Kevin Davis

Lovedrug Wild Blood Conscious or not, the dogged influence who keep rearing their head on Wild Blood—the fourth LP from Nashville-by-way-of-Ohio indie rockers Lovedrug—are U2, whose famously delay-soaked arpeggios dominate anthems such as “Your Country” and “Revival” as mercilessly as they dominated The Unforgettable Fire back in 1984. And like that album, Wild Blood fe ...

The Decemberists Long Live The King EP The track list for Long Live The King, the latest EP from hyper-literate indie-folk vets the Decemberists, calls to mind the band’s last series of short-form studio releases—2008’s vinyl- and download-only Always The Bridesmaid singles series, a batch of principally traditional Decemberistian pop tunes cut during the sessions for 2009’s The Hazards Of Love

MC Lars Lars Attacks! When firing on all cylinders, this thing they call nerdcore is that rare musical subclass that seems to utterly defy the standard critical rubric. Trying to parse an artist like MC Lars for subtext is to either miss the point or commit the critical fallacy of heaping scorn upon something simply for being what it is; holding him artistically accountable for polluting the wor

My Morning Jacket Circuital   Having reached its apparent threshold on 2003’s It Still Moves, the sweetly mournful ruralism of My Morning Jacket’s origins has spent the better part of the last half-decade fighting a dying battle of resistance. It’s varied inv ...

Secondhand Serenade Weightless EP It seems that, due to discrepancies in the rates at which they mature emotionally, a point comes at which most adolescent girls conclude—to varying degrees of permanence—that all boys their age are morons. This reali ...

Broken Bells Meyrin Fields EP   Listening to Broken Bells—electro-pop collaboration between Shins leading man James Mercer and Beatles-bootlegger-turned-Gnarls-Barkley-superstar Danger Mouse—feels a bit like watching one of those weird high school flings between an A/V club super-dork and a cheerleader at the fore of a New Year’s resolution to start going for guys with a little more substance.

The Strokes Angles   For a group whose fundamental artistic register has shifted so little in their 10 years, the Strokes really have come a long way. In fact, upon first listen to Angles, the Strokes’ fourth long-player (and first since 2006), a complete neophyte could be forgiven for outright refusing to believe that this band initially rode in on a much hyped wave of groups (the White Strip

The Decemberists The King Is Dead   “I play the harmonica on this one. There’s a stipulation—you play with Bob Dylan, you have to play with a harmonica, so we’re fitting it in somehow.” In context, this is head Decemberist Colin Meloy joshing with a Seattle festival audience last September during the introduction to new single “Down By The Water.” Out of context, this is the simple ess ... Rea

The Tallest Man On Earth Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird EP   Distilling the essence of Kristian Matsson’s (you know and love him as the Tallest Man On Earth) sepia-toned folklore is probably a task best left to the image that graced the cover of his 2010 full-length, The Wild Hunt: a dusty plain on the verge of sunset, taken—we can reasonably assume from the small strip of highway