Local CD Reviews
Issue 232 / April 2008 More from this Issue
Download PDF
Lewis
When the World Gets Dark
Self-released
Street: 01.08.08
Lewis = Blink 182 + The Get Up Kids + The All-American Rejects + MXPX
There's nothing worse than having to give a local band which represents you and your local musical community a bad write-up. Nevertheless, nobody wins when a band continues on, ignorant of their lack of talent. Lewis is the epitome of the-pop punk sound a la Blink 182. Maybe they thought they'd fill the void for all the Blink fans who can't get over Blink being gone. Who knows? The bottom line is: there is nothing original and/or redeeming about any of the songs on this album unless you are a pop-punker. If you happen to be a pop-punker, then my deepest sympathies go out to you and I assure you there is more to music than what you know and I implore you to search the pages of this magazine to find it. Best of luck. Jeremy C. Wilkins
Stag Hare
Ahspen
A. Star
Street: 01.10.08
Stag Hare = A Silver Mt. Zion + Animal Collective + Explosions in the SkyThis album is nearly 42 minutes long but feels like 10. Starting off slowly with an almost-tribal melody, Ahspen easily could have been the soundtrack to The Martian Chronicles, because all 42 minutes in this piece are an instrumentation of beautiful bliss that seem to follow an internal storyline. The album dips and dives with guitars, progresses and digresses with all of the intensity of A Silver Mt. Zion's This is Our Punk Rock through muffled drumbeats and shakers, yet never breaks its sequence of events. Ultimately, this album is atmospheric, other-worldly music at its finest, yet stays grounded by portraying a sense of establishment and optimism ultimately seeming to challenge the listener more than anything. This album does more with one single track than most post-rock bands do with twelve. Kristyn Lambrecht
The Tenants of Balthazar's Castle/Stag Hare
Mean Girls
A. Star
Street:01.01.08
The Tenants of Balthazar's Castle/Stag Hare = Null + Yoko Ono
I once watched a performer maintain a tricky, tempo-swaying drum roll using a stick in one hand and a rubber ball in the other. I was completely mesmerized by the performance, but letdown by the recording and unable to convince any who heard it how magnificent it had been. This is my beef with 90 percent of so-called noise music: you have to see it to appreciate it, otherwise, if you expect anyone to listen, you damned well better make the aural side really interesting. The first two tracks of this roughly produced cassette, a static texture resembling exactly that, static, and a murkily filtered, unwavering loop that comes across as a Philip Glass excerpt, were probably exciting with the benefit of volume and live psycho-acoustic oversight, but they inspire very little interest via headphones; the third piece, gravelly with an intermittent high-pitched scrape, barely improves the lot. The recently enlisted to this genre might be a little shocked and mutter, "I had no idea this goes on!", but anyone familiar with music post-Masami Akita will hear this as pedestrian naivet. Staci Q
Top Dead Celebrity
S/T
Exigent
Street: 04.01.08
Top Dead Celebrity = Converge + Candiria + Kyuss
The opening track "Illuminati" on Top Dead Celebrity's self-titled album made me hope this would be a dynamic instrumental band, and then right towards the end of the well-laced opening track they speed it up, give it the Kyuss kick and the hammer drops. Top Dead Celebrity is all about laying down the law from here on out. The music has some serious machismo, which a lot bands lack these days, and everyone knows that in order to have blues-laced hardcore, it's mandatory to have machismo seeping out of every pore. The boys in Top Dead Celebrity definitely have enough machismo to keep the hardcore engine running. Jon Robertson
When the World Gets Dark
Self-released
Street: 01.08.08
Lewis = Blink 182 + The Get Up Kids + The All-American Rejects + MXPX
There's nothing worse than having to give a local band which represents you and your local musical community a bad write-up. Nevertheless, nobody wins when a band continues on, ignorant of their lack of talent. Lewis is the epitome of the-pop punk sound a la Blink 182. Maybe they thought they'd fill the void for all the Blink fans who can't get over Blink being gone. Who knows? The bottom line is: there is nothing original and/or redeeming about any of the songs on this album unless you are a pop-punker. If you happen to be a pop-punker, then my deepest sympathies go out to you and I assure you there is more to music than what you know and I implore you to search the pages of this magazine to find it. Best of luck. Jeremy C. Wilkins
Stag Hare
Ahspen
A. Star
Street: 01.10.08
Stag Hare = A Silver Mt. Zion + Animal Collective + Explosions in the SkyThis album is nearly 42 minutes long but feels like 10. Starting off slowly with an almost-tribal melody, Ahspen easily could have been the soundtrack to The Martian Chronicles, because all 42 minutes in this piece are an instrumentation of beautiful bliss that seem to follow an internal storyline. The album dips and dives with guitars, progresses and digresses with all of the intensity of A Silver Mt. Zion's This is Our Punk Rock through muffled drumbeats and shakers, yet never breaks its sequence of events. Ultimately, this album is atmospheric, other-worldly music at its finest, yet stays grounded by portraying a sense of establishment and optimism ultimately seeming to challenge the listener more than anything. This album does more with one single track than most post-rock bands do with twelve. Kristyn Lambrecht
The Tenants of Balthazar's Castle/Stag Hare
Mean Girls
A. Star
Street:01.01.08
The Tenants of Balthazar's Castle/Stag Hare = Null + Yoko Ono
I once watched a performer maintain a tricky, tempo-swaying drum roll using a stick in one hand and a rubber ball in the other. I was completely mesmerized by the performance, but letdown by the recording and unable to convince any who heard it how magnificent it had been. This is my beef with 90 percent of so-called noise music: you have to see it to appreciate it, otherwise, if you expect anyone to listen, you damned well better make the aural side really interesting. The first two tracks of this roughly produced cassette, a static texture resembling exactly that, static, and a murkily filtered, unwavering loop that comes across as a Philip Glass excerpt, were probably exciting with the benefit of volume and live psycho-acoustic oversight, but they inspire very little interest via headphones; the third piece, gravelly with an intermittent high-pitched scrape, barely improves the lot. The recently enlisted to this genre might be a little shocked and mutter, "I had no idea this goes on!", but anyone familiar with music post-Masami Akita will hear this as pedestrian naivet. Staci Q
Top Dead Celebrity
S/T
Exigent
Street: 04.01.08
Top Dead Celebrity = Converge + Candiria + Kyuss
The opening track "Illuminati" on Top Dead Celebrity's self-titled album made me hope this would be a dynamic instrumental band, and then right towards the end of the well-laced opening track they speed it up, give it the Kyuss kick and the hammer drops. Top Dead Celebrity is all about laying down the law from here on out. The music has some serious machismo, which a lot bands lack these days, and everyone knows that in order to have blues-laced hardcore, it's mandatory to have machismo seeping out of every pore. The boys in Top Dead Celebrity definitely have enough machismo to keep the hardcore engine running. Jon Robertson
Page: << Prev 1 [2]
Facebook
Myspace
Twitter
YouTube
RSS
Be the first to comment!
Add a comment
Please keep your comments on the subject of the article.
We will delete your comment if it is racist, misogynistic, sexist, bigoted or just plain lame.
No HTML allowed!