Album Reviews

Girlpool – Before The World Was Big

June 16, 2015

Girlpool is as punk rock as it gets. Two girls, at 18, release their first LP and gain a moderate following. No drums, just bleeding heart lyrics that are as honest as it gets with a clean guitar and some simple bass lines. A year later, a second, finely tuned LP drops from the duo and the punk rock continues. Of course, this isn’t the type of punk rock that the Beastie Boys pissed off their parents with. This is the new age of lady-punk that has taken over the indie scene ever since genre prophets Sleater Kinney bursted back earlier this year. Before The World Was Big hits you right in the heart when you hear it. I don’t care if you’re an 18 year old girl ready to ship off to college that has a moderate collection of vinyl she’s trying to find a place for in her[...]

Major Lazer – Peace is The Mission

June 8, 2015

There is an appeal to Major Lazer even to those that don’t subscribe to the EDM culture. Guns Don’t Kill People, Lazers Do caught some attention in 2009 with one of the strangest combinations of sound heard at that time: reggae mixed with electronic dance music, smashed together with a sense of humor and a cartoon laser-toting Jamaican renegade soldier. It was fun in 2009, but that’s not the case anymore. Peace Is The Mission removes a good amount of the originality of Major Lazer and brings the project into the top 40. Lazer-founder Diplo seems to be travelling down the path that fellow pop producers Calvin Harris and Pharrell have recently went down: producing pop tracks for years, mostly under the radar, and eventually gaining enough cred in the Illuminati circle to release their own hit albums. While this album is probably going to do great in the sales[...]

Of Monsters and Men – Beneath the Skin

June 8, 2015

Nearly four years after their hugely successful debut, My Head Is an Animal, the Icelandic indie-folk/indie-pop quintet Of Monsters and Men has at last returned with a proper follow-up in Beneath the Skin. The record is a rare, near-perfect follow-up that both retains the group’s galloping choruses and effervescent energy while also pushing their sound in new directions. On Animal, the quintet’s melodies were so jaunty and jangely that even tragic songs like “Little Talks” – which seems to discuss communications between two lovers, one living, one dead – came across as bubbly and lighthearted. With Skin, some of alt-rock’s best hook-writers have gotten better at channeling that tragedy and beauty into their music. They still employ their big horn hooks and chants, but they’re done more subtly and artfully. The addition of pummeling tribal drums have also lent the music an oomph and expansiveness that fits excellently in the[...]

Jamie xx – In Colour

June 3, 2015

It’s been four years since we’ve heard a new studio album from acclaimed DJ and producer Jamie Smith, better known as Jamie xx. If you’ve never heard of Smith’s solo work, you have probably heard his material in The xx, his primary band. And for good reason, Smith has been skyrocketing in popularity, mainly after his production crediting on Drake’s hit single “Take Care,” and then Smith’s 2011 remix album, We’re New Here, which reimagined Gil Scott Heron’s I’m New Here track by track. That album hinted that Smith was going to go onto big things as Jamie xx, and almost four years later, In Colour is here, proving that he sure can shine on his own What’s remarkable about what Smith does on In Colour is that he writes so many genres into these songs, many that the casual music fan may not know and appreciate, all while making it totally accessible. In[...]

Florence + the Machine – How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

June 2, 2015

As humans we would never wish personal turmoil, i.e. a tough breakup, on anybody, most of us having gone through a lot of that shit ourselves. As music-fans, however, there’s nothing better than a breakup, divorce, death of a loved one or mental breakdown, as tragedy has inspired so many artists’ best music. For baroque-y British soulstress Florence Welch, the personal turmoil included a “complicated, on-again-off-again relationship” with both a man and the bottle, culminating in a near mental breakdown during her time off following her astonishing sprint to the top with 2009’s Lungs and 2011’s Ceremonials. It’s also, thankfully for us, culminated in How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful – the most intimate, powerful album yet from this vocal powerhouse. She matches soul-barring, confrontational lyrics (see “You were on the other side, like always / You could never make you mine” from lead single “What Kind of Man”) with[...]

