Score: ****/***** . Boy, does Matt Shultz get right into it when he’s out there doing his thing: he’s decked out in this all-black, denim looking outfit with this big, black cowboy hat on, his short, wiry little frame traipsing about the stage with an oddly taut sense of purpose. The delivery is measured, languid, […]
Score: 8/10 . My first experience with The Budos Band was hearing what must have been something off of Burnt Offering in a bar in 2014, concurrent with that album’s release. Now, mind you, the culture was sort of on their side at that point, as that mark preceded Kamasi Washington’s breakthrough masterpiece The Epic […]
Score: 5/10 . Lightlessness is nothing new and neither is anything else, for that matter. Ok, here are a couple things I notice to Priests’ favor, right off the bat: A cool band name The androgyny and literal irreverence is good, very “punk” (although apparently they went online bit**ing about people calling them “punk” so […]
Score: 7.5/10 . Semantics are one thing and music is another. This new Son Volt record should prove that just fine, I would think. Objectively speaking, it’s certainly hard, if you’re a fan of folk-rock in any permutation, not to get at least kind of psyched up for this new Son Volt outpouring. I mean, […]
Score: 7/10 . From the way it looks, all of those “releases” listed on Bandcamp are just individual songs, or snippets of songs, and this sole Spotify “album” selection ergo qualifies as the solo debut of No Age’s guitarist Randy Randall. And I, for one, am sitting here listening to it at 4:17 p.m. on […]
Score: 2/10 . One thing is very obvious to me right away about the Mekons as I take in what I can of this new album: everything they’ve wanted to accomplish as a collective (which formed in the 1970s, according to Wikipedia), they already have. I mean, just look at their insane discography: it spans […]
Score: 8.5/10 . Well, if you want a disorienting listen in new rock, look no further than this: I don’t think I’ve ever been more confused at the beginning of an album, when it started out oppressively sterile with almost no reverb on the drums and a juvenile, Guitar Hero type riff with no gravity […]
Score: 8.5/10 . On the Bandcamp page for this album when the press release ascribes the band with being “intent on bringing fresh… song writing (sic) to the fore,” it sort of jolts the reader to see that term “song writing” at all. These tracks on Masque, that is, are physical, gauntlet-like journeys, the accomplishments […]
Score: 8.5/10 . It’s funny how somehow today a new Stephen Malkmus album just seems like a bigger deal than it would have when he dropped his first of two “solo” projects, Face the Truth, in 2005. Let’s be honest, too: a lot of credit should go to Pitchfork for championing and propagating the band, […]
Score: 4/10 . Well, it seems like the Meat Puppets are finally just “puppets” now and everybody seems to like them for that: they’re easy today to pigeonhole into these pathetic country saps, with no anger, no creative direction, no psychedelia, no much of anything but this impossibly tired and bored “Americana” which could have […]