REVIEWS

I knew when I first saw Hampton Yount on Conan that he was someone to watch out for. What made it difficult was that he was called Hampton Yount, so I wasn’t going to remember his name. But his bit about the risks of online dating of men vs women was so clever and witty that it always stuck with me. Hell, I even discussed the idea with friends over drinks. So when I got his full length album Bearable,...

There’s nothing I like better than being completely surprised by a random album sent to me by a label. Especially when you expected comedy albums and get a curveball mized in in the form of a music/comedy album. Especially when you actually end up really enjoying the album. Then especially when you find out the artist is from your hometown of Boston.   Zach Sherwin’s Rap! is all of these things.   Yes, it sounds a lot like Flight of...

Artist: Metallica Album: Hardwired… To Self-Destruct (Deluxe Edition 3CD) Label: Blackened/ADA/Warner Music It’s funny how the psychology of salesmanship works – after a certain point, one has to wonder where the logic goes. A great example of that can be found in the Deluxe Edition, 3CD version of Hardwired… To Self-Destruct. As previously stated in my review of the standard-issue 2CD version of the release, Metallica’s new album is a great trip back to the early, shreddy and fairly lean...

Artist: Rascal Flatts Album: The Greatest Gift Of All Label: Big Machine Records/Sony Music What do people mean when they say “that music moved me”? Moved you from your seat to turn it up? Moved you from the room to get away from the twisted sounds of crashing and banging? Moved you to shake your bottom and get a groove on? For me, music is a background noise that is always on when I am working, cleaning, playing, cooking, bathing...

Artist: David Bowie Album: Legacy (2CD) Label: Columbia/Legacy/Sony Music Over the last forty years, there have been a multitude of “Best of David Bowie” compilations to his new release racks. To date, this critic counts eleven good, sturdy ones, but the methodology for making them has always been the same: “ensure that the core of around ten classic tracks which appeared on ChangesOneBowie (the first Bowie hits comp) are present, then mix and match a list of singles which flow...

Artist: Metallica Album: Hardwired… To Self-Destruct Label: Blackened/ADA/Warner I must confess that it would be very, very easy to find a bigger fan of Metallica than I am. To be perfectly blunt, I haven’t heard a new album by the band that I’ve liked in twenty-five years – and even that was a reach because I thought the Black Album spent more time plodding than rocking. No, I’ve always been a bigger fan of the earlier, “thrash” side of Metallica...

Artist: Pink Floyd Album: Cre/ation – The Early Years 1967 – 1972 Label: Pink Floyd Records/Columbia/Sony Music As every fan of the band knows, there have been three eras in the history of Pink Floyd: the first, Syd Barrett-fronted psychedelic period, the second (epic) Roger Waters-fronted period (which gave us albums like Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here and Animals) and the final David Gilmour-fronted incarnation which has produced albums like The Division Bell and...

Artist: Mike Watt Album: “Ring Spiel” Tour ’95 Label: Columbia/Legacy/Sony Music Ever walked into a record store and, digging through a vast and vastly disorganized bin of CDs, come across a genuine treasure of the sort that no one ever expects to find? That was the feeling which overtook me when I opened my copy of “Ring Spiel” Tour ’95. Now, I’m familiar with plenty of the back story behind that period of time in Mike Watt’s life; the bassist...

Artist: Lou Barlow Album: Apocalypse Fetish Label: Joyful Noise When Lou Barlow released his full-length solo album late last year, he ensnared the attention of even the longest-running and cynical of his fans. The reason for that was simple: when not playing sideman to J Mascis in Dinosaur Jr., Barlow had always shone brightest in the relative anonymity of putting a band name on his myriad projects (see Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Folk Implosion, et c.), even if there was no actual...

Artist: My Chemical Romance Album: The Black Parade + Living With Ghosts (10th Anniversary 2CD) Label: Reprise/Warner Upon first sight of the tenth anniversary edition of The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, even the greatest and most fanatical of the band’s fans will find themselves asking, “What the fuck is this?” They’ll be asking not because anything is wrong exactly, just that they won’t be able to immediately recognize what they’re looking at; unlike the original release of The...