Label: Wood & Bone Released: May 27, 2008 I’m not going to write a record review of Albertine. If I were, the review would be short and sharp: generic Christian adult-oriented pop, blah blah blah, whatever. But there’s something great about this album that I can’t dismiss with a handful of snarky words and superficial judgments. So instead of writing… Read more »
Label: Sony BMG Released: May 27, 2008 Live at the Fillmore East was recorded only a little over a month before I saw the Dolls play in Baltimore, so I had a good idea of the potential this release had. Despite my feelings about One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This, I found the show to be… Read more »
Label: Loose Recs Released: 2008 The Monocles tap into punk circa 1977 or so. Their songs consist of a single driving layer of frenetic energy, each of the three musicians moving in a single and deliberate direction at the same quick pace. Hey, it worked for the Adverts, right? And it works for the Monocles too, 30 plus years later…. Read more »
Label: Crusher Records Released: May 5, 2008 For outsiders, prog rock really seems like a limited genre full of musicians whose musical narcisism takes center stage, relegating things like hooks, emotion and all things rock n roll to the background. That may be true to some extent, but prog has also expanded rock’s palette in many ways. A band like… Read more »
Label: Parks and Records Released: Spring/Summer 2008 About six or seven years ago, I bought a 7″ on whim. It was only a few bucks and on colored vinyl, so I couldn’t go wrong. Still nothing prepared me for what I was about to hear. That 7″ was Rum Diary’s Mileage EP and the title song so rejuvenated my interest… Read more »
Label: Facedown Records Released: May 27, 2008 The metallic hardcore that Means offer on To Keep Me From Sinking has had a lot of practitioners over the last two decades or so and as expected, some do it better than others. The better bands are either tighter, more intense or occasionally even more creative. Means can compete with the best… Read more »
Label: Facedown Records Released: June 24, 2008 Can’t Fight Robots, the debut album from Arkansas’ Take It Back, finds a good mix between crunch and melody. It draws heavily on bands that defined the punk rock of the 90s like Pennywise and (ironically) Bad Religion and thickens that sound up with more hardcore tendencies. The vocals have a gritty power… Read more »
Label: VH1 Classics Released: June 3, 2008 Bret Michaels’ stupid reality show (I guess it’s redundant to call reality tv stupid) takes its name from the shallow lyrics of Rock My World‘s opening track, “Go That Far.” Frankly, bad as it is, it’s still the best this album has to offer. From there, it’s all downhill into a series of… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: 2008 Dead Leaf Echo offers up layers of heavy reverb, subtle, fluid rhythms and ambling, mopey vocals in the true shoegazing tradition. At times, they find interesting ways to get the vocals to work in concert with the rhythms and it’s strikingly good. They don’t get there consistently, but when they do, they really shine. The fuzzy… Read more »
Label: Ex Libris Records Released: April 14, 2008 With a lot of bands, it’s fairly easy to discern their influences and use those influences to describe the band’s sound. I could try that with Shin Jin Rui. At times I hear Gang of Four and at others the Stooges. Sometimes the Fall, Syd-era Pink Floyd, the Velvet Underground, Ziggy-era Bowie…. Read more »