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Multi-Love

May 28, 2015

Love is a topic that has been represented in music countless times, and there is no doubt that it will stay that way for years to come. It is also one of the most influential emotions, making you feel so many different and drastic ways, many times leading to an artistic release. In this case, New Zealand’s psych-indie rock outfit, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, shares its take on love’s many complications with the new album, Multi-Love. The opening vocals on the title track are a great indicator of what’s to come. Lead vocalist Ruban Nielson floats in over some simple keys and croons “Multi-Love / Checked into my heart and trashed it like a hotel room.” In general, Neilson tackles the topic of love as a whole (not how love can make himself feel, but how it can make anyone feel), and he does it in a way where he is[...]

Thee Oh Sees – Mutilator Defeated at Last

May 27, 2015

It’s something we’ve heard plenty of times in the last few years: John Dwyer has shit out another Thee Oh Sees album. Shit out is not to say that the product is less than grand, rather Shit out is to say that he is some sort of a lo-fi, tape-mongering, fuzz-fanatic who was crafted by the big god upstairs for the sole purpose of creating garage rock masterpieces Religious speculations aside, Dwyer has bestowed upon us the sixth Oh Sees album in the last five years. This one is titled Mutilator Defeated at Last, and it packs the typical Oh Sees punch we’ve been accustomed to being battered with in recent years, just a little bit more relaxed when compared with the previous release by the band, Floating Coffin. Just as past albums have done, Mutilator takes the listener on a journey,  from creeping along with eerie squeaks of echoey electric guitars and cymbal taps to, without warning[...]

Eskimeaux – O.K.

May 21, 2015

I remember a couple of years ago when I stumbled across a collection of demos from Eskimeaux on an “album” titled Igluenza. Eskimeaux was a name I had heard mentioned constantly, being interested in many bands in the budding lo-fi scene out of Brooklyn.  I almost instantly fell in love with the innocence, honesty, and simplicity of those demo recordings.  Digging farther back into the project’s catalogue, I could tell that founding member Gabrielle Smith was certainly onto something from the beginning. When Smith first started what would become Eskimeaux, she was making tracks which were much more avant garde in nature, featuring ambient, drone inspired, experimental electronics.  Out of these humble beginnings, Smith began to embrace more of a bedroom pop, glo-fi sound. After enlisting the help of members of the art collective, Epoch, including Felix Walworth of Told Slant, the project really seemed to find itself After seeing[...]

Faith No More – Sol Invictus

May 19, 2015

Even while experi-metal rockers Faith No More helped inform so much heavy music of the 90s and early Aughts, they always seemed to be miles removed from it. In the early 90s they were too abrasive for the alt-rock crowd, too weird and unpredictable for grunge, and by the late 90s too arty for the likes of KoRn and System of a Down, the nu-metal freaks they’d helped inspire. But the group still maintained a sizable cult following that’s proven impervious to critical panning and total lack of chart hits – sans “Epic” and “Midlife Crisis” – and one that only seems to have grown since their temporary disbanding in ’99. It seems only now the band’s getting the dues they deserve, and they couldn’t have proven themselves with a finer, so-called “comeback” disc than Sol Invictus. Rather than try and build on their enormously varied body of work, the[...]

The Tallest Man On Earth – Dark Bird Is Home

May 13, 2015

“Every day a growlin’ storm, but they’re kind somehow…” chirps Kristian Matsson, or The Tallest Man On Earth as he is so endearingly known, on the title track of his newest record Dark Bird Is Home, his lyrics still soaked with the stoic isolation that so beautifully sets the man apart from his contemporaries. While modern ‘folk’ artists (I’m looking at you Mumford and Sons, Lumineers) set their scopes on hand-clappingly accessible sing-along hits, Matsson continues to write songs for himself—unearthing his inner poeticisms and bearing them over songs with increasingly lush instrumentation. Though I’m reluctant to compare Tallest Man to anything that can be considered “modern,” his newest album does re-embrace the full-band jubilance of 2012’s There’s No Leaving Now. That’s not to say Dark Bird is without the profound simplicities that Matsson is known for, but the album does strike an interesting balance between the two. That balance[...]

