Label: Interscope Records Released: March 18, 2008 Lay Down the Law is a collection of songs that is perfectly good in the moment. Their catchy 80s power-pop (filtered through more recent times via the Strokes) is pleasant enough, but it can’t hold on to what it’s caught. Even after multiple listens, there isn’t a single melody here that sticks with… Read more »
Label: SideOneDummy Records Released: June 17, 2008 When British punk got into the hands of working class kids in the late 70s who married its anger to pub singalongs and soccer chants, Oi was born. It is a thoroughly British (okay, the Irish can pull it off also) phenomenon that American bands have had a hard time copying. Being able… Read more »
Label: Columbia Records Released: June 17, 2008 Punk rock made its way out of seedy clubs and into arenas over a decade ago, but that didn’t always mean that the bands who made it just turned on the commercial rock and abandoned their roots. Green Day, perhaps the genre’s biggest success story (unless you consider Nirvana punk), still really plays… Read more »
Label: Goodfellow Records Released: April 29, 2008 There are two kinds of anger: one based on love and one based on hate. I’ve always found myself more attracted to the former. New Model Army’s fury on “I Love the World” has always seemed both fuller and deeper than something along the lines of the Circle Jerks’ “World Up My Ass.”… Read more »
Label: Alive Naturalsound Released: January 8, 2008 “Billy Gibbons, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” That’s likely what goes through Left Lane Cruiser guitarist Freddy J IV’s head as he pines away for his guitar hero. Gibbons’ influence on Freddy’s playing is unmistakable and perhaps wearing his influences on his sleeve like that should count against… Read more »
Label: VH1 Classics Released: June 3, 2008 A few months back, I heard a few pre-release tracks of this project which reunites Def Leppard’s Phil Collen with former Girl bandmate Simon Laffy and brings in ex-Sex Pistol Paul Cook. The line-up certainly sounds like it could be flirting with disaster, but that preview raised my hopes that this would be… Read more »
Label: Flightplan Records Released: January 29, 2008 Some time in the 90s, pop punk generally began placing the pop over the punk in its approach to the point that it might be difficult to tell the difference between A New Found Glory and Avril Lavigne. That’s sad, because punk has a long pop tradition that dates back at least to… Read more »
Label: Count Your Lucky Stars Released: January 2008 Sometimes there is a very fine line between great and terrible. Great bands stay just on the good side and awful bands may only take a single step over. Queen’s bombast pushed right up to the line and they’re one of rock’s truly great bands. Meat Loaf (or really Jim Steinman) took… Read more »
Label: Deep Elm Records Released: May 13, 2008 Pneuma is an album that works more in noise than structure. Ambient layers and ambling indie rock rhythms are grounded by a more common vocal approach that alternates between whining and screeching and screaming. There is nothing pretentious about Moving Mountains’ deconstruction of rock though. It is experimental, but not simply for… Read more »
Label: Rhino Released: April 22, 2008 Love is a second rate band, but at perhaps the creative peak of rock music. They existed at a time when the old marriage of R&B and C&W that was rock n roll was experimenting with a lot of new partners. Love was a part of that. At times, the result was brilliant, making… Read more »