Tagged: 4stars

Alright, so playing catchup here because I ACTUALLY WROTE A FULL REVIEW and then didn't put it up here. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney are the hard-working rockers that could. With a modest beginning ten years ago and a steady rise to both critical acclaim and, eventually, mainstream popularity (not to mention Grammy awards), you could almost consider the Black Keys the musical manifestation of the American dream. Their determination and consistency make them [...]

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars After the release of their highly acclaimed first album, and then the release of an intriguing and excellent EP shortly following, the whole of the indie music scene has been anxiously awaiting The Pains of Being Pure at Heart to grace their ears with more fuzzy pop tunes. But now that the wait is over, and this buzzband from 2009 is back with their sophomore effort, will it live up to the first? Belong, [...]

Stephen McBean has never seemed particularly interested in keeping his two bands as entirely separate entities. Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops have more in common than just their similar titles; McBean enlists many of the same musicians to play for both projects and it can be difficult to tell at times where he draws the dividing line between the two band's. But while McBean doesn't often vary from the basic ingredients, any direct comparison of the previous efforts by each project reveals fundamental differences in trajectory, with Black Mountain's In the Future working through various forms of guitar-heavy [...]

The Great Dane mixman Kasper Bjorke retouches here Nothing But Our Love from Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr off their My Love Is Easy remixes EP. Kaspar keeps it pretty tight here putting on an uptempo poptronica beat for the Jr. Jr. jam. Denmark and Motown now you know you're in trouble. Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr - Nothing But Our Love (Kasper Bjorke Remix) Purchase / Info Greenhornes bassist Jack Lawrence is a [...]

Over the past few years, Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach have done much in the name of progress. Working with Danger Mouse to produce their 2008 album Attack & Release , providing the rhythm section for the rap-rock experiment Blakroc, and taking the time to focus on side projects last year definitely served to shake things up for a duo that was previously known more for their impressive consistency than for their innovation. Yet somehow it's their latest record, Brothers , that feels like the most ingenuous step forward for the band in quite some time—and tellingly, with [...]

When Delta Spirit arrived on the scene two years ago, they did so with a sort of fiery retro-rock sound that was about impossible to ignore. Ode to Sunshine , their debut, was as bombastic as it was melodic, with crunchy guitars, clanging piano and singer Matt Vasquez's emphatic wail making for an enjoyably noisy racket. So subtlety wasn't part of the equation, but their lack of restraint is part of what made the record such a great listen. This time around however, with History From Below , Delta Spirit take a decidedly different approach. There are still [...]

Given the unusual way in which Sam Amidon approached his first two albums, you might expect him to either be relegated to the smallest of niche markets or to feel pressure to write a record using more conventional methods. Instead, the young folk musician has found his unique songcraft to be quite sustainable, and he's garnered increased acclaim over the past few years—especially with 2008's lovely All Is Well . Of course, Amidon isn't the first person to take traditional folk tunes and reinterpret them with a personal twist, but the obscurity of his chosen songs and the lengths [...]

Roky Erickson - True Love Cast Out All Evil (* * * *) Roky Erickson's life and career have been marred by pretty severe personal turmoil (to say the least), but his latest record, True Love Cast Out All Evil , proves he's been able to put that behind him and still make great music. Recording with indie mainstays Okkervil River, the psychedelic rock legend offers a gritty, rough and ultimately uplifting set of bluesy rock tunes that appropriately focuses on such topics as [...]

Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can (* * * *) To call Laura Marling's sophomore album, I Speak Because I Can , a sign of growth for the precocious songwriter might seem to undermine her remarkably accomplished first effort, Alas, I Cannot Swim . Yet as mature as her debut certainly was, her latest record shows a definite increase in the quality and depth of her songwriting and singing. I Speak continues Marling's penchant for emotionally weighty material, and here she has the added [...]

Kristian Matsson, Swedish folk singer-songwriter and lone artist behind the Tallest Man on Earth moniker, is a man that appears to eschew artistic excess of most any kind, musical or otherwise. Sure, many musicians keep things simple and record on a shoestring budget because they have to, but it's clear on his full-length sophomore record that Matsson actually prefers to operate in a limited, sparse musical setting—and it truly would be difficult to imagine his songs presented any other way. As a result, his latest effort, The Wild Hunt , sounds much like his debut (2008's Shallow Grave [...]

