July 2009
1 post
Lee Fields and the Expressions - My World
Truth & Soul Records, 2009
On the opening track for his 1999 album, Let’s Get A Groove On, Lee Fields told us that he made that album to remind “some of you how soul used to be back in the day…before synthesizers and drum machines…when it was rough. And nasty. And genuine.” Those were fighting words, but ones you could stand by, which he did, and ones that would...
April 2009
1 post
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing....
Mo’ Wax 1996
Roll a phat one. The DANKEST shit you’ve ever seen. So grossly appealing, yet exhausting that while your baggy sits in your lap, you’re oddly more sexually aroused than you are seeing Ashlynn Brooke service the luckiest bastard in the world. You sir, own the night. The night is young, for that fact. You’re going to pick up your buddies on the other side...
March 2009
2 posts
5 tags
Electric Light Orchestra - Time
Jet Records, 1981
He stood before the ivory-fronted headquarters of the company. He had no idea why he had come here. They couldn’t help him and he certainly wasn’t welcome any more - not after his failed attempt to run away to the colony on the moon. Perhaps he was here because this place had been the beginning of his end, or, to put it more aptly, the final phase of his final...
14 tags
I Wrote Haikus About Cannibalism - 8 Song Demo
[No album art.]
Unsigned, No Release Date
I Wrote Haikus About Cannibalism are a bit of an enigma. Little is known about them, except that they hail from Antioch, California, and they are a four-piece. Their only known recordings are collected on the unofficially-titled 8 Song Demo, a simply stunning collection of screamo mini-masterpieces taken from their myspace page. Now, this is not your...
February 2009
22 posts
5 tags
Wesley Willis - Greatest Hits, Vol. 1
Alternative Tentacles, 1995
Since the big boom of Christianity, people have been fretting over the return of Christ. People poured over their holy scriptures, drowned their children in water basins, made collection baskets heavy with their life savings, and knelt by their beds like begging whores to someone they have never seen to save their souls forgetting that some guy they all love has...
9 tags
Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
Asthmatic Kitty, 2006
You’re a painter. You paint landscapes, mainly. The paintings are beautiful and extremely detail: you use the thinnest brush you have to individually paint in each blade of grass. Your paintings are full of life: there’s often a herd of deer dancing in the background, the trees are filled with birds, mice hide in between the bushes. Your paintings are vibrant,...
8 tags
Trouble Over Tokyo - Pyramides
Schoenwetter Schallplattent, 2008
Somewhere out there in an alternate universe, the bassist from Radiohead (Colin Greenwood) came into the recording studio, where Thom Yorke was playing a dead kipper to the band, and said, “Haha! Hey, guys, guess what I just heard!? Some British indie tosser is going to record an album with Justin Timberlake!” and then the whole band laughed at the...
CocoNot - Cosa Astral
Ever wonder what would happen if you put Animal Collective into a blender with Tito Puente, some ganja, and some reeeeally good rum? Neither have I, but i’d imagine it’d sound like CocoNot.
This li’l ensemble from Mexico, or some place down there, puts out some ridiculous grooves under a tropical, trippy, yet fairly accessible melody section that brings to mind the above...
5 tags
Van Morrison - The Complete Bang Sessions, disc 2
Cleopatra Records, 2002
There is a good chance that any of you under twenty-five first heard Van Morrison during one of your mother’s little socials with her goofy friends talking about their husbands and getting drunk on boxed white wine. Now you’re scarred for life because you saw your mother’s panties while she was twisting to “Brown-Eyed Girl” and you’re...
4 tags
Can - Ege Bamyasi
United Artists, 1972
I am completely convinced that Can is not a band from the 70s. Sometime off in the distant future, a group of Space-Germans with a fetish for early 70’s musical gear hopped into a time machine, went back in time, and recorded a few albums. This is the kind of music I would expect to hear in one of the less-frequented bars on a space colony from the stars. Imagine the...
4 tags
The Kinks - ...Are the Village Green Preservation...
Pye Records, 1968
This album is the sore thumb sticking out of musical history. In 1968, Jimi released Electric Ladyland, shredding it up while high as a kite. The Stones were singing about raw sexuality, and The Beatles were discovering acid.
The Kinks were singing about draught beer, china cups, and virginity. This album could have been recorded on Mars, it was so far removed from what the...
5 tags
Pure Reason Revolution - Amor Vincit Omnia
Superball Music, 2009
I’d be lying if I said I’d been rooting for something different when PRR announced they’d started work on their second album. The soaring guitar riffs and monumental chorals of their debut, The Dark Third, had left me begging for more, and no amount of EPs and bonus tracks could satiate my hunger; at the same time, I was still reeling from the...
9 tags
Owls - Owls
Jade Tree, 2001 Please excuse my hyperbole, but the split up of Cap’n Jazz in 1995 was the worst thing that has ever happened to modern music. You might surely be snapping your heads back in wild amazement, or asking, “Who?” but so long as we agree that I’m correct now, we can save ourselves a bit of time. Cap’n Jazz only released one album—Schmap’n...
