Contributions
Lovedrug - Wild Blood
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 feels […]
The Decemberists - Long Live The King EP
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 […]
MC Lars - Lars Attacks!
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 […]
My Morning Jacket - Circuital
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 inversely with a progressive eclecticism that duplicitously attained either enlightened highs or objectionable lows […]
Secondhand Serenade - Weightless EP
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 realization is as much a rite of passage for young women as the causational monosyllabic vocabularies and […]
Broken Bells - Meyrin Fields EP
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 […]
The Strokes - Angles
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 […]
The Decemberists - The King Is Dead
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 […]
The Tallest Man On Earth - Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird EP
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 […]