Since that Deftones record has got me in the mood for heavy and hooky stuff, why was no one cool on this 2004 Helmet disc? It's mighty heavy, with the kind of mammoth-but-weirdly-melodic guitar beatdowns that Jawbox and the various Dischord alums offer. It's actually ridiculously similar to the Deftones - or they are to Helmet - but either way it's murder on your speakers and still tuneful as ...
Aloha are one of those bands (like Sea and Cake) where each time they release a new disc I think, "eh, been there, done that," only to fall in love with the record once I hear it, even if it isn't anything groundbreaking. That process is playing itself out with Home Acres. Love "Moonless March" and am probably going to be listening to this with an annoying frequencv over the next week.
These guys are too little remembered even in the pathetic circles I imagine traveling in, where crystalline dream-pop is always playing in one's head if not your actual hi-fi. Breathy female vocals, idyllic guitars and synths and textural layers of distortion, it was not a new sound at the time, but it's done so perfectly here that armies of bands are rendered superfluous and you just made some ca
Oh, the unfair maligning of this record vexes me to no end! No it is not the best of GG's catalog [though I prefer it to the debut and the overrated In a Glass House] but since GG were very good songwriters in addition to fantastic musicians and bold arrangers, these attempts at pop mostly hold up well. "Thank you" and "Friends" are both lovely and the two bluesy rockers the review mentions are...