Album Reviews

The Decemberists – What A Beautiful World, What A Terrible World

January 20, 2015

“But we’re not so starry-eyed anymore,” Colin Meloy croons on “Make You Better,” the surprisingly radio-ready lead single off The Decemberists’ seventh studio album, What a Beautiful World, What A Terrible World. Indeed, while the group broke through with its heady, academic – and, yes, geeky – brand of historically-literate prog-folk, this latest record finds the Portland, Ore. quintet embracing a simpler, gentler format. It’s hardly a surprising artistic shift. After finding success in the mid-Aughts with rock-operas about an old Japanese folktale and a woman’s unlikely romance with a forest-dwelling shape-shifter (2006’s The Crane Wife and 2009’s The Hazards of Love, respectively), Meloy conscientiously stripped down the group’s progressive approach and high-minded concepts. The result was the howling, rustic Americana of 2011’s The King Is Dead. But where King was stark, driven by loud beats and hard-edged alt-country textures, Beautiful World is lush and serene, heavy on ballads and slightly[...]

Belle and Sebastian – Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance

January 19, 2015

After a nearly five year hiatus, the Glasgow natives, Belle and Sebastian, reunite with the group’s ninth studio album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. That’s not to say that the members of the band have not been keeping busy though.  In 2014, the lead singer Stuart Murdoch wrote and directed the film God Help The Girl, after making a soundtrack to the film with his musical side project of the same name back in 2009.  The film was way too quirky for my tastes, and I was really worried this new record would have the same effect on me, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was I wrong. Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance is sonically a breath of fresh air for Belle and Sebastian. While staying true to emotional lyrics revolving around personal struggle, the band is able to deliver a new record with some of the danciest[...]

Panda Bear – Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper

January 11, 2015

Since his 2007 album Person Pitch, Noah Lennox’s Panda Bear has been the gateway drug into Animal Collective. Both outfits feature the same qualities: zone-out repetition, upfront rhythms, a swirl of ineffable sounds, and summer camp sing alongs. Their success both lies in combining something confusing with something instantly gratifying, a perfect distillation of modern times. But where Animal Collective’s music seems to occupy a beautiful but more chaotic place, Lennox has always gone for the sweet spot. Originally too hesitant to bring his own songs into the group, Lennox did so upon the urging of other members, and it all eventually came to a head on Merriweather Post Pavilion. Now it seems like Lennox’s music as Panda Bear, at least popularity wise, has surpassed that of his band’s. Following 2011’s Tomboy, an album Lennox wanted to revolve around just guitar, rhythm, and drums, on Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper,[...]

Ariel Pink – pom pom

November 18, 2014

For all the thinkpieces, accusations of misogyny, and clickbait-facilitated outrage his words have inspired this year, LA rocker Ariel Pink’s message is quite simple. It’s not trolling or mean-spirited publicity-hounding so much as a deeply-felt need to tow the line for the rock ‘n’ roll outcasts. He is of a lineage with both Frank Zappa and Kim Fowley (the latter of which has two co-writing credits on this new record), contrarian sonic experimentalists with a knack for combining irreverent language, ingratiating melodies, and harsh noise experiments. The publicity campaign Pink launched this year around his new double album pom pom – which included everything from singing with a New York childrens’ choir to asserting in an interview, facetiously, that he was “raped in the ass” by a dominatrix – has proven oddly perfect for setting the tone of the record. While pom pom offers no apologies for Pink’s irreverent behavior,[...]

The New Basement Tapes – Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes

November 13, 2014

It seems like it’s every artist’s dream to get his or her hands on anything that came out of the mind of Bob Dylan. Whether it’s covering a beloved song or playing with the man himself, most artists name Dylan as an inspiration and graciously gush over the opportunity to be associated with him in any way. Imagine, then, the chance to interpret Bob Dylan lyrics that were written in the 60s but never realized as songs. That’s what The New Basement Tapes did, and the result is their first album, Lost On the River. The band is made up of big-name artists from big name bands: Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Jim James, Taylor Goldsmith, and Rihannon Giddens. This Traveling Wilburys-esque supergroup composed new music for the decades-old lyrics, and thus had total creative license with arrangements, instrumentals, phrasing, and everything else that makes a song sound good. The whole[...]

Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways

November 11, 2014

Indisputably so, the Foo Fighters have steadily led at the forefront of rock music, and after twenty years of making music, it is safe—if not necessary—to characterize this band as an American classic. To what I’m sure is everyone’s delight, the band decided to celebrate its 20th anniversary in an unusual way while making their latest album, Sonic Highways. After years of playing drums for legendary grunge band, Nirvana, David Grohl has long since moved up as front man and songwriter for the Foo Fighters. And although I would argue 90% of the time that the cut-off age for being in a rock band is 40 (take a hint, Billy Joel Armstrong), Grohl forcibly shatters this notion with the debut of the latest album. Sonic Highways manages to accomplish quite a few impressive feats in a relatively compact amount of time. The album’s main allure is not necessarily in the[...]

Chief Keef and Gucci Mane – Big Gucci Sosa

November 5, 2014

Big Gucci Sosa proves two things; Gucci is still here, and as shocking as it is, Chief Keef is back. Despite constantly being in and out of an orange jumpsuit, Gucci is consistent as ever on this thing. Keef has seemingly spent the last couple years of falling out of Chicago’s drill scene, instead opting for lean-induced, lazily-composed auto-tuned madness. It appears as though Guwop has talked some sense into young Keith Cozart though, because this album features a Keef spitting some of the hardest verses of his career. Opening track “Semi On Em” leaves no one questioning to the mindset of these two trap artists. “Bitch, I’m Gucci Mane, you heard that I go coco-loco/So much money that my pitbull got a diamond choker” the trap god raps as the beat thumps and the bass bangs. Keef’s introductory verse on the project signals the listener that we are getting the throwback version of the still-young Chicago[...]

The Flaming Lips – With a Little Help from My Fwends

October 27, 2014

Trashing an album like this is not easy, mainly because of how insanely easy it is. That Wayne Coyne, amidst accusations of cultural appropriation, unchecked egomania, and sad self-parody, would record an acid-damaged track-for-track cover of fucking Sgt. Pepper’s with Miley Cyrus reveals either a profound lack of self-awareness or an eager attempt to destroy his band’s legacy. It sounds like a joke your skeptical friend might have made about the band when you tried to get him to just hear The Soft Bulletin. As a long-time Lips defender and fan, I found the move exciting in its sheer audacity, and went into my first listen of the album with much hope. I’ve always been secretly kind of psyched about the Wayne-Miley friendship, and figured that the ballsiness of the project would warrant its existence. And it’s never fun to hate on something this ridiculous. But when I first listened[...]

Stars – No One Is Lost

October 14, 2014

While watching the closing minutes of “High Fidelity,” an episode of Degrassi (circa 2006), I found myself entranced by the lyrics of its concluding song: “Live through this and you won’t look back.” After a little digging, I found out the song was “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” by indie-pop band, Stars. Now, nearly ten years later, the Canadian band has released their latest album, No One Is Lost. And though their impact has slightly diminished since then, the quality of their sound has certainly maintained through the decade. In tempo with their typical vibe, No One Is Lost features lots of keyboard, alternating vocals between Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan, and of course, some 80’s flare. While the latest Stars album does not necessarily present anything different from previous albums, it proves a valuable steal for both long-time fans and newly acquainted listeners. There is something to be said for their[...]

Steve Gunn – Way Out Weather

October 13, 2014

Weather is probably the most common topic brought up amongst strangers. And its broad, unrevealing nature was something Steve Gunn had in mind when putting together his new album, “Way Out Weather. “Way out weather is a common song,” Gunn sings on the album’s opener. The Philadelphia-turned-New York City musician’s previous release, Time Off (2013), was the work of a purist not influenced by the exhausting nature of the city. It featured tumbling travis-picked acoustic guitar accented with light bass and guitar solos that wouldn’t dare wake up a sleeping baby, leaving the spare character of his songs almost wanting to be colored with something more. With his new album, Way Out Weather, they have been. Keys, banjo, and a sweeping pedal steel give a panoramic, widescreen feel to each of the album’s nine songs. Songs like “Wildwood” and “Fiction” bounce along some old country road. These are traditional roots-rock[...]

