Warner

The Flaming Lips American Head (Warner Brothers) From the moment they have the opportunity to hear American Head, there’s no doubt that Flaming Lips fans will rejoice at the band’s return, for several different reasons. Some fans will just be happy the band is back with new music. Other fans will be thrilled that, for for the first time in over a decade, the Flaming Lips have returned to a more rockist permutation of their sound (last time was on...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Fortieth Anniversary, Record Store Day 2017-released, limited edition 2LP reissue of Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Not so very long ago, I was muddling through the stacks at my favorite record store when the sight of something surprising gave me pause. There, on a reasonably cool spring day, I found a copy of the Record Store Day reissue of Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, originally...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols LP by the Sex Pistols. The problematic thing about albums which come to be regarded as “culturally significant” is that, after it has been released and that cultural significance presents itself on a larger scale, everyone whats to get their hands on it and tool around with it in order to put their fingerprints on it and make it their own – in...

A deeper look at the grroves pressed into the hot pink, limited edition pressing of Father of All Motherfuckers by Green Day. After a span of sixteen years spent examining a series of high-concept creative endeavors (American Idiot started the trend in 2004 and catapulted Green Day onto an echelon of rock stardom that no one imagined possible for the band before, followed by another concept album in the form of 21 st Century Breakdown and a three-album vanity project,...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime LP by Family Of The Year. It’s funny how, as similar to one another as every Family Of The Year has been to date, Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime feels like a significant departure and/or move forward for the band. That Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime is the group’s first album for Reprise after enjoying a celebrated 2LP+1EP stretch at Nettwerk is irrelevant – Family Of The Year has...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Flaming Lips’ Greatest Hits Volume 1 LP. As a general rule, I must confess that Best-Of compilations seldom thrill me. While the odd set does prove to be the rule’s exception (like Nirvana’s black album, the set that Morphine released several years ago, ChangesoneBowie, Hot Rocks and All For Nothing/Nothing For All turned out to all be great sets) and which does present the band in question at its best, most...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Meet King Leg LP by King Leg. The beauty of working in a pop culture-identified medium like pop music is that, while the music does initially have finite appeal as ‘new music,’ the basic structures and forms can easily be revisited, re-purposed and re-presented as often as new artists are willing to rediscover them. Any music can be reborn with the power of belief Take King Leg’s new album, Meet King...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Revolution Radio LP by Green Day. Some smart aleck is going to say that this review is a bit late in coming (yes, Revolution Radio was released fourteen months ago) but that’s part of the point here; Green Day’s twelfth album was touted as a much-needed return to the band’s roots after almost a decade spent releasing concept albums and enormous album trilogies (plus a fourth CD/DVD conglomerate for good measure)....

Mastodon Emperor Of Sand (Reprise/Warner) After having spent the last few years stretching stylistically in a few different directions (The “White Walker” single found a home as the lead track for a season of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, 2014’s Once More ‘Round The Sun say the band get leaner and almost blurring the lines between metal and punk rock a bit), there’s something refreshing and exciting about the fact that Mastodon has made a glorious return to the sort of...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Oczy Mlody LP by The Flaming Lips. It has been pretty evident that The Flaming Lips were in need of a change over the last few releases, the band just wasn’t sure what needed to happen in that capacity and so elected to throw everything at the wall to see what might stick. They tried getting darker and more dissonant on The Terror, but that didn’t work out so well because...