// Category Archive for: Current Faves

School Of Seven Bells, Ghostory

By Less Lee Moore

“So fair, yet so cold like a morning of pale Spring still clinging to Winter’s chill.”
—The Two Towers, 2002

Althouth the name of the band is from a “mythical South American school for pickpockets,” School of Seven Bells could just as easily reference singer Alejandra Deheza’s magical vocals. On Ghostory, the band’s latest release, Deheza’s voice is crystalline, like ice fragments melting and freezing, re-melting and re-freezing. From a musical standpoint, too, Ghostory has a much chillier sound than the band’s previous albums. However, it is anything but off-putting. Ghostory is so marvelously seductive that I have listened to nothing else for the past week. I am in love with this album. It is the perfect soundtrack to the spring and perhaps even the rest of 2012.

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Dirty Three, Toward The Low Sun

By J Howell

It somehow doesn’t feel like it, but Toward The Low Sun marks the first proper full-length from Dirty Three in seven years, as well as the Australian trio’s first record for Drag City. For better or worse, it may be exactly what fans of the band were expecting: It sounds . . . well, pretty much exactly like a Dirty Three record—any Dirty Three record. After such a long wait though, it’s surprising how predictable a record it is. While there’s no denying that Toward The Low Sun is an achingly beautiful piece of work, it doesn’t expand much on the band’s aesthetic or break any particularly new ground for them.
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Amy Ray, Lung Of Love

By Kai Shuart

There’s a lot familiar in Amy Ray‘s new release Lung of Love. The urgent lyrics and heavy guitars that have long marked her as the more rock-oriented half of the Indigo Girls are very much present. The emotional territory of this album is also familiar, dealing with interpersonal relationships (such as in the opening track “When You’re Gone, You’re Gone”) and politics (such as in “From Haiti”).
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Maggie and Terre Roche, Seductive Reasoning (Reissue)

By Chelsea Spear

One could pinpoint 1975 as one of the first years of “The Woman in Rock.” Patti Smith’s Horses had just hit the racks; Heart released their first single and began recording their debut album; and The Runaways and Blondie had just formed. All these artists and bands created fierce and highly idiosyncratic rock, and their various images—tough, cathartic, slightly cartoonish—would inspire many girls to start making music.
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Tony Bennett, Isn’t It Romantic?

By Melissa Bratcher

Tony Bennett‘s Isn’t It Romantic? hit my doorstep on Valentine’s Day. It is fair to say that there isn’t a finer collection of romantic, swoon-worthy songs than this. Isn’t It Romantic? is an excellent, entry level primer of Tony Bennett’s catalog for those whose interest may have been piqued by his recent Grammy win for Duets II.

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The Explorers Club, Grand Hotel

By Cait Brennan

You’ve got to admire Jason Brewer, the founder of Charleston, South Carolina’s The Explorers Club. Barely 30, Brewer has mastered the language of 1960s pop songwriting with the kind of heart, skill, and creative ambition that would be the envy of any musician, especially those who were old enough to have been there in the first place. His band’s well-reviewed 2008 debut, Freedom Wind, echoed some of the Beach Boys’ most gorgeous moments; it was such a grand love letter to Brian Wilson that Brian Wilson’s own 2008 album That Lucky Old Sun was probably only the second-best Brian Wilson album that year.
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The Heartless Bastards, Arrow

By Danny R. Phillips

The Heartless Bastards are a bit of an anomaly in the world of music. They are a rock band led by the charismatic and clever Miss Erika Wennerstrom. Instead of taking the manufactured pop road much traveled like Katy, Britney, or Lana, Wennerstrom charges ahead like Chrissie Hynde, strapping on a guitar and scorching the Earth.

Arrow, the Bastards fifth album and first for Paristian Records, is full of exceptional lyrics, 1970s rock stomp, and just a sprinkling of country twang. Where 2009’s The Mountain (my pick for album of the year) was full of heartbreak and cathartic reflection (Wennerstrom had ended a nine-year relationship), Arrow is packed with wonder and acceptance of life.
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Pan Am: Music From And Inspired By The Original Series

By Melissa Bratcher

I love a good soundtrack, even for things I’ve not seen. I love the way that carefully chosen songs can convey a feeling and even a look, and that the use of music in a show or movie can make or destroy a moment.

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Various Artists, Meet Me At Mardi Gras

By Melissa B.

How fortunate the New Orleanians are: Once Christmas and New Year’s are over, they get to move straight into Carnival season. Parades, food, music, revelry, and the finest of these things, I’d wager, is the music.

I’ve often wondered how New Orleans can have so many obscenely talented, homegrown musicians. Is it the food, the humidity, the heritage, the proximity to water? Is there a great funk reservoir that all of the drinking water comes from? Do they put it in babies’ bottles at birth? Whatever causes it, there is a bumper crop of amazing New Orleans music out there and Meet Me At Mardi Gras puts it all in one convenient disc, making a party in your living room, or car, or ears. What have you.

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Misterman, With Cillian Murphy

By Maureen

Let me just get this disclaimer out of the way: I fucking love Cillian Murphy. I would crawl through a river of shit, Andy Dufresne-style, just to listen to him read the phone book. Which, in a twisted and complex way, he kind of does in Enda Walsh’s play Misterman.
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