album review

  • On their sophomore album, Australia’s the UV Race brings garage rock to a dirtier and grimier level than most. The band’s loose song structures and loose playing bring a lot of, well, “character” to these recordings. There are flubbed notes everywhere, and it’s all for the sake

  • On hit latest release, Amon Tobin isn’t building songs as much as he is sounds. The textures on most of this album are absolutely amazing, and among the best this Brazilian electronica producer has ever created. I love how abstract, adventurous, and mind-bending the first two thirds of this

  • On his debut full-length, Outmind, Matthewdavid flips through his sketchbook of ambient drones and blurred beats, picking out the best stuff he’s got to offer so far. While he does pull some fantastic sounds together, and issue I find myself running into is the brevity of some of these

  • On the band’s latest album, Manchester Orchestra seems to lose of a lot of the passion and rock ‘n’ roll momentum that have made their last two LPs pretty decent. They’ve exchanged this for some relatively heavier production and string arrangements. In my opinion, it wasn’t that

  • Turtleneck and Chain has some pretty memorable tacks on it, to be honest. Some of these might be the best this comedy rap outfit has ever penned. “I Just Had Sex” has already blown most of their other videos away on the view count, and the title track is a

  • Wild Beast’s Smother shows the band toning things down, and making a sound that comes off eerier than the material on their previous two albums. Though this LP still holds some of the grooves their last albums did, the songs here carry a much more serious tone–maybe too

  • SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG SWAG

  • On their latest album, the Antlers work to improve the lo-fi recording quality they were dealing with on their last album, and they definitely succeed in that department. The instruments and the mix sound absolutely fantastic. But there are more changes. First off, the storytelling that made their past LP

  • On Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes improve just about everything that they were doing on their last album. Keep in mind the key word here is “improve,” not change. Yes, the band is still walking down the same path they were on their previous LP, but they’re much further down

  • Natural Child’s 1971 is an attitude-heavy set of rock tunes that emulate everything from power pop to the kind of classic rock they play on the AM band. Stylistically, this LP is all over the place, which is kind of surprising since the 7” EP I reviewed of theirs