – Bermuda Drain album review
Prurient’s ambitious new album Bermuda Drain is painful to listen to, but perhaps not in the way singer Ian Fernow intended. The album consists of screams, whispers and deep monotones set to what sounds like a Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Fernow utters such lyrics as, “If I could, I would take a tree branch and ram it inside you, but it’s already been done” with such sincerity that one wonders if the album is a farce. But when a [...]
Portugal. The Man – In The Mountain In The Cloud album review
Since inception in 2004, Portugal. The Man have been aging like a fine wine, showing noticeable improvement with each new project they undergo. On July 19th, 2011, the band released their 6th studio full-length entitled, In The Mountain In The Cloud on Atlantic Records in cooperation with guitarist/producer John Hill. With a new label, a perfected and experienced lineup and a new producer, the resulting album is both reassuring and artfully crafted. Too often bands reach a major record deal [...]
Basement – I Wish I Could Stay Here album review
It’s not difficult to understand why Basement has been so successful at building an audience during the time leading up to the recent release of their debut I Wish I Could Stay Here. I remember the shock and awe-like surge of emo music that hit in the late ‘90s. It was 7th grade and you’d look around and see all of these mopey kids and it made sense that they listened to mopey music. Boy kisses Girl then Girl kisses [...]
Taking Back Sunday – self titled album review
It had been quite some time since I had heard anyone mention Taking Back Sunday, and until I got word of the release of their new eponymously titled album I had assumed that they had faded quietly into the memory of that strange time that followed the turn of the millennium when an entire generation of Baby Boomers were still grappling with their disappointment at the overblown hype of the Y2K predictions and trying to figure out what to do [...]
Fruit Tree Foundation – First Edition album review
In early 2010 several of Scotland’s most talented indie-rock and folk musicians came together to collaborate on a project called The Fruit Tree Foundation, and the resulting First Edition will finally be available for purchase on June 28th. The idea for the album arose from the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival with the intention of raising awareness of mental health and challenge perceptions of mental health problems. The musicians involved are members of such bands as Frightened Rabbit, [...]
