CDs like Starlight by Joan Armatrading remind me of why I hate genre classification in music. Grace Notes labeled this "Country & Folk,” which is plainly absurd; seeing that label attached to Starlight has to be some holdover from her earlier career, which she might reasonably have been classified as "Folk" (certainly never "Country"), but only so much as "A woman with a guitar" = "Folk." That was then though, and this is now – and this album is certainly...
Eric Burdon does not seem to realize the Sixties ended long ago. And that's a good thing. He still believes that music can change the world, and he still sings like that's true. On 'Til Your River Runs Dry, Burdon tackles a number of political and social issues. The central theme, as indicated by the title, is the water crisis; the growing lack of fresh, clean water for much of the world's population. Although he does present water as both...
Endorsements and condemnations of different recorded music formats get made regularly, but what is the difference between an LP and a CD, really? Barring a few obvious exceptions (like the differences in the mastering, production and equalization that NOFX put into the CD and LP versions of Heavy Peting Zoo and Eating Lamb in 1996), the differences between the sound on a CD and that on a long-player record couldn't really be that dramatic – could they? Well, yes and...
After the reasonably abysmal response that the band received for Year Of The Black Rainbow in 2010, fans began to get justifiably worried. After the first installment of The Afterman was released in late 2012 though, many critics projected that the days of Coheed And Cambria existing as a heavier than hell, mathy metal outfit were counting down quickly. As it turns out, Coheed And Cambria's critics were right; Descension (the band's seventh full-length album) plays even further into the...
Awrightchu worthless junkies youse,I dunno who you ben talkin' to, but I feel like I've had a tail on me ova da las' little while. I's like, everywhere I go, i's hard findin' stuff thit fell offa da back o' music industry trucks! You wound'know anything about that, wouldja junky? Cuz if you did, well, that'd be a real shame fer youse. So le's keep ya right, awright? Dummy up an' nothin' bad's gonna happen. Inna meantime, I do got...
Sometimes the best way to see and hear things refreshed is to get out of your comfort zone for s minute. It might sound trite, but it's true; if you take a chance and get out from under the potentially stifling veil of what you know, you may be lucky enough to discover a whole new, vivid and exciting unknown to revel in. That's the chance I took when I put Boats' third album, “A Fairway Full Of Miners”, on...
After their first listen to Masked Intruder's self-titled debut, everyone will find themselves asking breathlessly, “Who were those masked men?” Masked Intruder is, very simply, a perfect and instantly gratifying reminder of all that was great about the “songs about girls” craze which overtook punk rock in the 1990s; strains of the instantly memorable, heart-on-their-sleeves lyric sheets that Chad Price and Bill Stevenson were writing for ALL merge perfectly with some snotty, nasal and heart-wrenching vocal melodies...
"Then there’s Pete Didn’t want no fameSo he gave all his money awayThere’s something wrongHe tried to be strongSo they certified him insane.” – “Jail Guitar Doors” by The Clash Oh, dear reader, the sacrifices I make for you. Lately, I've been subjecting myself to repeated listens of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, one of the least deserving mega-hit albums of all time, just so I can explain to you why it sucks so badly. Seriously, when I was first offered this...
Sometimes the reason why a record turns out to be incredibly difficult to like is because some of it is just so good – but some of it is just so not. That, in short, is the great hindrance to the success of The Bronx' fourth album; some of the album's twelve songs qualify as the knock-down, drag-out best tunes that the band has ever written and they're bolstered by some of the best playing they've ever committed to tape....
Since forming six years ago and immediately allying themselves with the indie music scene, Hollerado has seemed to go out of their way to see just how far the envelope can be pushed before they finally tear it apart completely. When the music business was interested in seeing just how novel it could make an album without letting it lapse into the realm of complete parody (this was when labels like EMI tried developing two-piece cardboard “CD cases” called “enviro-cases,”...