Search

Mac Lethal 11:11:00 AM [4/5] Mac Lethal, a self-described “Irish pothead who flows with no hair,” riffs cleverly on everything from the opportunistic activism of protest songs to the painful redundancy of recent Tool albums. Boasting a comedian’s arsenal (he name-checks Bill Hicks and raps about using Mitch Hedberg’s brainstem as a quill), Mac […]

MC Chris Eating's Not Cheating [3] Part Eminem, part Har Mar Superstar, cartoon-character voice actor Chris Ward’s alter ego, MC Chris, returns with his third proper CD, Eating’s Not Cheating. Ward spends most of these 14 tracks talking about A) how great he is (“MC Chris Owns”), B) all the women he has sex with […]

MC Lars This Gigantic Robot Kills [3/5] After a three-year break, California nerdcore rapper MC Lars returns with This Gigantic Robot Kills. The disc’s title is taken from a conversation Lars had with late avant garde legend Wesley Willis shortly before he died. It’s a fitting tribute: Like Willis, Lars isn’t heavy on musical skill, […]

MC Lars The Graduate [3/5] Not to hip-hop connoisseurs: If you want to appreciate MC Lars, don’t take him so seriously. True, he’s not the best lyricist on the planet; in fact, he’s not even close. But that hopelessly nerdy quality is what makes him so genuine–and on the long-playing follow-up to 2004’s The Laptop […]

Make Believe Of Course [4/5] When your band is fronted by as charismatic, confounding and cerebral a figure as Make Believe’s Tim Kinsella, it’s hard to push your music outside of that dude’s shadow. And when your second album is inspired by equally extra-musical matters-as is Of Course by the 2005 arrest of drummer/Tim’s cousin […]

Mock Orange Captain Love [4.5/5] Never has there been a band more worth truly rooting for. The pride of Evanston, Indiana, Mock Orange have consistently delivered challenging and interesting interpretations of emo and indie rock nearly impossible to compare to their peers. Unfortunately, the band’s artistic success hasn’t translated into acknowledgment from the general […]

Meg & Dia Here, Here And Here… [4/5] Fans of the straightforward piano-and-acoustic-guitar touches on Meg & Dia’s 2006 debut, Something Real, might be taken aback by the larger-than-life Here, Here And Here… Thanks to Howard Benson’s production touches and the Frampton sisters’ burgeoning confidence, the album features layered arrangements, radio-friendly vocals and thick guitar […]