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The Hold Steady ‘Heaven is Whenever’ Review At its best, the Hold Steady is a romanticized version of a great bar band: Guys resembling office clerks transformed into drunken poets who riff on Thin Lizzy, the Clash and “Rosalitaâ€-era Bruce Springsteen. Their rambling songs were shaped into robust anthems on their third and best album, the 2006 release [...] ‘A French Kiss in the Chaos’ Review Jon McClure first came to prominence as the flatmate and occasional writing partner of Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner. As the ‘Reverend’ in Reverend & The Makers McClure then had his own success with 2007 debut album, The State Of Things, which reached the top five. This follow-up is more [...] LCD Soundsystem ‘This Is Happening’ Review In seeming defiance of the hype that can so easily crush the potential and ambition dozens of today’s most amped up bands exude, LCD Soundsystem head honcho James Murphy has brazenly absorbed the mounting anticipation for his project’s oncoming album with what appears to be the reassuring calm of a seasoned [...] Hole ‘Nobody’s Daughter’ Review Hole’s first album in 12 years has come with the usual serving of controversy, this time incited by the fact that Courtney Love is the only original member present. The recruitment of new hands (including a Brit, Larrikin Love’s Micko Larkin), plus the bombast-loving Linda Perry as co-writer, has resulted in more polish [...] Black Keys ‘Brothers’ Review For four albums, the Black Keys’ sound was as obvious as the cover for their sixth album, Brothers: “This is an album by the Black Keys. The name of this album is Brothers.†So even after they took a (slight) left turn on 2008’s Attack & Release via a production team-up with the [...] CocoRosie ‘Grey Oceans’ Review Not that you’d expect anything particularly conventional from an act that apparently emerged from underneath the voluminous kaftan of Devendra Banhart back in the mid-Noughties, but of all the artists to be lumped into the “freak-folk†movement, CocoRrosie have surely turned out to be some of the freakiest. Based between Paris and Williamsburg, New [...] The National ‘High Violet’ Review If MGMT colors its musical canvas with fluorescent candy-scented magic markers, and Coldplay favors the niceness of pastel watercolors, The National’s output resembles a painstaking charcoal sketch with dramatic interplay between light and shadow. The five-piece’s cerebral rock ’n’ roll makes no apologies for its bleak emotional tenor, and I still can’t [...] We Are The Fallen ‘Tear The World Down’ Review In the time it takes you to play ‘Tear The World Down’ with the prior knowledge that guitarists Ben Moody, John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray were previously in Evanescence there are a few moments where you ask, ‘What the hell is going on here? Another female-fronted, nu [...] The Classic Crime ‘Vagabonds’ Review Fed up with the industry, the scene, genres, and most of all the need to please others, The Classic Crime champions honesty as the driving and defining force behind their third career album Vagabonds. Both musically and lyrically, the band’s newest album is blatantly honest and hard-hitting with both a flair of [...] Cancer Bats – Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones When Liam Cormier and Scott Middleton formed Cancer Bats in 2004, they sought to bring together the styles of some of their favorite music acts, such as Refused, Black Flag, Led Zeppelin, and Down. Considering the sonic disparity among those four artists, this was no easy feat. However, both [...] |
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