Newsday (MCT) -- The Academy Is ... isn't afraid of taking chances. Each of the Chicago band's albums features a different approach to pop-leaning rock, and its new EP, "Lost in Pacific Time" (Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen), is another musical left turn. Singer William Beckett said the band members are proud of the new EP because they produced it themselves and recorded much of it on the road — in.
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Monsters of Folk continue to blanket the airwaves and intertrons with performances from their self-titled debut, which we found to contain precisely 8 PMEUs (PopMatters Enjoyment Units) out of 10. "Temazcal" is a cool affair, maybe deserving better treatment than the video can deliver, what with its sepia tone and cheesy scratched film effects and all, but such is life.
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Grizzly Bear continues to get mileage out of Veckatimest with this video for "Ready, Able". The song is as good as ever, but the stop motion video by Allison Schulnik is the real star here.
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Will Stratton is in the habit of releasing music for free, so it comes as no surprise that he's giving away a couple from his new album, No Wonder. The lyrics aren't anything special, with nary an inspired image between the two songs, the kind of interchangeable ruminations that do nothing to distinguish him from any number of other songwriters, but they are inoffensive and pleasant enough, and...
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J. Tillman's video for "Though I Have Wronged You" is barely a video, consisting only of a low-res conversation between green and pink pixel clusters. What do they talk about? The usual: feeling disconnected when we're technologically connected to more of the world than ever before, the difficulty of living from within as opposed to building a persona out of tweets and status updates, the way t...
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Here's a video for the title track from Cocker's Further Complications, slinky stage presence and paper airplane transitions included.
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Some artists are more than merely great. There are some artists that for a period of years, a period that is finite, consistently produced music that, it can be argued, far exceeded the work of their peers. For that brief period of time they were definitely Masters of the Form."Anger is a gift." -- Rage Against the Machine, "Freedom" Anger was a pretty standard component of popular music by 19...
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McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) -- There's nothing fancy about Jewel's concerts. That's not the way she rolls. "It's just me and my guitar," says the country-folk-pop singer from Durham, N.C., a stop on her tour. "I don't do set lists. Every show is different." Besides playing favorites like "You Were Meant For Me," "Hands" and "Foolish Games" as well as stuff off the new album, "Lullaby," she tells...
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Fuck Buttons + Growing: 4 November 2009 - DC9, Washington DC / Words and Pictures by Mehan JayasuriyaUpon ascending the stairs at DC9 Wednesday night, I was greeted by a haze of digital chirps and static. Growing, a three-piece noise outfit from Brooklyn, had already launched into their set and I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was hearing. Order did start to emerge from the chaos, howev...
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Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT) -- Bruce Springsteen is doing it. So are Van Morrison, the Pixies and Steely Dan. Playing a classic album in its entirety in concert — along with random favorites, of course. On tour this year, Steely Dan is rotating the three biggest albums from its 1970s warped jazz-rock heyday: "Royal Scam," "Aja" and "Gaucho." To get Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Walter Becke.
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The Roots joined Jim James, Conor Oberst, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis on stage Wednesday night to kick out the jams, as they say. The debut album from Monsters of Folk is out now on Rough Trade.
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Max Bemis and co. have returned with one of the most self-referential albums to ever grace the emo-rock canon, and lo' and behold, it's one of Bemis' best.Max Bemis is currently fronting the most important emo-rock band working today. Also, Max Bemis is a liar. When the problem-plagued Bemis unleashed his debut album ... Is a Real Boy in 2004, the members of the Alternative Press nation took a ...
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This is not a new castle, but it's a fairly impressive renovation of the existing foundations.Australian hard rock outfit Wolfmother is the sort of band that attracts unlikely fans in unlikely numbers. Their popularity is a sturdy bit of makeshift scaffolding cobbled together from various subcultures and mainstream offshoots; all expert estimates point to it being structurally unsound, but some...
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The duo from Once return with a fine new album. It's mostly about how their real-life relationship fell apart, but with strong songwriting and gorgeous singing.The Swell Season have their work cut out for them with their second album, Strict Joy. The duo of Glen Hansard and Markta Irglov released their debut effort in 2006 under the name The Swell Season, and have toured using that moniker for t
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Synth pop, effects-heavy rock, and dreamlike euphoria are the driving forces behind Neon Indian’s pleasurable and bright look at pop psychedelia.Psychic Chasms is a marvelous sonic voyage through a bubbly synth landscape of tones and emotions. One listen to the album gives the impression of brilliant, lush canopies of vivid synthesizers and crawling guitars swaying playfully in a jungle of two-.
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Karen O’s lively soundtrack sounds best where the wild things aren’t: in the most straightforward bits of childlike indie-pop.Did Spike Jonze get more than he bargained for when he approached Karen O with this project? Most signs point to yes. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman -- and former lover of Jonze’s -- made it a party, and just about everyone’s invited: bandmates Brian Chase and Nick
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This slightly unclassifiable Danish quintet are good to have on your side, like a friend whose support is rock-solid if uneffusive.There's a tendency to think of joy, especially joy expressed via music, as a kind of mindlessness. Not that stupidity and happiness necessarily go together, but that real exultation is accompanied or caused by something that makes you stop thinking, that reflection ...
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With generous remastering by Reel Music, the luster of Share My Love is ever-glistening. A rare gem from the Motown catalog finally gets its due.Gloria Jones has not left my laptop or my stereo for well over 72 hours. I find myself listening to 1973's Share My Love on repeat, usually three times sequentially per session. I absorb each 38-minute installment of music like a plant nourished by wat...
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Toto la Momposina is one of those musicians who would have to work at being anything less than good.Listening to "Tembanddumba", a song in which Tot la Momposina lets her voice stoop thrillingly and then snatches it up again like a dropped hankie, reminds that Mercedes Sosa died not long ago. Sosa was an Argentine, and Momposina is Colombian, but both have championed the folk music of their respe
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Four Dallas yahoos who call themselves Boys Named Sue play roadhouse crowd-pleasers in beer-soaked classic-country mode.How’s this for a gimmick: Four Dallas yahoos call themselves Boys Named Sue and play roadhouse crowd-pleasers in beer-soaked classic-country mode. They are: Sue-ah on “lead vocalizin’ and pickin’”, Snakebite Sue on “bangin’ and harmoneez”, Bobby Sue on “sawin’
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