The Photo Atlas
The Photo Atlas No, Not Me, Never [4/5] It’s both surprising and admirable that Stolen Transmission snapped up the Photo Atlas before Jade Tree or Suicide Squeeze caught wind of them. The Denver quartet’s jagged, snappy debut revels in the post-hardcore edginess of bands like These Arms Are Snakes (without the guttural screaming) or Minus...
Permanent Me
Permanent Me After The Room Clears [3/5] Formerly known as Yes, Virginia, North Bellmore, New York’s Permanent Me bill themselves as “that new band from Long Island who don’t sound like all the other bands from Long Island,” but really, the quartet’s hook-heavy attack fits in well among the Isle’s current pop-obsessed ranks (Nightmare Of...
The Hatepinks
The Hatepinks Tete Malade/Sick In The Head [3.5/5] Following last year’s 16-minute album Plastic Bag Ambitions comes Tete Malade/Sick In The Head, a nine-minute affair (make that eight, as the exceedingly vacuous waste-of-a-track “Your Ass Is A Stereotype” is trés horrible) that shows our favorite French provocateurs, The Hatepinks, as raucous and in-your-face as ever....
Only Crime
Only Crime Virulence [3/5] Much like their 2004 debut, Only Crime’s latest shows the band haven’t shook the split-personality affliction they arrived with on To The Nines. Half of Virulence‘s material strikes with such a convincing punch that you truly believe the all-star cast (members of Descendents/ALL, Good Riddance, GWAR, Bane and Hagfish) could single-handedly...
Echo Screen
Echo Screen Euphoria [3.5/5] Boy, has punk grown up. The beats, the energy and the attitude of agit-punk from yesteryear have been tumbled around and smoothed out over the decades like a handful of jagged stones, leaving an undeniably smoother base on which bands like New Jersey’s the Echo Screen have capitalized. On their debut...
Die Hoffnung
Die Hoffnung Love Songs [3.5/5] Only a decade after their debut can we fence-in the band I Hate Myself with the label "proto-screamo," but it fits: Florida-based brothers Jon and Jim Marburger had the screaming, the hill-and-valley dynamics-not to mention an idea of introspection that equated romantic rejection to drowning and/or bleeding. Re-invented as Die...
Communiqué
Walk Into The Light EP [3.5/5] Located inside the liner notes to Communiqué’s new EP is a quote from Miles Davis that reads, “People who don’t change will find themselves like folk musicians, playing in museums and local as a motherfucker.” This quote basically sums up the five songs on Walk Into The Light. While...
Dustin Kensrue
Dustin Kensrue Please Come Home [3.5/5] More than any of their post-hardcore peers, Thrice have demonstrated the creative imagination and flexible musical muscles to reinvent their songs acoustically without ever compromising their emotional wallop. Dustin Kensrue, of course, has been at the center of every sonic storm and because of his lyrical conviction and charitable...
The Shins
The Shins Wincing The Night Away [3/5] It wasn’t that long ago that the Shins made the galactic jump from best-kept-secret status to ginormous, indie-darling extraordinaires. (Thanks, Natalie Portman.) Still, while the Shins effortlessly spliced the spirit of Simon And Garfunkel with Modest Mouse-esque hipster sensibility to much acclaim on 2001’s Oh! Inverted World and...