Vince Staples – Hell Can Wait

October 8, 2014

One thing that can be said about Los Angeles rapper, Vince Staples, for certain is that he does not have a bad verse to his name. Although he is a friend to the Odd Future crew, musically he couldn’t be more different. The 21-year-old has the soul of one of his West Coast gangsta-rap forefathers, notably rapping last year on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Hive” “If this was ’88 I would’ve signed to Ruthless, ‘9-4 woulda had me walking down Death Row,” a nod to some of the most famous, dark labels in hip hop history. Whether it was on either of his Shyne Coldchain mixtapes or last year’s Stolen Youth, a collaboration with Mac Miller’s production pseudonym Larry Fisherman, Staples has consistently brought introspective gangsta rap to his bars. Hell Can Wait continues this style, and this EP is a strong prelude to the debut album that Staples says is coming next year. Buzz for[...]

Weezer – Everything Will Be Alright in the End

October 7, 2014

Make no mistake: despite the well-trodden narrative of 21st century Weezer as the sad, emotionally dead carcass of a once-great rock institution, the past 14 years have been good to Rivers Cuomo and co. Though critical and fan consensus regards their work in the 2000s as unequivocally terrible (which it is, by and large), none of that really affected the band in any discernible way, either commercially or emotionally. They continued to pump out shit albums with shit covers and shit lyrics, and even managed to find their biggest hit along the way with 2005’s “Beverly Hills.” They continued to tour, they sold Snuggies, they had their own goddamn yearly musical cruise. You saw them live when they came to town, you rolled your eyes as they played “We Are All on Drugs,” and then you started screaming when the iconic opening drum fill to “Undone (the Sweater Song)” kicked[...]

Thom Yorke – Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes

October 3, 2014

Over the years, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has garnered attention as a sort of outspoken purveyor of electronic music. Upon being asked what he would pick if he had to choose between using a guitar or the medium of electronic production for the rest of his life, he infamously responded with the latter. Eight year after his first solo album debut, The Eraser, Yorke has finally released another, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, for all to access and purchase via Bit Torrent (a sort of statement on digital music circulation in itself) late last week. The 8 track album, teeming with choppy and subdued production and foreign yet string-like synthesizer arrangements, ambiguously fuses human expression with the paradigm of technology. It’s Yorke in his most experimental leanings, the score to the anatomy of a loading motherboard. As a digital manifestation, these shadowy, slightly paranormal instrumentals prove to be the ideal backdrop to[...]

She Keeps Bees – Eight Houses

October 1, 2014

She Keeps Bees is a homemade band. Essentially an alias for minivan loving front woman Jessica Larrabee, the act has been self-releasing EP’s and LP’s alike on their own since 2008. Eight Houses, the third LP release from the Brooklynite ex-pats, marks only the second LP released on a proper label. In the past, Bees have glided between folk and blues garnering comparisons to Patti Smith and Cat Power. As flattering as that may be, it is a bit of a lackadaisical nod. A more accurate comparison would be The Heartless Bastards and even Bad Company. What works on this record is its simplicity, with the main focus being Larrabee’s booming and penetrating vocals. Her gentle, supple guitar riffs, and the drumming of Andy LaPlant take side stage to the golden goose that are Larrabee’s vocal chords. She manages to deliver strong mono harmonies, which is a feat on its[...]

The Architects – Border Wars Episode II

September 30, 2014

The Architects, the four piece who hail from Kanas City, MO, jog back and forth between classic rock and melt-your-faces-off dirty, grimy punk rock on Border Wars Episode II, the latest installment of their elaborate concept album endeavor which comes equipped with a coinciding comic book with art by Mallory Dorn. Its predecessor, Episode I, was more straight forward rock n roll with a few grimy tracks thrown in there. Episode II, though, is the Architects album that you may think twice about taking home to your parents. With songs like the sappy “Killer Crush,” “In the Snow,” and “Criminal,” Episode II really lets the Architects talent shine through, stating “hey, we can write super catchy pop rock songs with depth and substance, but why do that all the time?” The central force behind this record is the vocals of Brandon Phillips, driving song after song up the city on the hill. This album[...]