Lou Barlow Brace The Wave (Joyful Noise) I can’t deny it (nor would I want to): I am a Lou Barlow fan. To date, there hasn’t been a musical project of which he was a part that I haven’t loved; Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Dinosaur Jr., Folk Implosion and the stuff he’s just recorded under his own name have all found a home in my record collection. Granted, there was that one EP that Folk Implosion did with Deluxx which I found...
It has been said so often now that most fans (even the newest, least tested ones) can take this as a fact: David Bowie always rocks hardest and best when he’s making a grand artistic statement. The years have proven that as factual but, as Station To Station, Tin Machine, Earthling and, now, Blackstar illustrate, the singer goes that ever-so-important extra step and ascends to a whole other creative echelon when even his biggest supporters are left pretty sure that...
Divers is the fourth studio album by U.S. singer-lyricist Joanna Newsom, released on October 23, 2015 via Drag City. Release date: October 23, 2015 Artist: Joanna Newsom Label: Drag City Genre: Baroque pop, Avant-garde music Producers: Joanna Newsom, Noah Georgeson This album was released a couple of months ago – Joanna’s first new album in five years. I never started listening to her until about two years ago. I discovered her when a very good friend of mine said...
Restorations LP3 (Side One Dummy) If The Constantines taught us anything in their decade-long run as the pre-eminent Canadian ambassadors to rock n’ roll before the Arts & Crafts artist roster showed the rest of the world that there was some great music being made in the great white North, they showed us that the secret to a great rock song isn’t always a mind-blowing riff – sometimes it has everything to do with sonic texture and a good vibe....
ARTIST: Adele – DATE: 12-20-15 ALBUM: 25 LABEL: XL Recordings/Beggars Group There’s no other way to say it: Adele is the rightful queen of pop in 2015. Now three albums into her career, she has set and broken records with an ease which is almost comical, and done it with raw talent – not using salesmanship or clever gimmickry. Her third album, 25, continues in that tradition for the most part but, now, the singer has clearly lay down...
Leave it to David Bowie to wrap a perfectly tongue-in-cheek idea in populist medium and make a celebration of it. That is, of course, precisely what the singer has done in licensing Earthling for a fresh vinyl pressing now, almost twenty years after the album was originally released. Confused, reader? Let me clarify it for you: when Earthling was first released in 1997, much ado was made about how the music was recorded as well as the equipment which was...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Gary Clark Jr.’s Live double album. Listening to Gary Clark Jr.’s Live album on vinyl, listeners will find themselves suddenly overcome by a wave of nostalgia. Images of Mick Jagger jumping next to a jackass (as he did on the cover of Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!) and Dylan at Royal Albert Hall, KISS shouting it out loud on Alive, At Budakan, Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps and The Who’s Live At Leeds...
Over the last few years, several artists have managed to successfully resuscitate the theatrics of old vaudeville and revival productions (see The Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer’s solo work – to name just the biggest of big names) and actually made the form interesting again. It’s been really cool to watch and, with that success at hand, it almost seemed inevitable that interest would shift to another fading style of music, and someone would try to start reviving it too....
KILLS THE CHARTS WORLDWIDE! Metal legends IRON MAIDEN’S new album A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH has not only been released to enormous critical acclaim across the globe but has also resulted in some of their highest chart placing ever. In addition to their Number One chart debut on the Billboard Pan-European Chart the album has now debuted at no 9 on the Billboard USA Chart on their US label Sanctuary Records and at No.2 in Canada. This is the...