Shiny Toy Guns - Girls Le Disko
Girls Le Disko In order for a remix album to work on anything other than a crate-digging beathead or hedonist dancefloor-prompt level the songs you're working with have to have enough going on internally to withstand the barrage of editing, condensing, rearranging and recontextualizing that efforts like this entail. For electro/dance-rock mainstays Shiny Toy Guns,...
Treaty Of Paris - Currents EP
Currents EP If you feel that too many records of recent have lacked hooks, it's because Chicago's Treaty Of Paris stole them all. Packed from start to finish with glorious melodies, the six tracks that comprise Currents grab you immediately, and it's the kind of record that makes you want to dive for the "repeat" button almost...
Weston - This Is My Voice And This Is My Heart
This Is My Voice And This Is My Heart "If you're not a teenager, you are tonight," says James Snyder of the Pennsylvania pop-punk-turned-alt-rock band Weston on This Is My Voice And This Is My Heart, recorded live at Hoboken, New Jersey's landmark underground rock space Maxwell's. That sentiment sums up the live album quite well,...
Various Artists - Wrecktrospective
Wrecktrospective Over the past two decades, Fat Wreck Chords has gone from being the pet project of NOFX frontman Fat Mike to one of the most influential punk labels of all-time–and correspondingly, a collection like Wrecktrospective is long overdue. Essentially a supercharged version of the label's Fat Music samplers,Wrecktrospective is a massive three-disc, 88-song collection of songs that spans the...
The Heat Machine - No Coast Dance Party
No Cast Dance Party Amazon.com Widgets Asbestos http://www.asbestosrecords.com
Set Your Goals - This Will Be The Death Of Us
This Will Be The Death Of Us New Found Glory comparisons will fall by the wayside with This Will Be The Death Of Us. The album isn't so much the natural extension of Set Your Goals as it is a quantum leap forward by an essentially entirely new band (neither of SYG's current guitarists played on...
Son Volt - American Central Dust
American Central Dust If you're a sucker for consistency, then Jay Farrar should be your favorite songwriter. Predictably, Son Volt's sixth album, American Central Dust, is teeming with twangy ballads, like "Dust Of Daylight," that prominently feature Farrar's instantly recognizable pipes. While his former Uncle Tupelo bandmate Jeff Tweedy has managed to reinvent himself with each...
Stellastarr* - Civilized
Civilized On Civilized, stellastarr* are barely recognizable as the same NYC rock darlings who yelped through tunes like "My Coco" earlier this decade. This isn't a good thing. Although the band's noisy interludes and Britpop tendencies occasionally hit the mark-the soaring "Tokyo Sky," mod-glam dance party "Zombie Prom" and the Bloc Party-ish synth-pop race "Robot"–Civilized sounds murky...
Killswitch Engage - Killswitch Engage
Killswitch Engage The fact that Killswitch Engage self-titled their fifth album provides a clue to the sounds contained within. Killswitch Engage is a concise encapsulation of everything KSE do well, with no real filler and an obvious single in "Take Me Away." It's a meat-and-potatoes guitar-bass-drums record; some tastefully melancholy piano on the album-closing "This Is Goodbye"...