Consistency is an appealing trait in an album. Versatility is, of course, encouraged, but the best records have a common unifying thread linking one song to the next. Nudge too far in one direction, and your record is disjointed, schizophrenic; too far in the other and it’s staid and unexciting, and some jack-off music critic is tut-tutting your artistic vision. Reformed Brazilian psych-rock band Os Mutantes’s new record, Fool Metal Jack, threatens to careen off the rails several times. Perhaps […]
Album Reviews
Fantasia, Side Effects of You: Album Review
One of the most dependable R&B singers in the game returns.
Frank Turner, Tape Deck Heart: Album Review
If English singer-songwriter Frank Turner’s heart is a tape deck, it’s a severely used one; it warps the tape in your favorite cassette, and everything sounds scratchy and worn, cloaked in a layer of tell-tale hiss. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s got one of your favorite songs lurking deep within its recesses, and if Guided By Voices have taught us anything, it’s that a great song is a great song, period. Frank Turner’s new album, on the other hand, […]
Snoop Lion, Reincarnated: Album Review
Snoop Dogg? Snoop Lion? Whatever the hell you call him, he has a record out.
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, Love Has Come for You: Album Review
Perusing the concert listings a few months ago, a listing for “Steve Martin & Edie Brickell” jumped out at me. “That Steve Martin? That Edie Brickell?” It all seemed so bizarre. My father later expressed interest in going to the show, as Martin’s newfound musical career apparently gets a great deal of play on XM/Sirius’ bluegrass station. I bought the tickets out of curiosity. Last week, I got a taste of what we might be in for when that performance […]
Phoenix, Bankrupt! : Album Review
“List-o-mania, my testes, see ’em grow… like-a-rhi, like-a-rhino!” These are, the internet tells me, definitely not the lyrics to Phoenix’s breakthrough hit, “Lisztomania”. I never actually thought that the Parisian indie-rockers were narrating a peppy, Kafka-esque tale about growing rhinoceros balls, mind you — but the absurdist image never failed to make me chuckle, and anyway, why futz with something that was probably way cooler in my brain? (Actual lyrics: “Think less, but see it grow; like a riot, like […]
will.i.am, #willpower : Album Review
One might be tempted to think that the hashtag in will.i.am’s newest album title is a hollow attempt to call reference to the Twitter-friendly zeitgeist of the time and thereby posture itself as something relevant and connected to our culture while masking a core of general emptiness and mediocrity. One would be right to do so. The will.i.am empire has risen as much from his marketing saavy as his musical talent (honestly, probably more so), and #willpower smacks of something […]
Shuggie Otis, Inspiration Information + Wings Of Love: Album Review
A gifted, prodigiously talented soul/funk recluse, Shuggie Otis’s music certainly deserves to be canonized; all the accepted pieces of pop-culture folklore are there, from the Rolling Stones sideman offer to the eventual artistic blackout, and so it stands to reason that when Otis’s music finally reaches the masses, it will be transcendent. Which, as it turns out, is a bit of a foolish way to think; there’s no easier way to shatter transcendence than to expect it. In 2013, we’ve […]
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mosquito : Album Review
‘I think that I’m bigger than the sound’ Karen O proclaimed on ‘Cheated Hearts,’ from 2006’s sophomore effort, Show Your Bones. Seven years later, on their fourth album, O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase give their all on making good on that statement. It’s been 10 years since the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s blitz-krieged the early aught’s with their version of neo-punk. In the years that followed the band has now released three additional albums – all of them receiving generally glowing […]
Major Lazer, Free the Universe: Album Review
Initially a collaboration between producers Diplo (MIA, Santigold, Amanda Blank, Die Antwoord) and Switch (MIA, Santigold, Beyonce, Xtina), Major Lazer’s debut was the summer album of 2009. A dance album that blended reggae, dubstep, reggaton, and dancehall, Guns Don’t Kill People was an eclectic, refreshing, and quite frankly, fun album perfect for block parties, beach bonfires, and sweaty, sweaty clubs. Aside form the occasional remix EP, the duo has been rather silent since. Free the Universe (Secretly Canadian) breaks that […]
The Shouting Matches, Grownass Man: Album Review
Musical anonymity can be a funny thing. Justin Vernon, the neo-folk mastermind behind Bon Iver, isn’t going completely incognito by stepping out with a few friends to record a loose-limbed garage-blues record, but it’s something of a musical disguise nevertheless; his ethereal, crooning falsetto replaced with a gnarled, expressive wail, one could easily mistake his vocals on The Shouting Matches’ Grownass Man for the work of… of anyone else, really. Take your pick. But that’s not to say that Grownass […]
Ghostface Killah, Twelve Reasons to Die: Album Review
A grisly, retro-fitted, blood-spattered, cinematic Tarantino pastiche for music nerds and hip-hop heads everywhere, Ghostface Killah’s enthralling Twelve Reasons to Die isn’t merely the emcee’s finest hour since 2006’s career-high Fishscale; it’s also, assuming it gets the respect it deserves, poised to be hip-hop’s most prominent excursion into the grindhouse, and the true breakthrough of producer Adrian Younge. Or perhaps “composer” is the better word. Twelve Reasons to Die is the result of a miraculous and rare synergy between sound […]