Petite League- Slugger
Baseball. Rock ‘n’ Roll. The Carrier Dome. Do those phrases resonate as “American” to you? Well, they should. And they’re three words that, more or less, resonate with the band from ‘Cuse known as Petite League. Petite League is a lo-fi garage rock band currently...
Prince Daddy & The Hyena – Adult Summers
Prince Daddy & The Hyena has me baffled. They've just put out something truly unique, an almost unclassifiable sounding new EP called Adult Summers. My attempt at classification: take equal parts Andrew W.K. and The Hotelier, and toss in a dash of The Locust. One...
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings – It’s A Holiday Soul Party
It's not that holiday music stinks per se, it's the fact that holiday music is bloody ubiquitous for a solid month; weaponized against us every time we go into a store (notably, except for The People's Wegman's on Amherst St). There's also a lot of terrible holiday...
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Paper Mâché Dream Balloon
If you haven’t heard of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, here’s a short history of the band’s existence. They formed in 2010 in Melbourne, literally as a side-project/joke band. They released the hard-hitting 12 Bar Bruise in 2012. It was mostly garage-ey psych...
BØRNS – Dopamine
Hey, did you like Foster The People’s Torches? ...No? Well boy oh boy, do I not have the album for you. This time around, it's from Garrett Borns. Birthed in Michigan, and better known as his stage name BØRNS, Mr. Borns has released his full first length album,...
Neon Indian – VEGA INTL. Night School
After what seemed like a relatively boring end of summer in terms of new releases, we’ve got a bunch of goodies coming out from indie icons. Seasoned veterans (Wavves) and 22 year future bedroom stars (Alex G) have both put out new stuff this month, but we’re going to...
City and Colour – If I Should Go Before You
City and Colour strikes gold again with its fifth album titled If I Should Go Before You. The band preserves its deep and solemn lyrics accompanying its melodious sounds, but definitely has changed from previous album The Hurry and the Harm, opting for a newer mixture...
The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die – Harmlessness
I want you to say it with me! The World is a Beautiful Place and I am no Longer Afraid to Die is not just another emo revival band! The World is a Beautiful Place and I am no Longer Afraid to Die is not just another emo band! Sure, you’re probably going to look at...
Avicii – Stories
The scene starts out black. Forceful, bright MIDI grand piano chords play. The scene fades in. A tattered pair of old sneakers are walking down a sidewalk “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” the lyrics tell you as the MIDI instruments break into a full MIDI...
The Front Bottoms – Back On Top
I'm not sure if it was the choice of the Front Bottoms or their new label, Fueled By Ramen, but in an exceedingly strange move, prior to the release of their new record, Back On Top, SIX of the record's eleven songs were made available to the public. Why they did...
Kurt Vile – b’lieve i’m goin down…
For the past year or so, Kurt Vile’s last full length, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, has been my go to road trip album. The sound was so expansive, warm, and spacious, it almost seemed perfect compliment for a long drive in the sunshine. I guess that this might partially...
Ryan Adams – 1989
When Taylor Swift finally dropped 1989 last year, it's success was hardly a surprise. The singer's new album had felt like the final chapter in her carefully cultivated image as pop's biggest underdog. Going back to her debut as a teenage country star who's lyrics...
Mac Miller – GO:OD AM
Finally. You log onto Spotify. You click the search bar. You frantically type in “mac.” You realize you could have probably just typed in “M” because what bigger “M” artist is there than Mac Miller? Your hand starts to shake as you click on the name, which may as well...
Travis Scott – Rodeo
I have decided that I am going to create an award for the album that I am happiest that I didn’t overlook this year, just so I can preemptively give it to Travis Scott’s new album, Rodeo. Up until this point, I have been wildly unimpressed by the “new Atlanta” style...
The Weeknd – Beauty Behind the Madness
At the age of 25, Canadian R&B singer The Weeknd is set to drop his second studio album, Beauty Behind the Madness, on Friday, and while the record is still pending an official release, nearly half of its tracks have already had success as chart-topping singles....
Beach House – Depression Cherry
At this point, you really have to hand it to Beach House. With a decade under their belts, the duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally have managed to constantly put out well received material, drawing clear shoegaze influence and crafting it into their own dreamy,...
Mac DeMarco – Another One
So the Pepperoni Playboy has done it again. Who is the Pepperoni Playboy, you ask? And what exactly has he done? He is none other than the slacker king of “jizz jazz” (self-proclaimed), Mac DeMarco, and he’s just put out his first release since 2014’s Salad Days....
Chelsea Wolfe – Abyss
About a week after listening to Chelsea Wolfe's new album, Abyss, out on Sargent House Records, I had a lucid dream of what it was like to suffer from sleep paralysis. In the dream, I woke up, but my body was still, unmoving. A shadowy, demonic figure attempted to...
Adult Mom – Momentary Lapse of Happily
I remember a couple months ago, sitting on the floor of a living room on the West Side, hearing Stephanie Knipe’s music live for the first time. Armed with just an electric guitar, Knipe, front woman of Purchase, NY's Adult Mom, proceeded to perform one of the best...
