Score: 10/10 . Really, in all honesty, at some point in this murky quagmire, I’m planning on getting to the topic of music. But first I’d like to discuss white middle America. It’s the place that developed Viagra. It’s the place that started genetically modifying tomatoes and mass-producing coffee in Colombia, putting that country’s economy […]

Score: 8.5/10 . The most powerful woman in techno you’ve never heard of, Ellen Allien, owning to an astonishing 11 studio albums and two record labels to her name (BPitch and UFO Inc.), chimes in here with another focused, eclectic array of complex but captivating IDM music. The songs are sonically interesting and otherworldly but […]

Score: 6/10 . Well, pride always comes before the fall, as they say, and it’s usually when we think we can do no wrong that our resting-on-laurels disposition starts to stink of the worst hubris and everything falls flat. The Gus is a collection of pointless folk rock songs that hark back to a time […]

Score: 9/10 . It’s “Flat Tummy Tea,” the lead single off of seventh Freddie Gibbs album and second Madlib collabo Bandana. The Gary rapper is spitting the bars-packed chorus with the lines “Crackers came to Africa rappin’ to raffle rummage me / America was the name of their fu**in’ company”. Elsewhere, we get the off-the-cuff […]

Score: 7.5/10 . In Cameron Crowe’s ’70s rock biopic Almost Famous, the rock god pecking order takes a distinct turn: the lead guitarist is actually seen as the megastar of the group, which in this case is the fictitious act of Stillwater [1], the lead singer and the rest of the band then sort of […]

Score: 7.5/10 . Yeah, the stakes is high. I suppose so. I personally tend to veer toward the egotistical. He**, I clearly value my own opinion on most things, provided that they’re music, sports or beer, and that’s about three and a half times as much satisfaction as my hometown is typically willing to afford […]

Score: 10/10 . Engulf yourself in full-on homo-erotic surrender in the scope of millions a la The Bends’ “High and Dry”? This is old hat for Thom Yorke. Be in a car or observe “traffic”? This seems to be something he’s still grappling and struggling with. Like the opener “Airbag” on OK Computer, the leadoff […]

Score: 10/10 . In my last review on this website, which handled Morrissey, I commended Morrissey’s ABILITY to confuse the listener (by making them think he wrote the songs, among other things) and the penchant of this element to render a sort of listening JOURNEY that’s multifarious, rather than monochromatic. This new Band of Skulls […]

Score: 10/10 . Track two on Morrissey’s new covers album, “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow,” poses an interesting discussion point, particularly in terms of the overall message of the Smiths/Morrissey catalogue that’s accumulated through the years (in no part of which Morrissey is the primary composer of music, interestingly) [1]. As Wikipedia reports, the song is […]

Score: 8/10 . The Rats come from Norfolk, Virginia, which is a medium-sized city on the Atlantic Coast. But ultimately, they’re in their own world. Believe you me. He**, they have to be. Over and over, the lyrical themes on this concise, Clash/Rancid influenced punk album are lurid, rearing their ugly heads in the form […]