It may not seem like it (since he's guested on everyone's album and cranked out a few side projects) but Antony and the Johnsons haven't put out a record since 2005's I Am a Bird Now. Luckily, for those of us who like slightly creepy, hauntingly beautiful voices, January 20th, 2009 is more than just the day that politics in America take a turn for the better. See, it's also when Herr Antony and Secretly Canadian will release The Crying...
Some bands have a gift for painting exquisite images and drawing listeners in to feel the music in their guts. They draw together incisive lyrical content that pays special attention to detail with complimentary textural sounds that flesh out and bolster the subjects broached and thus present vivid, fully formed and marvelously articulated pictures. Helms Alee is such a band but, unlike others including Pavement, The Notwist or even Smashing Pumpkins, Helms Alee makes no attempt to enrich their music...
The words “genre defying” are a bit overused, and constitute a phrase that really doesn’t make sense. I’d go more in depth with that opinion, but that would just add up to a bunch of sentences of me trying to explain some idiotic statement. And, it’d make me look like a self-righteous jackass who talks about himself for the entire first paragraph of an album review. Oh, um, I’ll just start talking about XX Teens and their debut LP, Welcome...
Throwback-rockers The Black Keys just brought sunshine to a rainy day by announcing the release of The Black Keys Live at the Crystal Ballroom. The disc not only will showcase one of the dopest live acts today, but as a bonus, the disc will include 17 live songs, original music videos for “Your Touch,” “Just Got To Be” and “Strange Times,” as well as behind-the-scenes footage of the making of their chart-topper Attack & Release. The DVD was produced and...
To paraphrase a Chinese proverb, change is growth, growth is life and those that refuse to accept change run the very real risk of being trampled by the new things coming down the line behind them. Ironically, few genres in the pop canon view change with more distaste than punk rock; once a band appears and makes an impact with a particular sound, the conventional wisdom among fans of the genre is that the band in question has no reason...
It feels funny saying it, but Dillinger Four’s C I V I L W A R, in some ways, is like the second coming of Christ. Here we have an outstanding band with a hardcore following that’s managed to release albums that are highly relevant, yet deceptively simple, over the years. Dillinger Four’s shows became inconsistently legendary, as no two people will tell the same story, but they will be sure to mention an erratic and charming highlight or two....
I have always felt like I've kind of missed the boat when it comes to Iced Earth. They were always one of those bands that I thought I would get around to listening sooner or later, but unfortunately never did. So when I saw that they were back in San Francisco, this time with Saviours, who are one of my favorite bands, and that long-time vocalist Matt Barlow had returned to the band, I figured it was about time to...
Some bands are easy to qualify. On the very first listen to their very first record, any listener can have the band in question figured out – where they’ve been, where they’re going, how they’re going to get there and, in some cases, each stop that they’re going to make along the way – and said group will simply live out the predestined act precisely to expectation. That isn’t a slight necessarily, such was the case with musical institutions including...
Some bands are easy to qualify. On the very first listen to their very first record, any listener can have the band in question figured out – where they’ve been, where they’re going, how they’re going to get there and, in some cases, each stop that they’re going to make along the way – and said group will simply live out the predestined act precisely to expectation. That isn’t a slight necessarily, such was the case with musical institutions including...
I think we've reached a point where Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan can be referred to in the context of "Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan," without having to mention their respective former bands to make the average indie-informed reader think "Oh yeah, those guys." Having said that, I feel the need to keep latecomers in the loop by naming them anyway (Belle & Sebastian; Screaming Trees, et al), and in doing so destroy my whole hypothesis. But oh well. That...