There's something about the act of discovering a new band, of making room in your mind for a new act, the character in a singer's voice, a new recognition, an understanding that starts the first time you hear and artist's work and is reconsidered for every track and for every note you hear of theirs afterwards, and with each record comes this anticipation that the record is going to be as goo...
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You are Jason Isbell, and you are on a brutal tour with your band, the Drive By Truckers, touring their latest record, "A Blessing and a Curse." During this tour, the fighting with your wife, who also happens to be the bassist, has grown so intense that it threatens the very existence of the Drive By Truckers.You leave the group after this tour, separate from your wife whom you later divorce,...
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2008 was a year where my musical age really started to pop up like the number of grey hairs around the temple region of my head. Still there was plenty of good music to be had, even if finding them meant sifting through hundreds of records to find an album that didn't sound like one hundred other bands who would be forgotten about by the end of the year. These are the ones who rose to the top,...
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How do you a review a record for a band whose previous work you admired so much over the years that when you look at their catalog, you are really looking back at the events in your own life, proof of how music can get grafted onto us and lodged within us so deeply that the music becomes synonymous with who we are.Case in point with Verve's fourth record, Forth. To say that this release was an...
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The downer vocals, the whispers of regret, it's all hitting me as I listen to the opening strains of "Dream State Flying", one of the tracks on Firecracker People, by Hotel Lights, a project helmed by Ex Ben Folds Five Darren Jesse. In this song I can see clear through the Summer to the Winter, with me standing outside that old brick building I used to work in. Decked out in a sweater and blue ...
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The very nature of this record, its' essence, the spaces where the edges of songs come together, demands the listener to question their own expectations of pop music. That is whether or not it is the job of pop music in general to provide a catchy melody with which to sing along in the car to or should it be used as a device to shine a light on man's deepest desires and faults? Such is t...
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There are bands and when you hear them, there are people that come to mind and just thinking about it puts you off of it. “That band sounds so weird, its like they’re trying to be weird” you can hear yourself say the first time you put the record on. It's the kind of record where if you put it on, people are going to roll their eyes and now you are one of those guys, who listens to cooler th
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Evil Urges is a lot of things, it's loud, proud of its third funk nipple, and isn’t afraid of flaunting it, but really a band with this many expectations weighing on their shoulders have done the right thing, and made an abrupt left turn into the jungle, it's just that this time, thousands follow them, unaware of the band’s true nature.The record’s concept, if one can be found, is to embrace
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M83’s latest, Saturdays=Youth, takes the listener on an imaginary time warp, one where seemingly dissimilar musical blends and memories meld, where Cocteau Twins era dream nostalgia merges with old techno styles to create a hermetically sealed world, imagined through the eyes and ears of various High School students, including you, dear reader.This record is so well put together its like scenes.
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There's something about Oregon Winters, how bleak the days can be, the afternoons lazily going by, and getting used to the endless variety of cloud cover, be it white or cream-colored, that makes me think about Sun Kil Moon. There is something in the voice of Sun Kil Moon lead singer Mark Kozelek that seems to hit me with a stormy sense of arrival, the way it washes over my ears, and how somet...
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