Snoop Dogg – BUSH

May 12, 2015

Snoop Dogg sure is having one hell of a late-career rediscovery. After more than two decades in his revered gangsta rap persona, the D-O-Double-G reinvented himself as a peace-loving, rastacap-wearing reggae crooner for 2013’s Reincarnated. After that he had a brief stint as SnoopZilla, for his one-off 7 Days of Funk album with Dam-Funk, and a longer stint as DJ Snoopadelic, a phase which pretty much explains itself. For his latest project, BUSH, the unlikely hip-hop chameleon teamed up with Pharrell Williams for an upbeat set inspired by old-school funk, disco, and modern EDM music. Think Kanye’s 808s filtered through the jazzy funk amalgam of To Pimp A Butterfly’s production. What you end up with is the funnest, most-focused set of Tha Dogg’s career. The record opens with “California Roll” – a piece of sunny, Golden State-loving funk set over the bass-line and rhythms of “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” It’s[...]

Hop Along – Painted Shut

May 12, 2015

One could imagine each song off Hop Along’s latest album, Painted Shut, as a string of fictional characters partaking in the same short story collection. The embarrassed ex-girlfriend, the abused kid, the powerful man, the mental patient. All of these situations could remain in an archetypal setting, but they are made personal by singer-songwriter Frances Quinlan’s cathartic, riveting voice, and poignant but precise lyrics. Each song details a rich narrative that rises up from the subconscious to the surface. It has that effect of, “Oh, man, I forgot about that.” Hop Along’s lyrical content in Painted Shut is more centralized than their previous release, Get Disowned. The veins of anti-folk and untethered pop remain, albeit in a controlled manner. This album was recorded in a short time span, under the direction of producer John Agnello (who recently did Kurt Vile’s Walkin’ On A Pretty Daze, and has recorded the likes[...]

Mumford & Sons – Wilder Nights

May 5, 2015

Though the de facto leaders of the folk revival movement, Mumford & Sons have always been arena rock as much as anything. On songs like 2009’s “Little Lion Man” and “I Will Wait” off their GRAMMY-winning sophomore effort Babel, frontman Marcus Mumford brought a dramatic edge – and of course, huge singalong choruses – that practically demanded a huge starry-eyed audience. For their third effort, Wilder Mind, they embrace their inner pop – and populist – impulses, and, of course, plug in. And while they do deserve a kudos for a radical departure from a very successful formula,the results are anything but bold. With help from The National guitarist Aaron Dessner, the group employs a slow building and moody approach that replicates a watered down approach of that group’s style. They also add Coldplay-esque sentimentality, loads of boring chords that’d find home in a Snow Patrol songs and splashes of[...]

Blur – The Magic Whip

April 30, 2015

It’s 2015, and there’s a new Blur album. That phrase itself seems kind of strange, like “Bad Pizza” or “Best Michael Bay film”, but at last, it has finally happened. And there’s no way a release of this magnitude could not feel like an event. Blur was globally one of the biggest bands of the 90s, with a string of #1 hits in almost every country (except the US). It even took an actual act of God for this album to even exist, the product of a series of cancelled shows in 2013, that left the band stranded the in Hong Kong for a week. Over that week, the four members of Blur would reconnect and produce the sessions that led to The Magic Whip. There also is an inherent oddness to The Magic Whip itself, While others have struggled to frame it in among Damon Albarn’s past work or[...]

Raekwon – Fly International Luxury Art

April 29, 2015

The Wu-Tang Clan as a collective has unquestionably seen better days, but the group’s most talented member (if not Ghostface Killah) has enjoyed something of a Raekwonaissance as of lately. Buoyed by the 2009 release of the excellent, long-delayed sequel Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II, Raekwon has been unusually high-profile in recent years, turning in guest verses for the likes of Kanye West and SchoolBoy-Q. Naturally, the Chef tried to build on his success and create music that would appeal to a broader audience than his usual Mafioso rap narratives. At least that was his stated goal in 2013, when he announced Fly International Luxury Art, his sixth studio album. But after two years of push-backs and delays, it’s hard not to feel underwhelmed with much of the final result. Production-wise, the album is yet another return to Raekwon’s roots – specially the first Cuban Linx – with[...]