A deeper look at the grooves pressed into All Them Witches’ Nothing as the Ideal LP. Over the last five years or so, I’ve become acquainted with Nashville’s All Them Witches; reviewed a couple of their albums and gotten to feel like I know the band – or at least know what to expect from them from album to album. I figured I knew, for example, that their psychedelic/classic rock amalgam would end up being a consistent thread through the...
As good or remarkable as any band could eventually prove themselves to be, history has proven conclusively that it’s truly rare for any band to arrive that way (see Nirvana, Ween, Wilco, etc. for examples of bands which developed over time) out of the proverbial box. In that regard, The Glands were no exception; when they started, this little band from Georgia was a perfectly average-at-best band, drawing inspiration from punk and college rock. They produced music of a quality...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Slackers’ 12″ UV digitally printed vinyl single. Ignoring the, “Gee whiz!” quality of The Slackers’ new single as well as the talking point of, “Well, this is a new way of combining digital and analogue formats into one release,” (rather than being pressed, this release is UV digitally printed vinyl) it needs to be pointed...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP Deluxe Edition reissue of Sirens of the Ditch by Jason Isbell. It’s pretty uncommon for me to wonder where I was when I review a reissue of an album which was originally released after 2002 (a.k.a. The year I joined the press). That is not to say there weren’t great albums that I didn’t get my hands my hands on to review them when they were new, it’s simply something...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Green Fuzz” 10” single by Naked Giants. After releasing their debut album, Sluff, in 2018, even the softest, newest and least tested critics figured they had Naked Giants’ career path pegged and charted. They figured that a future full of odd, poppy, rocky and fairly danceable music was in the cards for this band, until such time as tastes shifted and then the group would just implode under the weight of...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Finally Free LP by Daniel Romano. After first appearing in front of a hardcore band about fourteen years ago, Daniel Romano has taken personal delight in jumping from music genre to music genre with an impunity which proved to be incredibly infectious. From hardcore to folk to country to rock and innumerable hybrids of all those sounds, Romano has proven to have a golden touch almost as pure as David Bowie’s...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Light // Sound’s self-titled debut album. Since childhood, we’re taught to never judge a book by its cover or be so superficial as to make inferences about a person’s character based solely upon their exterior persona. It’s good advice – making snap judgements about the contents of an article or individual by the first sight one sees – but that doesn’t mean the first thing that potential patrons visually absorb cannot be...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Things Change LP by American Aquarium. Usually when I’m reviewing vinyl records, I try to present my thoughts in a linear manner – from front to back, A-side through B-. In my mind, it just makes sense; unlike on CDs (where it’s really easy to jump around from song to song as a listener likes), records play best song-by-song and bands usually go out of their way to take that into...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Karma For Cheap LP by Aaron Lee Tasjan. The single greatest problem from which Karma For Cheap (and it’s auteur, Aaron Lee Tasjan, by extension) suffers is that it’s just too polished and the the seams on it are too air-tight. For that reason, it’s difficult for listeners to not meet the music with more than a little bit of suspicion. This is precisely the same problem from which artists like...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Nude Party’s self-titled album. As one listens to The Nude Party’s self-titled album, it’s instantly easy to pick out some sounds and ideas which may have inspired the music, but not so easy to figure out how all the pieces might have aligned to produce this result. For example, the haunting keyboards which color the songs on The Nude Party sound as though they might have been inspired by Shadowy Men...