Month: June 2013
Review: Sharks – Selfhood
There is a certain blissfulness that comes with simple music. UK-based Sharks’ latest release, Selfhood, is a record that reminds me of a simpler time in music. … read more
Review: Shannon And The Clams – Dreams In The Rat...
When Sleep Talk came out two years ago, it managed to blend forced nostalgia with something fresh. … read more
Review: Red Hare – Nites of Midnite
“Don’t want to not fit in in the wrong way” sings Shawn Brown on Red Hare’s debut, kicking style over substance square in the balls. Nothing less should be expected of a punk veteran like Brown, or the rest of Red Hare. Although technically a debut, Red Hare is essentially Swiz/Sweetbelly Freakdown with a new drummer, the raging Joe Gorelick (Bluetip). … read more
Review: Royal Canoe – Today We’re Believers
This album starts right off sounding a bit like a carnival: a spectacular explosion of energy and sound, music and noise. In line with some of the best in the experimental rock genre, … read more
Review: Royal Trux – 3-Song EP
The utilitarian title of 3-Song EP (originally released in 1998) contains no lies and no lollygagging. The EP contains 3 songs. “Deafer Than Blind,” the minimalistic first third of the EP, begins with a slow, heavily reverberated drumbeat that remains steady to the end of the song. … read more
Review: Radiation City – Animals In The Median
As the first track, “Zombies” began, my imagination pranced to a breezy field of poppy blossoms in the Pacific Northwest. … read more
Review: Rise Against – RPM10
Rise Against is a staple of modern punk rock, and it’s unlikely that anybody has survived this long without hearing them mentioned somewhere. … read more
Review: Polly Scattergood – Arrows
What a refreshing and novel concept for an album in 2013: songs of heart break and loneliness without any cloying traces of hip-hop or rapping on them. The very talented Scattergood bares her heart completely for her sophomore album and that young, … read more
Review: Poeina Suddarth – Happy Whore
Poeina Suddarth’s vocal range is insane. Her sharp-yet-sweet voice travels everywhere from upbeat skit-skat jazz on “Natural Disaster,” all the way to relaxed grass-plains country sounds on “Gasoline” and “White Mr. Beauty.” … read more
Review: Pure X – Crawling Up The Stairs
Where Crawling up the Stairs doesn’t confront immediately with a sense of deep self-loathing, it seethes. Pure X is disarming in the way Nate Grace and Jesse Jenkin’s songs belie their distressed core by being quite pretty and non-confrontational. … read more