the needle drop
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New York’s Cults have a deeply rooted love for pop’s older and more sentimental side. Considering how referential this music is, these two must be extremely well-verse when it comes to the Spectors, Wilsons, and Meeks of the world. I’m sure they’re even fans of artists
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On SBTRKT’s self-titled debut, this London-based producer cooks up a solid set of dubstep songs; icing them with some pretty soulful vocals from Sampha. Plus, the clean and lean electronics bubbling under him are the perfect complement to the feelings he’s conveying. There are several different vocalists featured,
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On Iceage’s full-length debut, the band forges a cohesive style in raw, messy musicianship and noisy guitars. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, and sometimes it’s just catchy and loveable. But it’s always giving off some kind of strong energy or emotion–even at its most apathetic. WATCH THE
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On Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, the project opens the floodgates and welcomes in a sea of new instrumentation. Everything from clarinet to string arrangements are laced into these songs to widen the spectrum of sounds that were once so sparse four years ago on For Emma, Forever Ago. But
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On the band’s sixth album, Black Lips clean up their sound with Mark Ronson at the mixing board. And even though things are coming in cleaner and clearer, the band hasn’t lost any of their energy and attitude in the process–which is what makes Black Lips records
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Snake Oil’s debut LP is a pretty nice piece of instrumental psych rock. The recording of this this is really great, too. It separates the instrumentation perfectly, and swells very nicely when everything layers on top of one another. The melodies are decent, and the grooves are nice, but
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Come, my children! Indulge in this glorious thrash metal! Denver, Colorado isn’t exactly a mecca of thrash metal, but Havok still manages to string together some of the genre’s best characteristics into one 11-track gauntlet. This LP rarely lets up, and dishes out one hard riff after another.
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OK, so it’s widely acknowledged that a lot of people don’t care about Death Cab for cutie anymore. I guess I used to be one of them, too. But because of all the requests and my own curiosity, I figured I’d try out Codes and Keys since
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This Will Destroy You’s latest LP starts and finishes with flying colors, but it gets a little underwhelming in the middle for me. Hearing the band revisit old sounds, work with an odd drum mix, and working with similar structures throughout this album make me rethink my original love
