Mark Lanegan Band Blues Funeral 4AD/Beggars Group US Recently, I marveled at Mark Lanegan's voice, that deep and leathery, wavering and seductive voice, and noted how I would not only listen to Lanegan reinterpreting the catalog of pop songstress, Katy Perry, but I would buy that collection, too . That's the power of having the voice of Rock 'N' Roll. Blues Funeral, Lanegan's first solo collection since 20042s Bubblegum, presents the listener with a scenario tantalizingly close to my own dream/nightmare. Squeezed in the middle of [...]
Guided by Voices Let's Go Eat the Factory GBV Records From the beginning, the Guided by Voices reunion of the mid-90s lineup was different. It may have read like the familiar script - Cult band tours theaters and the festival circuit, gets their due and gets some dollars, but unlike many of their peers there was a palpable sense that Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennell were actually enjoying themselves the second time around. Bob brought his full array of rock kicks and microphone tricks. Mitchell [...]
Herzog Cartoon Violence Exit Stencil Too often when talent is used to describe an indie rock band there's a catch. As in, they're a talented band, but they're too cute and too obtuse for their own good. Or, they're a talented band with a disdain of conformity and a similar disdain of melody. Or, they're a talented band, why the fuck can't they write one damn song I can hang my hat on. Cleveland's Herzog are a talented band of another type. In their case, talent means understanding. They [...]
How much does Goner Records love you? Try two double LP singles collections by two of the most potent acts in modern garage rock dropping on the same day worth of love. That's 47 tracks of love. That's over 120 minutes of love for Ty Segall and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Sure they deserve the attention, but do they deserve two double LPs worth of love from your wallet, too? The Short answer is yes. The long answer goes something like this... Ty Segall [...]
Thee Oh Sees Carrion Crawler/The Dream In the Red Not the wandering, goofy goodness of Castlemania, 20112s first LP by the San Francisco garage-rockers, Thee Oh Sees, Carrior Crawler/The Dream is a more concise, more direct, and significantly heavier affair. Part of this can be traced back to the album's genesis. Originally conceived as two separate EPs, principal John Dwyer, and the rest of the band, ended up cranking out an album's worth of material in one week of studio time. Just as important was Dwyer's desire to [...]
Pujol Nasty, Brutish, and Short Saddle Creek Nasty, brutish, and short, indeed. At seven tracks and less then 20 minutes, Pujol's debut EP for Saddle Creek Records, is a rough-edged mix of garage and punk served with a side of Southern swagger that is both instantly likable and full of promise. Lead vocalist, and band namesake, Daniel Pujol of Nashville, has a scruffy and scraggly delivery immediately comparable to a young Westerberg, Eric Bachmann during his Archers of Loaf days, or even Eddie Spaghetti of the Supersuckers. He just exudes [...]
Wolves in the Throne Room Celestial Lineage Southern Lord Similar in scope to Sunn O)))'s masterpiece, Monoliths and Dimensions, and even recalling the grandeur of instrumental rock greats like Mogwai or Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Celestial Lineage, the latest release by Wolves in the Throne Room, does more than redefine black metal for the American audience - It renders the very notion of genre pointless. And unlike much of the popular music that comes from the Pacific Northwest these days (Folkies Fleet Foxes immediately come to mind), brothers Aaaron and Nathan [...]
Mastodon The Hunter Reprise Attention headbangers and metal enthusiasts: Before you get all chaffed because Mastodon went ahead and threw a handful of radio-friendly unit shifters on their latest album, The Hunter, ask yourself this question: In streamlining their progressive metal sound from head-spinning epics about Moby Dick, the Russian Empire, and who knows what else, into more concise, but still bludgeoning three to four minute pieces, have they really lost any of that essence that made Mastodon who they are? To these ears there are still plenty of insanely [...]
Wilco The Whole Love dBpm / Anti- With the Whole Love being bookended by the crunchy electronics of "Art of Almost" and the sedate, ruminative and repetitive folk of "One Sunday Morning," it's the meat and the middle and less experimental parts of Wilco's eighth studio album that will ultimately make or break the listening experience for both long time followers and newcomers alike. For like a lot of bands who've just completed a long recording contract and found freedom in their own label, Jeff Tweedy and company's latest aims to [...]
Cave Neverendless Drag City Like their neighbors in Disappears, the Chicago outfit Cave have placed themselves at the forefront of the new Neu revival with the release of Neverendless. And while working elements of German electronic music into Rock 'N' Roll is hardly novel (Search this website for motorik or krautrock and any number of bands will pop up), what is different, is how reverential modern artists are treating their source material. It's as if they're trying to make careers out of variations on two songs - "Hallogallo" and [...]
