Ho Ho Ho! It’s Justin Bieber!! And we’ve got a review of his new holiday album.
Posts tagged "album review"
Spin Cycle: U2 Tribute “ACH-toong BAY-bi Covered”
U2’s “Achtung Baby” turns 20, and some legendary artists have paid tribute to the band and their songs on a new album.
Spin Cycle: Wednesday 13, “Calling All Corpses”
There’s something to be said for knowing exactly what you’re gonna get. You can’t go to a Metallica show and get the same high you got when you were in your later teens or early 20’s. What’s worse – you can’t listen to a Metallica album and truly reminisce about that live experience. Your ears and eyes heard and saw those things and you enjoyed how they translated between record to club (or arena). I have always been a fan […]
Spin Cycle: M83’s “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming”
I first encountered M83 via their previous effort, 2009’s Saturdays=Youth. That album’s lush, dreamy soundscapes drenched in echoes of the 1980s was a sublime masterpiece, and one of my top picks for 2009. I was thus understandably excited when the band announced the follow up, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. However, I admit that when the band announced that it would be a double album, I grew skeptical. It’s not that double albums are inherently bad, but they are inherently ambitious. […]
Spin Cycle: Tom Waits’ “Bad As Me”
Back in 2006, Tom Waits released a sprawling odds-and-sods collection called Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards. At a massive three discs, and packaged like a dusty hardbound American tome large enough to bludgeon with, Waits decided to cut directly to the chase: each disc was named after the type of songs contained therein, according to which of the three titular descriptors it matched. That mentality isn’t unique to that set, though; in Tom Waits’ universe, in fact, brawlers, bawlers, and […]
Spin Cycle: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s “Tape Club”
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are easy to like, but they’re unlikely to be anyone’s favorite band. They’re a little too unassuming for that: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin write simple, unadorned pop songs. Classifying them as indie is difficult since, beyond their unwieldy band name and reasonably lo-fi take on things, their songs are generally catchy and devoid of pretense; lumping them in with groups that tread the indie/pop dividing line like Death Cab For Cutie or […]
Spin Cycle: William Shatner’s “Seeking Major Tom”
There’s nothing inherently offensive about William Shatner’s music career. His style is innately silly, sure – generally speaking, spoken-word recitations of pop songs strung over bombastic instrumentals – but it’s difficult to begrudge him his moment in the musical spotlight, given his hammy seriousness. The former Captain Kirk attacks pop tunes as though they were Shakespeare monologues (or, in the case of his first musical outing, 1968’s The Transformed Man, because they’re Shakespeare monologues). The amount of sheer, campy, go-for-broke melodrama […]
Spin Cycle: Justice’s “Audio, Video, Disco”
Sometimes, subverted expectations can be fun. Case in point: Justice, otherwise known as “that group that had that song” (“D.A.N.C.E.”, in case you were wondering) or perhaps “the band Daft Punk fans listen to between albums”, have returned with a sophomore set. Their fun, monolithic slabs of electronica sounded reasonably fresh on their debut, Cross, but the replay potential wore thin, and the prospect of a new record – especially in a week that sees a prolific release from fellow […]
Spin Cycle: The Original 7ven’s “Condensate”
“I never had as much fun as I had with the original seven… and it ain’t over yet,” Morris Day says wistfully on the spoken intro to his old band’s comeback record, Condensate. Morris Day and The Time – here renamed The Original 7ven because, well, mentor Prince’s copyright-related peccadilloes have gotten the better of him in recent years – may not have released an album together in 21 years, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to Condensate. Not only […]
Spin Cycle: Murs’ “Love & Rockets, Vol. 1”
“Dope beats, dope rhymes, what more do y’all want?” Phonte once asked, and the question remains a potent one: hip-hop, particularly of the underground variety, turned a more experimental corner around the time of the millennium, and for many, the art of the simply-constructed, plainspoken hip-hop LP fell by the wayside. The loose-limbed, live-band feel of the Roots; the lush soundscapes and penetrating self-excavation of Kanye West; these are the things that we’ve been conditioned to value in hip-hop. Some […]
Spin Cycle: Meat Loaf’s “Hell in a Handbasket”
Are we at a place, culturally, where we can unanimously agree that Meat Loaf’s 1977 debut, Bat Out Of Hell, is unequivocally awesome? Sure, it’s theatrical. It’s bombastic. And, perhaps most damningly, it’s awfully cheesy; Meat oversings every ballad, Jim Steinman writes pretentious multi-song suites about his inability to get girls as a teenager, and at first listen, Meat and Steinman seem to be taking everything really, really seriously. But it’s cheese of the most glorious variety; its sincerity (tempered, […]
Spin Cycle: Bjork’s “Biophilia”
By way of a disclaimer, this review doesn’t come from the point of view of a Bjork fan. That’s important to note, as it seems that the Icelandic pixie’s records are uniquely suited for those familiar with her style, those attuned to her peccadilloes. Unlike most Bjork records, however, Biophilia has been anticipated more for its incorporation of multimedia and technology than for the direction of its music. Its song suites are, supposedly, enhanced by their interactions with corresponding iPad apps, […]