Explosions In The Sky
Explosions In The Sky All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone [4/5] Back in the day, if you listened to instrumental acts like Vangelis, Tangerine Dream or Mike Oldfield, you were either someone that got Heavy Metal magazine delivered to the house, a hash head or worse, some combination of the two. Thankfully, instrumental music...
Sounds Like Violence
Sounds Like Violence With Blood On My Hands [3.5/5] Given that their home country couldn’t be further from rock’s birthplace, it’s always been irritating to watch Swedish bands like the Hellacopters, the Hives, the (International) Noise Conspiracy, et al. descend on U.S. consumers with such deluded self-confidence. Comparatively speaking, Båstad, Sweden, post-grunge quartet Sounds Like...
Signal To Noise
Signal To Noise Kodiak [3/5] A quick rundown of Signal To Noise’s more notable tour partners-Planes Mistaken For Stars, the Blackout Pact, Love Me Destroyer-should give you an idea of what to expect from the four-year-old Colorado band’s debut album: serrated melodies, whiskey-soaked vocals and enough testosterone to make a eunuch sprout neck hair. Indeed,...
Relient K - Five Score and Seven Years Ago
Relient K Five Score And Seven Years Ago Gold-selling Christian rockers Relient K seem to have struck a mutually beneficial deal with the corporate devil on their fifth and latest full-length, the Howard Benson-produced Five Score And Seven Years Ago-just when you think the band’s heaping spoonful of sugary, radio-ready power-pop goodness is about to...
Big D And The Kids Table
Big D And The Kids Table Strictly Rude [4.5/5] Regardless of popular belief, ska isn’t dead. While the genre hasn’t come near its commercial peak in 1997 (did you know the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were on the cover of AP twice? In seven months??), there has been a vibrant underground ska scene keeping the checkerboard...
Nothington
Nothington All In [3.5/5] Most musicians start simple and then grow progressively more technical, not the other way around. But in Nothington’s case, guitarist/singer Jay Northington and drummer Gabe Lindeman have scaled back the riffs and poppy time changes of their last band, the now-defunct Tsunami Bomb, to deliver a stark, straight-ahead pub-punk offering. Sure,...
Ted Leo And The Pharmicists
Ted Leo And The Pharmicists Living With The Living [4/5] Ah, the difficult fourth album-pharmacist Ted Leo, drummer Chris Wilson and bassist Dave Lerner continue the drive for a pop that is ultimately punk. Still informed by melodic Brit outfits like the Jam and Stiff Little Fingers, Living With The Living takes steps back to...
The Boils
The Boils The Orange And The Black EP [3.5/5] One may deem The Orange And The Black a concept album, as every song (exempting “The Life For Me”, an ode to the touring life) is a hockey anthem-nay, a Philadelphia Flyers anthem. But considering the topic and the lyrics, including this gem, “Cheap beer/cheap seats/missing...
Bayside
Bayside The Walking Wounded [3.5/5] The title track and opener on The Walking Wounded partly conveys what it must’ve felt like after Bayside’s tragic van accident more than a year ago, which claimed the life of former drummer John “Beatz” Holohan and seriously injured bassist Nick Ghanbarian; in the song’s chorus, singer/guitarist Anthony Raneri admits,...