Various Artists Stax Country Stax Records Would anyone have expected a country music album from the stalwart Southern soul label Stax? Nevertheless, while there is a history of overlap between country and soul/r&b, this release might still [...]
Julien Baker Turn Out The Lights Matador Records Julien Baker’s new album Turn Out the Lights is emotionally disarming, as her talent as a songwriter/lyricist/singer makes itself known. While her debut Sprained Ankle was an all acoustic [...]
Dirty Fences Goodbye Love Greenway Records You walk into a punk/heavy rock dive, you’re seriously craving a greasy burger and an even more seriously cold beer. Oh, and you want to hear a band that is first of all loud, but tight and musically [...]
Little Coyote The Trouble With Teeth EggHunt Records Debut albums can be a tough affair, for the artists making them and for the listeners encountering an artist they are not familiar with no matter how much they’ve heard about them beforehand, [...]
Michael Nau The Load Suicide Squeeze Sometimes, no matter how good you are or how hard you try — or both — you just have an extremely hard time making it. It can be any reason or combination of them: too little exposure, too much [...]
Electric Youth Breathing Milan Records Sometimes it is hard not to pigeonhole a band based on its name. After all, the Toronto duo Austin Garrick and Bronwyn Griffin named their band after a Debbie Gibson album. With the electro-pop tag attached [...]
The Persian Leaps Bicycle Face EP Land Ski Records Everybody who thinks they have something to say about music at some point mentions originality. Sure, great, but what do they exactly have in mind? Something exceptional, never heard before, a [...]
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart The Echo Of Pleasure Painbow Records The fourth album by Kip Berman’s The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is called The Echo of Pleasure. The album has been out for a while and many initial opinions jumped onto the [...]
The Dan Ryan Guidance Cosmic Dreamer Some albums hit you straight away, right in your chest, feet, head, or all of those. Some, on the other hand are slow evolving affairs, unfolding note by note in front of your ears, either to be simply [...]
My Favourite Things Fly I Will, Because I Can Independent You really have to be a bit cheeky to name your band My Favourite Things. This was one of the main themes from the Mary Poppins move which became one of signature John Coltrane tunes upon [...]
John Murry A Short History Of Decay Latent Recordings Some artists suddenly crop up, come up with some brilliant music, get critical accolades, and then, as if there is an invisible border, they simply cannot cross it. It can be that the [...]
Pattern Language Total Squaresvielle Happy Robot Records What would be motorik in terms of music? I guess something to get you motorin’ down the Autobahn, or the open highway, if you are from Colorado like Chris Frain, aka Pattern Language. Or [...]
Phoenix Ti Amo Loyaute/Glassnote Records When this one hits the stores, I’ll be sitting back comfortably in my armchair waiting for the flak to start flying around by both critics and those who consider themselves Phoenix fans. I can tell you [...]
Aldous Harding Party 4AD For the less initiated, New Zealand is that land far far away and so strange, they filmed The Lord of the Rings film series there. And for those a bit more in it, New Zealand is that land far far away and so strange [...]
Elf Power Twitching In Time Orange Twin Records Whatever happened to the Elephant 6 Collective that practically ruled the indie rock scene (some even added a then popular sub-label ‘college rock’) in the second part of the Nineties? Some [...]
Big Walnuts Yonder Big Walnuts Yonder Sargent House First fact about Big Walnut Yonder, it is an album by “a super group”. (“OK, so Mike Watt and the guys say it is not. The supergroup, I mean. Maybe because they themselves are aware of [...]
Shugo Tokumaru Toss Polyvinyl Records Slice everything into pieces, toss them in the air, let them fall to the ground, then pick them up and arrange them in any random order and see what you can come up with. I guess that is maybe what Shugo [...]
Tashaki Miyaki The Dream Metropolis Records Usually, it is supposed to be like this — if you haven’t heard of an artist, it is for your own good. But in this information glut we live in, you’re bound to miss on some good ones, even great [...]