Wooden Shjips West Thrill Jockey Over the course of three full length albums and two singles collections, Wooden Shjips have all but perfected their sound. Led by guitarist Ripley Johnson, this San Francisco quartet fuses boogie rock, 19602s, West Coast psychedelic rock, and krautrock into a warbling and wavering blur where the lines of form and function all but disappear. The jams may only be five, six, or seven minutes long, but under the right circumstances, they can pull the listener into a place where they can stretch on to infinity. [...]
Wild Flag Wild Flag Merge Indie Rock, that catch-all genre for all things underground, has had to fend off numerous criticisms over the past few years - Inide rock too white! It's too nostalgic! It's too safe! It's too smart for its own good! What is indie rock anyway?!? One criticism no one ever lobs, however, is that indie rock is too much fun. The reason is simple and can be seen with one's own eyes at indie rock festivals across the country. Many of these new acts are [...]
The Rapture In the Grace of Your Love DFA Records Similar to The Strokes, The Rapture are another NYC band who peaked during the early part of the past decade with their debut album, whose star gradually dimmed with each successive release, took a lengthy break, and who've returned in 2011. The Rapture were big names in the dance-punk craze. The Strokes, meanwhile, found similar success with their stricter reconstruction of 19702s NYC punk, of course. Those distinctions aren't necessarily important here, but do serve as a reminder of where underground [...]
Girls Father, Son, and Holy Ghost True Panther/Matador It's Tuesday. Let's talk about vomit. On Girls' Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the San Francisco band's second release for True Panther/Matador Records, there's "Vomit," the song, which, truth be told, is an absolute stunner - A thrilling six minute ride, epic in the way Pink Floyd or Guns 'N' Roses could be epic, with the dirtiest, and I mean unwashed, unkempt, sleeping on the streets of 19902s Seattle, raised on a diet of dumpster scraps, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana [...]
The Men Leave Home Sacred Bones Punk, post-punk, post-hardcore, noise, scuzz, fuzz, pigfuck , Leave Home by The Men is an album that could wear any number of labels. The guitars are loud, way loud, to the point of blistering distortion. The vocals are bloodied, throaty and rough. The attitude is confrontational from side one, track one on through to the end. And, there are times when all of this becomes unpleasant for the listener. It's unpleasant in a good way, but unpleasant, nonetheless. Yet, those adjectives and [...]
Wugazi 13 Chambers Self-Released Ostensibly, a mash-up of the post-hardcore band, Fugazi, and the hip-hop gang, The Wu-Tang Clan, Wugazi's 13 Chambers plays more like an old-school rap album, or a direct collaboration between these two legendary artists, than the work of two producers (Cecil Otter & Swiss Andy) hunkered down in the Midwest. The seamlessness of the source material is that striking. Another surprising aspect of 13 Chambers, in addition to the fact that this mash-up works at all, is the funkiness of Fugazi's contributions. They've been called [...]
Cymbals Eat Guitars Lenses Alien Barsuk One thing Cymbals Eat Guitars does not lack on their second album, Lenses Alien, is ambition. This East Coast act has more ambition than your average indie-rock outfit times ten. Hell, "Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name)," the opening track on this, their second album, runs over eight minutes and recalls Built to Spill, and of all things, Janes Addiction's Ritual de lo Habitual. It's the type of track most would build to. Not Cymbals Eat Guitars, they use its grand movements, bursts of static, and [...]
Male Bonding Endless Now Sub Pop Now that Male Bonding have ditched that lo-fi style of their first album, we can finally see what this young band of English punks are capable of on this, their sophomore album, Endless Now. Granted, at the time of their debut, the shit-shine was the new pro-tools, and lo-fi the new hi-fi, but their blend of American pop-punk and UK shoegaze was done absolutely no favors with that shit-shine, no matter how in it was. When their songs should have popped they were [...]
The War on Drugs Slave Ambient Secretly Canadian The roots of Slave Ambient, the new album by Philadelphia musician, Adam Granduciel, and his band, The War on Drugs, can be traced back to Bob Dylan and classic albums like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Grandaddy's Sophtware Slump. If album reviews were based on references alone, then Granduciel's Slave Ambient would be a ten out of ten, end of story. The roots of Slave Ambient can also be traced back to one of Granduciel's old bandmates, Kurt Vile, and the [...]
Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks Mirror Traffic Matador When one considers Stephen Malkmus, once of the much-beloved indie rock group, Pavement, spent much of 2010 on a very successful reunion tour with his former band, it's not totally surprising that this album with The Jicks would sound like a long lost collection of Pavement tracks recorded circa 2002. What is surprising is that two of the '90s biggest alt-rock icons (Malkmus and Beck, who produced Mirror Traffic), could work together in the studio and only come up with an album that [...]
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![Niki & The Dove - The Fox [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/l2f6UbMnlq4_130.jpg)
Download: Lissy Trullie - "It's Only You, Isn't It"
‘SNL’ Showcases Karmin, Honors Whitney Houston
Love You Whitney
Ugandan Methods – Beneath The Black Arch
