Reviews

I Was Totally Destroying It Vexations In their five years together, I Was Totally Destroying It have been as hard-touring as they have been prolific; the band’s fourth full-length, Vexations, comes off as a product of hard work, polished to near-studio perfection. From the opening title track, each piece falls in a matchless line—wavering keyboards […]

Paper Route The Peace Of Wild Things This review originally ran in AP 291. It’s easy (and scarily accurate) to write off Paper Route as some sort of Coldplay clone with an ’80s synth fetish. One would think the arena-pop tendencies displayed on 2009’s super-underrated Absence would be toned down in the wake of the […]

Blaqk Audio Bright Black Heaven This review originally ran in AP 291. The story can now be told: Davey Havok and Jade Puget finished Bright Black Heaven before they completed AFI’s last album, 2009’s Crash Love. Since the duo’s previous album (2007’s Cex Cells) did well, the executives at the major label they were signed […]

We Are The Ocean Maybe Today, Maybe Tomorrow Losing a half of a two-headed frontman is tough. Taking a stylistic left-turn under the same moniker that a band built their fan base under is a big risk. Trying do both at the same time is an unenviable (and inadvisable) task, but that’s exactly what We […]

Two Gallants The Bloom And The Blight This review originally ran in AP 291. While Two Gallants never officially disbanded, the duo of Adam Stephens and Tyson Vogel spent much of the time following 2007’s self-titled release in a state of prolonged inactivity, at least with each other. (Both members released solo albums in 2010.) […]

NOFX Self Entitled This review originally ran in AP 291. It’s sort of expected that we’ll get a new NOFX album every three years (seriously, since 1997’s So Long And Thanks For All The Shoes it’s been like clockwork), and on it, there will be a bunch of decent-to-good songs, a few great ones and […]

The Avett Brothers The Carpenter Death and winter play heavily on The Carpenter, the Avett Brothers’ seventh studio album (and second with producer Rick Rubin, for his American label). And while these themes are quite weighty, the execution at times is uncharacteristically flat—polished to the point of extinguishing the raw emotion that defined the band’s […]

Chotto Ghetto Sparkles Los Angeles’ Chotto Ghetto have been churning out a bizarre melding of alt-metal/rock and post-hardcore for some time now, with this full-length for Asian Man Records perhaps the biggest scale to showcase their strange sounds. It’s not a bad starting point for newcomers, thankfully. Sparkles is a sprawling 49 minutes where seemingly […]

Bob Mould Silver Age For Bob Mould, three’s a lucky number. In the ’80s, he cut his teeth as frontman of the Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü, a legendary underground trio whose melodic hardcore, punk and power-pop inspired modern acts such as Foo Fighters and No Age. In the ’90s, Mould spent time at the helm […]

Animal Collective Centipede Hz A listener can drop in at almost any point in Animal Collective’s decade-plus career and find a likeable piece of music with which to connect. 2007’s Strawberry Jam was most accessible through the primal screams of “Fireworks”; 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion had the thumping “My Girls.” But on the band’s ninth […]

North The Great Silence There’s good reason why bands like Russian Circles and Pelican are instrumental. Celestial post-rock-leaning metal is not a vocalist’s game. Kyle Hardy, the singer for Tucson, Arizona, quintet North, struggles to find his place on The Great Silence. His scruffy low screams, akin to Isis frontman Aaron Turner, work perfectly when […]

Divine Fits A Thing Called Divine Fits It’s unsurprising that two scratchy-voiced dudes like Britt Daniel and Dan Boeckner, who both like fussing with effects pedals and emotional tension, can coexist. But listening to Divine Fits debut album, A Thing Called Divine Fits, seems like exactly the sum of the abilities of the frontmen for […]

Minus The Bear Infinity Overhead This review originally ran in AP 290. For their fifth album, Minus The Bear offer an amalgamation of their entire back catalog with Infinity Overhead. The pop sensibilities of 2010’s Omni play nice with the spaced-out prog-rock leads and pedal-board abuse of 2007’s Planet Of Ice and 2005’s Menos El […]

The Chariot One Wing When The Chariot’s 2010 album Long Live was unleashed, it cemented the band as leaders in utter originality and chaotic passion. One Wing continues on the Georgian group’s uncompromising path, electing this time to include songs that expand upon the band’s throw-a-blender-into-a-food-processor sound. Wiry, twisting riffs are fused with Josh Scogin’s […]

While She Sleeps This Is The Six Opening with the Motörhead-meets-At The Gates blast of “Dead Behind The Eyes”, While She Sleeps do not waste time in making an impression. Loud, fast and designed to instigate bar brawls, it’s a monster of a track—and perhaps the best here—but this does not mean that This Is […]

Our Last Night Age Of Ignorance This review originally ran in AP 290. From the opening notes of Our Last Night’s third album, it’s clear the band are of the Artist In The Ambulance-era Thrice-meets-Saosin school of thought. Frontman Trevor Wentworth does his best Cove Reber impersonation with the range God gave him (which unfortunately […]

Circa Survive Violent Waves Nothing about the path Circa Survive have taken over the last seven years has been surprising. Formed by the adored frontman of a cult favorite and a handful of seasoned musicians with strong roots in progressive hardcore, the band release a couple of incredibly well-received albums for a revered indie label, […]