At first and even second glance, Besnard Lakes' third effort, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night , seems strikingly similar to their acclaimed sophomore one, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horses . Obviously, the title structures are quite comparable, but that's only the tip of the iceberg: the lengths of the respective albums are within a minute of each other; the 'wall of sound' stylistic approBach is much the same on both; and the songs on each record ebb and flow with a constantly dynamic intensity. Initially, these parallels seem to result [...]

It first seemed strange when, doing research on Fang Island, I found the band's first two EPs filed under the "Children's Music" section of iTunes. I doubt the label was intentional, given the band's high volume rock'n'roll style, but after becoming more familiar with Fang Island's self-titled debut, the categorization does seem accurate in certain ways. The collective's brand of indie-pop is endlessly energetic, noisy and joyful, blending soaring, chanted choruses with epic instrumentals for a deliriously fun experience the group describes as "everyone high-fiving everyone." The music has an almost universal appeal; there's a youthful energy but also a [...]

Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do (* * * 1/2) Eight albums in and the Drive-By Truckers are still going strong. The Big To-Do is a little shorter and more focused than many of the band's previous efforts, and though it's also a bit less consistent there's little to really complain about as the songwriting and musicianship are mostly top notch. "The Fourth Night of My Drinking" is a typically bleak, yet insightful Truckers song, as is the dark "The Wig He Made Her Wear," but tunes like [...]

• jj - Let Go

My schedule doesn't permit me to review everything I'd like to in full, so while capsule reviews aren't an entirely fair way to evaluate an album's strengths and weaknesses, they'll give me an opportunity to give my two cents about more of this year's music. Enjoy my first set of three: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists The Brutalist Bricks (* * * *) Ted Leo and company are back in full force with their latest album, The Brutalist [...]

After a consistently impressive start to any career, an artist tends to earn enough goodwill to try something different; a concept album, an unusual collaboration or new genre, for instance. But just because you can doesn't mean you should, and for every successful foray into the previously unexplored there have been innumerable disasters. Granted, when you consider the dependably fantastic Patty Griffin's latest effort, a gospel record fittingly labeled Downtown Church , it doesn't seem so removed from her previous works (especially her last album, 2007's wonderful Children Running Through ). Her country-folk straddling aesthetic and continuing progression [...]

With their sixth effort, it's unlikely Shearwater will impress many of their skeptics; The Golden Archipelago sounds a great deal like the beautifully executed albums that came before. But there's something to be said for the refining of one's sound rather than attempting to reinvent it, and the band has managed to create something that feels unique to their catalogue due to their continued commitment toward producing an album, as opposed to just a collection of singles. This approach is once again made evident in the perfectly sequenced ebb and flow of the songs comprising this record's 38 [...]

I can't get to all the good stuff (or bad stuff, for that matter) in any given month, so I thought I'd sum up my experience with music in the month of January (and hopefully other months too if I decide to make this a more permanent feature). I'll go over a few of my favorites and provide some reviews in brief of things I haven't covered yet. The year got off to a great start, so there's plenty to go over here. The Best from Chewing Gum for the Ears, January (link [...]

Bristol duo Malachai make an awful lot of noise for just two people. Of course, coming after famously loud duos like The White Stripes and The Black Keys, perhaps the considerable volume produced by Gee Ealey and Scott Hendy shouldn't be surprising. But something in the explosiveness and variety of the band's debut, The Ugly Side of Love , makes it seem like there's just more people behind it.Their first effort is a brief blast of rock 'n' roll covering 13 tracks in just over 32 minutes, combining 80s punk swagger with 60s psychedelic rock (along with just a [...]

I can't say I've thought about his enough to actually do it, but if I were to make a list of the singers I would most like to release a gospel album, I'm certain Patty Griffin would be very near the top. That's not to say that I have an extensive collection of the genre, but I do enjoy a great gospel record on occasion, and Downtown Church hits that spot just right. That's because Griffith went about making this album all the right ways, paying homage to soulful, classic gospel records while retaining her familiar musical personality, [...]

If there ever was a band that personified "college rock," Surfer Blood is it. As their bio states, these University of Florida students recorded their debut album "in a college dorm room, using musical equipment purchased with scholarship money." Supposedly, they rejected the version they had begun to record in the studio due to "the way the engineer was affecting their sound." This is certainly a very "indie" thing for a band to do, but the decision seems to have been an intelligent one in this case; Astro Coast is a more than solid rock 'n roll debut [...]