Titus Andronicus – The Most Lamentable Tragedy
Believe it or not, if you were at the Titus Andronicus show at the Tralf Music Hall in 2013, you were among the first people in the world to hear tracks off of the band’s latest effort, The Most Lamentable Tragedy. While two years seems like a stretch from the first...
Pitbull – Dale
You hear those three ascending piano notes. You stop what you’re doing and turn your full attention to the wondrous arpeggiation that just tongued your earholes. You hear the same three notes, descend back to where they came from. You start to see spots. You start to...
Wilco – Star Wars
On “Cold Slope,” the 9th song off Wilco’s new album, Star Wars, Jeff Tweedy sings, “Some say you’re never really there, but you still take up space.” That line could be an indictment of the band over the past several years: touring endlessly but producing fewer...
Tame Impala – Currents
Thanks to a Facebook post from my friend Matt, it has come to my attention that "Tame Impala is the Instagram of rock bands.” This comes as a part of a multiple-hundreds of words rant from this album review of Currents. First of all, if you read it, Will Neibergall...
Neil Young and Promise of the Real – The Monsanto Years
Sure, in writing it sounded like a good idea, or at the very least a ballsy and righteous one. Neil Young, one of rock’s most dedicated social and environmental activists, dedicating the space of an entire LP to taking down one of the most controversial corporations...
Wavves X Cloud Nothings – No Life For Me
If you were up on Sunday night around midnight, you may have been pleasantly surprised by something on the internet. No, it wasn’t an admission from one of your facebook buddies that he was in fact, totally in the wrong about having a confederate flag vanity plate on...
Girlpool – Before The World Was Big
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...
Major Lazer – Peace is The Mission
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,...
Of Monsters and Men – Beneath the Skin
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...
Jamie xx – In Colour
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...
Florence + the Machine – How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
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...
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Multi-Love
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...
Thee Oh Sees – Mutilator Defeated at Last
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...
Eskimeaux – O.K.
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...
Faith No More – Sol Invictus
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 Tallest Man On Earth – Dark Bird Is Home
“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...
Snoop Dogg – BUSH
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...
Hop Along – Painted Shut
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...
Mumford & Sons – Wilder Nights
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...
Blur – The Magic Whip
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...
Raekwon – Fly International Luxury Art
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...
Speedy Ortiz – Foil Deer
When Speedy Ortiz’s first full length, Major Arcana, dropped in 2013, I experienced a strong sense of addiction. From the first listen, the crooked, catchy rhythms, jangly vocal delivery, and lyrical wit had me listening over and over. Speedy Ortiz doesn’t put out run...
Alabama Shakes – Sound & Color
When they exploded on the scene in 2012, Alabama Shakes' mix of bluesy garage rock, Southern rock and soul (channeled via vocalist Brittany Howard) led most critics to brand them a roots rock group. It was, for the most part, a fitting umbrella genre to peg the...
Tyler, The Creator – Cherry Bomb
Say what you will about Tyler, The Creator - his puerile public persona; his real-life destructive stage antics; his stoic, perennially grumpy-sounding delivery - but the dude's nothing if not eclectic. Much like the sophomore records of fellow Odd Future emcee Earl...
Waxahatchee – Ivy Tripp
If there’s anything I’ve learned from listening to Waxahatchee's music, it is that less is more. The acoustic, lo-fi sound that frontwoman Katie Crutchfield brought on her first record, American Weekend, was something very special. Recorded solo by Crutchfield in her...
Toro Y Moi – What For?
Often characterized as the father of chillwave, Chazwick Bundick, or Toro Y Moi, has released his fourth album, What For? this past Tuesday. With music that’s just as strange as his name, Bundick has pushed all boundaries concerning genre. Since 2008, Bundick has...
Fort Romeau – Insides
Since the release of his 2012 debut album Kingdoms, London producer Fort Romeau has continued to develop a highly textured, slow-burning house sound that lends itself to both economical dance cuts as well as airy, warm introspective tracks. After putting out a series...
Death Grips – The Powers That B
There are very few bands that have as strong of a cult following as the controversial, experimental hip hop trio, Death Grips. Over its five year life span, DG has put out some incredibly genre defying music, even attracting the ears of one of the biggest names in the...
Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell
Loss can alter a person. Whether it’s reinvention, recollection, or flat-out despair that hits the hardest, the death of a loved one often times has a profound effect on an individual. In the case of Sufjan Stevens, the feelings resulting from his mother’s death in...
Death Cab for Cutie – Kintsugi
“I don’t know where to begin,” croons perennially plaintive vocalist Benjamin Gibbard on Kintsugi, the eighth studio album from indie-rock vets Death Cab for Cutie. Indeed, with its synth flourishes and electronic left-turns, it does ring of a band that’s struggling...
Tobias Jesso Jr. – Goon
The narrative of heartbreak and desperation that runs through the debut album of Canadian artist Tobias Jesso Jr. has been countlessly explored by numerous singer-songwriter types who strive to craft a universal sentiment from their internal struggles. It's worth...