REVIEWS

ARTIST: Los Campesinos! – DATE: 01-17-10 REVIEW BY: Bill Adams ALBUM: Sticking Fingers Into Sockets LABEL: Arts & Crafts/Wichita Now Playing: ‘Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(s)’ from Sticking Fingers Into Sockets by Los Campesinos! If The Vaselines had been slightly more accomplished on their instruments, if Arctic Monkeys didn’t take themselves so seriously, if The Fratellis had a better sense of humor, well, none of them could have been Los Campesinos – a band smart enough to...

ARTIST: Joan Jett – DATE: 08-08-08 REVIEW BY: Bill Adams ALBUM: Sinner LABEL: Blackheart Now Playing: ‘Riddles’ from Sinner For her first album of new material since 1994’s Pure and Simple, Joan Jett has elected to go back to basics with Sinner. ‘Back to basics,’ in this case, means playing to the singer’s strengths: heavy handed guitar riffs and Jett’s own signature mezzo soprano growling vocals take stage center over The Blackhearts’ hard-driving rhythms that, this time, have a...

ARTIST: Sonic Youth DATE: 12-08-06 REVIEW BY: Jon Pruett ALBUM: Destroyed Room: B-Sides and Rarities LABEL: Geffen Pretty strange that just as Sonic Youth’s time at Geffen comes to an end, they also are riding strong on the energy of two back to back great albums (Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped). The Sonic Youth devotee might chime in right here and say that they’ve yet to release a bad album, and while that is technically true, they haven’t been this...

ARTIST: Pela DATE: 12-04-06 WRITER: Aaron Autrand It’s one of the more annoying things about writing about music. An album crosses your desk in a little cardboard sleeve or a jewel case with no cover. It’s a band you’ve never heard of, one of twenty or so in the stack you have to listen to that day. Each CD gets about three minutes, usually enough to tell if it warrants another listen or will just go in a box and...

ARTIST: Pavement DATE: 12-04-06 REVIEW BY: Casey Lombardo ALBUM: Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition LABEL: Matador Records Now Playing: “Grounded” from Wowee Zowee Ah, sweet Wowee Zowee. The difficult third album. The one that true blue Pavement-philes derive the greatest pleasure in championing: it’s neither the definitive classic (Slanted & Enchanted) as deemed by establishment rock journos nor the beloved-by-girlfriends, 120 Minutes mainstay (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain). No, with its mixture of kaleidoscopic songwriting...

If turning something old into something new is what’s going on in music right now, then Toronto’s k-os is the man. His third record since 2003, and first for new label Virgin, clearly puts him as one of the most creative and talented musicians and producers in the game right now. The first track off 2007’s Atlantis: Hymns for Disco, “Electrik Heat – The Seekwill,” is yet another take on the “Funky Drummer” break, but there’s homage and a fresh...

“The original blueprint was to combine Carl Craig or early Warp records sounds with that of German groups like Kraftwerk and CAN,” explains David Best of UK’s newest innovation, Fujiya & Miyagi, about their 2007 release Transparent Things. “I like the fact that we can incorporate different styles into our music and it hopefully still sounds like us.” From the first note on “Ankle Injuries,” your ears perk up like when you’re driving down the freeway and you hear a...

How White Flight is a solo project is beyond any sort of musical comprehension. The “project” rivals any Beck or Arcade Fire record for its imagination and pure listenability. White Flight is Justin Roelofs of Lawrence, Kansas, where he says “is a place where the conditioning is put on an individual in a very heavy way.” After taking a few rides on the White Flight, perhaps rural Kansas isn’t such a bad place to be conditioned. The album is a...

UK’s own Stanton Warriors—Dominic Butler & Mark Yardley—got the invite from the Fabric folks to not only play the club, but to record the 30th installment of FabricLive for the series. You can say that’s quite an honor, but you can also say that the duo deserves the hell out of it. For the past 8 years, Stanton Warriors have been twisting and crafting beats to get people to dance hard and have a blast doing it. This mix might...

Song for song covers of albums tend to be a pretty lame affair. Every once in a while, someone knocks out an all star Beatles re-enactment and effectively flattens it of any spirit. Which is why it is practically startling just how good this track-for-track version of Harry Nilsson’s Pussycats is. Why does it work? Because this notorious album, (originally half sung in drunk-speak with John Lennon), was never very good to begin with. What people expected to be a...