8 tags
Ivo Papasov - Balkanology
Hannibal, 1991
This one’s for all you lovers out there. That’s right, you. Take the time and stop your love making to check out Ivo Papasov and his Bulgarian Wedding Band. Ivo and his boys are masters of Bulgarian wedding music (that’s right, you heard it, Bulgarian wedding music) and on this album they have no problem showing off their their style and control, all in the name...
5 tags
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride
4AD, 2008
OK, now I might not be the best person to review this album, but I do own it and that’s qualification enough in this newfangled world of blogulated reviews! We have the usual tracks of Darnielle and his guitar proving everyone who thinks Conner Oberst is the next Dylan utterly wrong. Even though he’s been established for a while longer than Mr. Oberst, and has a bit of a...
7 tags
Tower of Love - Jim Noir
My Dad Recordings, 2005 There’s somewhat a school of thought that in art, it has to mean something, art must have this over-riding narrative, must be a reflection upon society. It’s not necessarily a pretentious school of thought, but has existed for nearly as long as Og the cavemen first dabbed his stick into a pile of shit and created an etching of a buffalo, or mammoth, and Ig said...
5 tags
Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
Polydor, 1991
When Pitchfork reviews whatever hot album they’re focused in on, the reviews tend to be ridiculously long, and they almost always having nothing whatsoever to do with the album. Eight brain-draining paragraphs later, and the pretentious fuckwit is waxing loquacious about prancing gazelles or meteors or the price of oil some other stupid, banal shit.
Well, I’m not...
6 tags
Diane Cluck - Monarcana
Very Friendly, 2006 This album is like the bleeding heart of lost America, oozing desperation and dust out of its aorta, letting the thick blood pour onto sand, not because it’s dying, but because that’s the only thing left for it to do. Diane Cluck started off as somewhat of an alternative and watered down Regina Spektor, and yet this album was recorded from 2001-2004, overlaying...
6 tags
Botch - We Are the Romans
Hydra Head Records, 1999
A while back, I was walking along a beach. It was late evening, and the sun was setting, casting a violet shade on the dusky sky. The sights and smells were amazing, the salty sea-air, the seagulls calling out their nonsense message to any creature that could hear them.
But then…
Then I felt the stinging. Not just one sting, thousands of stings. Working their...
4 tags
Telex - Looking for St. Tropez
RKM, 1979
Marc Moulin, the now-deceased frontman of Belgian synthpop trio Telex, once said of his music, “the best compliment anybody could pay us is that our music is disposable - that’s what all music should be.” Well, sorry Marc. It may be rather dated, but I love it.
And what’s not to love? It’s cheesy. It’s over the top. It’s almost unbearably...
5 tags
Faraquet - The View From This Tower
Dischord Records, 2000
Imagine, if you will, an orgy. And not just any orgy. An orgy involving early Don Caballero, XTC, Fugazi, and King Crimson. Now imagine that this orgy somehow gave birth to a bastard love-child. That love-child would be Faraquet.
Angular guitars, driving beats, and odd time signatures are what define this amazing piece of work. As far as math-rock goes, this shit is...
4 tags
Reiko Kudo - ちりをなめる [Licking Up Dust]
Hyotan Records, 2007
Reiko Kudo is the partner of Tori Kudo, and is an occasional singer/songwriter for his band, Maher Shalal Hash Baz. She released one album while fronting a band called, Noise, then started doing solo albums. This EP… man. Where to start.
This is an album that’s hard to write a review for. It’s equally haunting, irritating, and mind-bendingly beautiful....
6 tags
The Mountain Goats - Hello and Farewell Gothenburg
Recorded 1995, unreleased. Leaked 2007 Track four. That is the only reason you need to listen to Hello and Farewell Gothenburg. Titled I Love You, Let’s Light Ourselves on Fire and under two and a half minutes, the song contains some of the most heartbreakingly simple lyrics John Darnielle has ever written. “What’s going to be the death of me?” He starts, with a vocal...
4 tags
Hyu - Random Walker's Delight
Chilidisc, 2002
This review from discogs.org says everything that need be said about this album: This release is a perfect example of an album that will never in a million years get the attention it deserves. An unfortunate circumstance for a talented artist like Hyu, and certainly unfortunate for anyone else who falls into the same boat. Random Walker’s Delight is a ridiculous blast...
4 tags
Cursive - Burst and Bloom EP
Saddle-Creek, 2001
Being a very big Cursive fan for the past 5 years, people have always asked me where to start if they are unsure even after listening to a couple tracks on their own. For those people I go straight to this little gem. It stars off a bit shaky with some self indulgent lyrics, but it quickly picks up the pace and gets you right into the music. 20 minutes later you find...
4 tags
The Claudia Quintet - Semi-Formal
Cuneiform Records, 2005
I’ve listened to a couple of tracks here and there on Pandora stations, and that’s what got me into them enough to buy this album. So after a few weeks of waiting for another iTunes gift certificate, I finally bought Semi-Formal. All I have to say is that this albums is so tight, conceptually engaging, utterly unclassifiable by genre to such a point so that...