David and Peter Brewis' last release as Field Music , 20102s majestic Field Music (Measure) , was the brothers' most accessible, most coherent, and best album so far. For all its sprawl and experimentation - spanning 70-odd minutes and two CDs, featuring ambient Eno-inspired soundscapes and what the band termed "'found sound' composition" - Measure showed Field Music, assuredly and confidently, as themselves. Having spent two albums as Field Music and a solo album each finding their feet, David Brewis commented after Measure 's release that they now [...]
For a man who has spent many years battling addictions, is it any wonder that Dylan Carlson wants to keep himself busy and away from his demons? Following on from last year's excellent Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I , Earth return with a second album in twelve months, the companion piece Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II . Recorded at the same time as 2011's record by Stuart Hallerman, the man responsible for engineering the brutal drone of Earth 2 , it's every bit as good as part [...]
For a band that's name comes from a oft-forgotten Disney flick about a Jamaican bobsled team that captured the world's hearts while finishing dead-last in the Olympics, Coolrunnings sound exactly how you'd expect them to sound. And yeah, I do mean that in a bad way. The scruffy, southern, guitar-toting, ne'er-do-any-harm indie-rock band has made a scruffy, southern, guitar-toting, ne'er-do-any-harm indie-rock record in the strictest and flattest methodology imaginable. If Dracula is Only The Beginning is them giving us their best shot, they've been shuttered out of style with such feverish ineloquence you'll [...]
Rather appropriately released on Valentine's Day, Tennis – a.k.a. Denver-based husband and wife duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley – bring us their second record Young And Old just over a year after the pair released their debut Cape Dory in January 2011. A series of songs written about their shared experience sailing around the Atlantic, Cape Dory was an album wrapped in whimsy and nostalgia, a romantic record of their days before married life. On their 10-track follow up that romanticism remains intact, even down to the album's [...]
Since the derivative but nonetheless lauded drone of their Anaesthetic album Maribel have disintegrated, reformed and returned as a physically very different beast indeed. With a lineup almost entirely changed from their Emil Nikolaisen-produced debut, band leader, guitarist and songwriter Pal Espen Kanelrud has rebuilt his Norwegian Nu-gaze army in a more effective and sometimes more sophisticated shape. What's sonically great here is the dissonant 1950s riffola employed on tracks like the twanging, horror-atmospheric Lynchian bar-room opener 'Falling Down The Stairs' and its second half mirror 'Perfumed', itself a clanging, sleazy slog boasting the knowing, [...]
This mini-album from Calgary via Edinburgh eight-piece Woodpigeon follows their most successful full-length album to date, the wonderfully lush, simultaneously Tom Petty- and Sufjan Stevens-infused Die Stadt Musikanten , and while they will always have a place in festival-goers hearts for bringing to light the genius of Scots songwriter Withered Hand via their stunning renditions of his miraculous 'No Cigarettes' anthem , accusations of copycat-ism have plagued them somewhat through the years. So while they do lean towards Elliott Smith or (more easily achieved) Iron & Wine territory – lands clearly [...]
Despite suffering debasement from low-quality acts and living as a cultural punchline, emo has persevered as a legitimate sub-genre. Songwriters like Jesse Lacey , Patrick Stickles , Max Bemis and David Bazan have managed to preserve the essence of intelligence, self-awareness and honesty that has defined the genre as far back as Minor Threat, while still progressing the sounds in their own ways. After an explosion in popularity (and an equal and opposite backlash) in the late 90s and early Aughts, great emo records are certainly harder to find than they were 20, or [...]
Pop music's quite the thing isn't it? Aside from wonderful artists making wonderful music for as long as we can remember, it also weaves tales that demand attention, stories of overnight success, or years of hard graft finally paying off; buskers get signed by label execs who just happen to have been walking by, or a waitress absent-mindedly singing to get through her shift whose life is changed overnight just because the big man from A&R was sitting there having his third espresso of the day. To this we can add the story of 17 year old Swede [...]
Some artists sing The Blues. Others have The Blues. Then there's the odd rare talent who appears to channel the bitter essence and hard-won wisdom of The Blues every time they open their mouth. Karen Dalton belongs to this select gathering of almost supernaturally gifted singers, her mournful voice and unhurried phrasing injecting a compelling dose of road-weary, ghostly grief to even the few jaunty tunes that ever got to share space with the low-down laments and traditional ballads that dominated her song kit. Dalton's early life was conducive [...]
Sharon Van Etten After Lana Del Rey's tortured pop princess act last week and Madonna's gladiator-cheerleader jukebox musical on Superbowl Sunday, the new Sharon Van Etten record came as a welcome burst of understated authenticity. There's nothing flashy or pretentious about Van Etten. Her new music is harder and a bit more country than her prior folky material, but still a far cry from hard rock, and as far from the dance floor as a wallflower at the prom. Her songs are still mostly about heartbreak, with plainspoken titles like "All I [...]
