I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. First I can’t get this song out of my head, then when I finally get around to listening to Kid Cudi’s new album, Man on the Moon 2: Legend of Mr. Rager, it’s his anthemic song with Kanye – “Erase Me” that won’t escape me. [...]
As a sucker for sad and mopey shoegaze SOARS grabbed my attention several months ago while breezing through the outstanding Shuffler website. The dark, ambient tones of the music seem to carry the distant and forlorn vocals of Briana Edwards on a dreary and mystifying fog. “Throw Yourself Apart” haunted me with the dark intro, [...]
Billy Corgan and Company are slowly but surely delivering on a promise made. That promise is the epic Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, a 44+ song collection released one at a time for free via the Smashing Pumpkins website. Every 4 songs a new collector’s edition EP is released. Teargarden by Kaleidyscope Volume II: The Solstice Bare [...]
Is it just me being a harbinger of music to come or is this a trend that the masses are influencing? I find myself being drawn to more music with overt 60’s derivations. Bands like Best Coast and Cults on the pop side then Tame Impala and new Smashing Pumpkins (see the latest “Spangled,” “A [...]
San Francisco based artist, Chelsea TK, has her first official full-length release in Terra Attero. It is a boisterous and swirling amalgamation of style and soul infused with layers of instrumental loops, driving drum work, clever electronic bits, and Chelsea’s expansive, entrancing vocals.
TK glides from soul diva to alt rocker from track to track and [...]
Arcade Fire’s newest album, The Suburbs, is a musical encapsulation of the experience growing up in the suburbs, USA (maybe Canada). One perspective is the oppression and banality of tract housing and strip malls that angst-y youth rail against. Another is that of the reminiscent adult waxing whimsical and romanticizing a misspent youth, the sneaking [...]
Curtis Lane is the debut album from Active Child, the namesake of L.A songwriter Pat Grossi. Blogs and journalists are bubbling with giddiness and positive reviews for Active Child. I assume the warm reception is because this EP comes across like a more elegant, ethereal Animal Collective. The first song, “I’m in Your Church at Night” [...]
M.I.A’s new, grinding cacophony MAYA is an album crafted for the new “connected” society. Themes and sounds are piled in a shaker, swirled violently and poured out in clumpy snippets of odd melodies and mish-mashes of style and presentation. It is like MAYA was made by and for the ADD, short attention span of the modern [...]
Australia’s Tame Impala is what I’ve been waiting for. The alternative music scene is bustling with lush pop songwriters, nifty duos, and electronica hybrids which are all great, but sometimes a dude needs a little rock! It is nice to hear a fresh treatment to straight-forward guitar rock and Tame Impala is able to do [...]
Duos, duos, duos – what the fuck? They are everywhere, crowding the music scene with interesting variations of electronica, pop, and rock. Of course there are The White Stripes and The Black Keys, but it goes way beyond that. Let me see, there’s The Big Pink, Sleigh Bells, Phantogram, Crystal Castles, The XX, Ratatat, Dirty [...]
