Label: Smithsonian-Folkays Recordings Released: 2007 New Lost City Rambler Mike Seeger (half-brother of Pete) serves up 28 traditional songs, some with vocals, some without. These are old songs, songs that have been around awhile, songs that Seeger probably learned from old scratchy 78s. Seeger approaches these songs with love, appreciation and authenticity. Some of the guitars he used are as… Read more »
Label: Metal God Entertainment Released: January 8, 2008 At the time, Judas Priest’s Painkiller seemed like a breath of fresh air. Ram It Down was a decent album, but not enough to assure metalheads that Turbo was a mistake Priest wouldn’t make again. Painkiller, on the other hand, seemed like Priest had not only abandoned their pop metal ambitions, but… Read more »
Label: White Knuckle Records Released: 2007 England’s Voodoo Six prefaced First Hit for Free, due out on March 24th, with this three song EP of their modern hard rock. “Faith” is the teaser’s first and best track. It takes 70s hard rock and filters it through the 90s, largely influenced by Soundgarden’s more mainstream, metally albums. The song isn’t particularly… Read more »
Label: Deep Elm Records Released: December 10, 2007 Ride Your Own Bike’s debut, Bad News from the Bar, gets off on the right foot with “We All Have Our Own Shoes,” whose strings slowly give way, but never completely, to a more traditional rock arrangement. After that, the creativity is pretty hit or miss though. For every clever or catchy… Read more »
Label: Woodstock Musicworks Released: November 1, 2007 A Million Yesterdays‘s brand of Americana generally alternates between country and country rock, finding the most consistency with the former, but perhaps their best moments with the latter. Their more traditional songs show clear command of the genre. Avalon Peacock’s voice might get a little shaky in her vibrato, but that along with… Read more »
Label: Hopeless Records/Sub City Released: March 4, 2008 The seventh installment of the Take Action compilation series is, as usual, a mixed bag of bands, but a pretty good one nonetheless. It dabbles in everything from from hardcore and metal (Every Time I Die) to noise rock (Drop Dead, Gorgeous) to progcore (Chiodos) to straightforward punk (The Matches), but most… Read more »
Label: Equal Vision Records Released: March 18, 2008 “The sky was cold-fire sunrise, the clouds alive in wild paint, but all of it blurred in the dynamite crescendo.” These words from Richard Bach’s Illusions not only give Alive in Wild Paint their name, but also their essence. Not only do they evoke soundscapes every bit as vivid as these words,… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: October 2007 The Russians’ founder Scott Janovitz is a veteran of the Boston music scene and recently lent his talents to Graham Parker as one of the Latest Clowns, so the well-crafted pop of their second EP should come as no surprise. They aren’t shy about their love of the Beatles (even segueing each song into the… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: 2007 Syracuse’s Mistletoe plays some wild punk rock. It’s not quite focused though. “Ghost Relatives” leans toward churning hardcore, “Poor Timing” toward angular Fugazi-influenced post-hardcore and “Stop Growing Up” toward the gritty rootsiness of Avail. Still, they do manage to find the commonality in all of that to make up their sound. That mixes with a great… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: 2007 Dirty Penny’s clear love of Mötley Crüe might be hard to take had the Crüe not stopped making good records way too early (two records, good as they were, is a short legacy), but under the circumstances, it turns out to be a lot of fun. I’m not exactly the world’s biggest hair metal fan. Sure… Read more »