Score: 7.5/10 . It’s a sad fact, but it’s really just hard to make a great E.D.M. ALBUM, per se. Sure, some seem to have succeeded in amassing a considerable genus of songs, placed within slots, on an LP format — whether it be Aphex Twin, Autechre, Hercules and Love Affair, Sepalcure or the likes, … Read more“DD Review: Logwitch – Trail of the Contortionist.”
Score: 6.5/10 . Hate. Hate is what is undeniable on this earth. I see, I hear it all the time. It’s this random Wilco roadie calling out Ryan Adams as the most full-of-himself individual imaginable, it’s me, the guy writing this view, doing things probably 10 times more hateful, every day. And then I’ll go … Read more“DD Review: Ryan Adams – Prisoner.”
Score: 7.5/10 . Related to my last post about the difference between rock criticism in the ‘90s and that today, I thought about making this review like viewed through the eyes of The Real World decade — would the music stack up to the snobbery of when things were still cutting edge, or would it … Read more“DD Review: Battle Hymns.”
Score: 10/10 . Cloud Nothings have more balls than Real Estate. This, of course, seems obvious, given the components of the situation. After all, they play music that is LOUDER. They always have, and always will. So while I stand by this statement, let me temper it with the following observation: Cloud Nothings on Life … Read more“DD Review: Cloud Nothings – Life without Sound.”
Score: 4 stars/5 . “Maybe We’ll Drown,” the only track currently available from Menace Beach’s upcoming album Lemon Memory, opens with a repeated quarter-note stab at a mellowly amplified electric guitar, done over and over on the same chord. It sounds like something your little seven year old niece or nephew could do. Well, yeah, … Read more“Track Review: Menace Beach – ‘Maybe We’ll Drown’”
Score: 8/10 . Lots of things are deceptive, and deviant from the typical track of music, about Joan Torres, and what they do here with Of the Musical. First of all, Joan Torres (a guy) and his band made a path from Puerto Rico all the way to San Francisco to embark on projects in … Read more“DD Review: Joan Torres’s All is Fused – Of the Musical.”
Score: 5/10 . I see it. You have to be “immaculate” to be “good,” in literature today, and you have to be “good” to be “passable,” the way maybe William Dean Howells and Kate Chopin were, once upon a time. Jodi Picoult is vastly preferable to many other authors out there, if only for her … Read more“DD Review: Jodi Picoult – small great things.”
Score: 6/10 . Teenage Fanclub has always scared me a little bit. No, they don’t wear masks and wield machetes at my face, no, they don’t even make loud music or exhibit aggressive behavior. I guess it’s just their level of FEELING — things which creep on you listening to an album like the atom-splitting … Read more“DD Review: Teenage Fanclub – Here.”
Score: 7.5/10 . As the press release for Strange Storm indicates, the album “explores (various) themes,” political themes, to be exact, and as we all know, this can be somewhat of a froggy situation. Music is obviously not discursive, in other words, it’s physical, so when I hear these claims of thematic treatment in it … Read more“DD Review: Darrin James Band – Strange Storm.”
Score: 6.5/10 . Ah, New York. The land of John Cage, the land of recent film While We’re Young and “facebook experiments.” This is from where we get the reinventions: this is where we get expression which scoffs at the notion of “product,” and has everything to do, typically, with ripe, contemporary human innovation. “Tiled … Read more“DD Review: Titled Axes – Music for Mobile Electric Guitars“