Label: PR (or that’s what it looks like on the back) Released: unknown I picked this bootleg EP up on ebay and thought, “Who is J Adams? I wonder if it’s the skater? Nah…” When the record came, I found the following dedication: Dedicated to: Tony Alva, Shogo Kugo, Jimmy Plummer, Jim Muir & the “Z” boys.” So, what do… Read more »
Label: Glory Glory Released: March 2, 2009 Guns on the Roof have spent the last two years playing with the likes of Rancid, the Misfits, Stiff Little Fingers, UK Subs, the Briggs and others, all bands that mix their punk rock sneers with unbeatable hooks. Their touring company along with the band from who they lifted their moniker have all… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: February 3, 2009 Everything Burns kicks off as a fairly typical post-emo mainstream rock album. There are bits of alt rock and emo tidied up in a nice, easily digestible package and yet…there’s something else, something deeper going on with this record. Underneath what seems at first to be a solid, but uneventful set of songs, there’s… Read more »
Label: Teenage Heart Records Released: August 11, 2008 Perhaps nowhere did the earliest marriages of punk and metal produce better material than in Boston. The early 80s found the likes of Gang Green and the FUs infusing their street punk with more than just a hint of metal. A lot of this was forgotten later in the decade as thrash… Read more »
Label: BNS Sessions Released: February 24, 2009 Story problem: If King Crimson and ELP were together heading south at 75 mph, Art of Noise was heading north at 102 mph and Hawkwind was heading west at, well the speed of the Silver Machine, what would you call the force where they met? Answer: Fun Machine. If that isn’t enough in… Read more »
Label: self-released (CD Baby) Released: February 24, 2009 JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound hail from Chicago, have a song about Baltimore and sound like Detroit…in the 60s. That was the time and place where the local airwaves were a battleground between Motown and garage rock. While not the greatest to emerge from that scene, it was probably Mitch Ryder… Read more »
Label: Old Sombrero Music Released: March 17, 2009 Some albums are amazing in the way they push the boundaries and change the rules while others are amazing in the way they perform within existing boundaries and prove long established rules. There isn’t much that’s new in Paula Sinclair’s music. She plays something that walks a fine line between country and… Read more »
Label: VH1 Classic Records Released: March 3, 2009 Probably the biggest trap into which a live album can fall is that of sounding too much like a studio album. After all, if it sounds pretty much like the studio cuts with crowd noise in between, what’s the point? A live album should inject different energies or arrangements into the songs… Read more »
Label: Alaska Records/No Breaks Released: July 2008 If one word could describe this 7″, it would be visceral. Nothing seems calculated or planned. Benard blasts through two songs of dissonance, frantic rhythms and pure passion in just under five and a half minutes. In that short time, they leave everything out there, their hearts on their post-hardcore sleeves. Saying that… Read more »
Label: Columbia Released: January 27, 2009 “The Wrestler” is the bonus track on Springsteen’s latest album, Working on a Dream. It’s a honest tale set to poignant music. It connects in the way we expect Springsteen to connect. However, it is appropriately labeled as bonus material, because it really doesn’t fit the rest of the album. The strings on the… Read more »