Australian singer-songwriter Gotye is a throwback who makes the kind of sophisticated pop music that was taken for granted in the 1980s. On his new album, Making Mirrors , he evokes the adult pop of Sting and Peter Gabriel, while still managing to sound fresh. From the first moments of the title track opener, which finds Gotye's voice floating uneasily between the wax and wane of a synthesizer moan, you know you're listening to a different type of pop record. That quiet, spare sound gives way to a blast of fuzzy guitars on [...]
By the mid '90s, Suzanne Ciani was "America's First Lady of New Age music" (Sound on Sound), a guest on the Letterman show, and a multiple Grammy Award nominee. But, although the sound of waves crashing against the shore does creep in towards the end of this new release from Andy Votel's Finders Keepers imprint, for the most part what we get here is something far stranger - and paradoxically also far more "commercial" (in the most literal sense of the term). The record covers the period from 1969 to 1985 - that's before [...]
Heavenly Records - home to remarkably diverse mix of established acts (Saint Etienne, Edwyn Collins) and breaking up-and-comers (The Soft Pack, Stealing Sheep) - appear to have bagged themselves a rather enjoyable Americana double-act. Americana is a genre of contradictions. At its simplest it refers to bands who look back stylistically to American roots music; although fans of Okkervil River are more likely to listen to The Roots than anything resembling the Soggy-Bottom Boys. Despite lyrical references to the Old West, wide open prairies, and endless highways, Americana tends to be music made and enjoyed by urbanites, and [...]
Lana Del Ray, Video Games L.V., It seems that we've come to some basic agreement about Lana Del Rey: She has talent, her songs are catchy, and the negative reaction to Born to Die says more about the biases of her critics than it does about her music. But perhaps I was too quick to dismiss your claim that her presence on the album matters less than the songs themselves. It's true that in pop music, the song often carries [...]
There are bands, like The Dismemberment Plan or Destroyer, the brutality of whose name belies the often sweet-natured, good humoured, delicate sounds contained within their work. And then there are bands like A Place To Bury Strangers , who sound just as confrontational as you would expect a band called "A Place To Bury Strangers" to sound. One has to wonder, are they limited by their name to only writing this deliberately ugly kind of music in the same way that Pete & The Pirates surely must wish they'd be allowed to write anything other [...]
Since the fated day when she picked up her guitar to write her first song, Beth Jeans Houghton and her band The Hooves of Destiny have thrown themselves between genres, knocking out a handful of commercial folk tunes before finally entering the studio to record their debut album. Given that it's taken five years to produce, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose might shock fans who aren't au fait with her recent change in direction. The album is more heightened and fraught than anything she's released previously, but its unprecedented style is definitely something to embrace. It's become normal [...]
Ever since Of Montreal were unfortunate enough to release one of 2007's most adored records, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? , they have been condemned to have every note scrutinised and slapped up against the measuring stick of their former success. Which, of course, is a ridiculous way of looking at things; whether new album Paralytic Stalks is marginally worse or better than Hissing Fauna… in anyone's skewed opinion is absolutely irrelevant. Paralytic Stalks is its own album, and is simultaneously frustrating, self-loathing, insecure, thrilling, deranged, and always completely [...]
Illinois musician Mike Kinsella has worked under several guises in his career. From the tragically short-lived brilliance of his band American Football, who graced us with but one record in 1999, to work with a host of Chicago indie acts over the past ten years, his is a quietly prolific career. With Owen , his solo moniker, Kinsella has found not only a staunch fanbase, but also a sparsely populated musical niche which he has cultivated over the course of five albums. Ghost Town , the newest of this quintet, continues [...]
Lana del Rey - Born To Die Lana Del Rey - "Off To The Races" Keith, I must admit that your critiques are valid: I certainly short-changed LDR's vocal capabilities (unfairly so), and I am most certainly a cynic! Allow me, then, an opportunity to re-evaluate and rephrase. I suppose I was trying to say that, although Lizzie Grant is certainly a capable vocalist, her presence on the album didn't dramatically affect my impression of the record. Yes, I enjoyed [...]
Lana Del Ray, Video Games L.V., It seems that we've come to some basic agreement about Lana Del Rey: She has talent, her songs are catchy, and the negative reaction to Born to Die says more about the biases of her critics than it does about her music. But perhaps I was too quick to dismiss your claim that her presence on the album matters less than the songs themselves. It's true that in pop music, the song often carries [...]
The Line Of Best Fit
Frontier Psychiatrist
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FREENESS: Robot Orchestra – Beat The Odds (Germany)
The Twilight Sad cover The Smiths
