// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Kevin Devine, Between the Concrete and Clouds

By Kai Shuart

Kevin Devine‘s first album on the Razor & Tie label, Between the Concrete and Clouds, is a good album to toast the waning days of summer. It’s full of reverbed electric guitars and jaunty melodies that seem very at home when played in the background of a barbecue, yet with enough melancholy to let listeners know that the bite of autumn air isn’t far off.
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Expo, 40 Sleeps

By Paul Casey

Full disclosure: John Lane and Christian Lipski are friends of mine. They have both written for this website. This is going to be a fair and biased review.

40 Sleeps is Expo‘s third album and follows the summertime joy of 2010’s She Sells Seashells with a mood far more in keeping with their debut, Playtime. “Dreaming of Bears” and its sleepy textures would have been particularly at home on that earlier album. Although things are on the downbeat, 40 Sleeps is not bleak or self-indulgent. The singer may be sad, but like Elvis Costello, is trying his darnedest to Get Happy!!!

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Brand New Video From Iceage, “You’re Blessed”

By Less Lee Moore

Check out the latest video from Iceage, whose album New Brigade we reviewed in June, saying, it “teeters on the thrilling precipice between the purity of the band’s nascent talent and future brilliance.”

Beirut, The Rip Tide

By Chelsea Spear

Zach Condon, the jet-setting mayor of indie pop band Beirut, knows how to set a mood. Before listeners hear so much as a note of his latest album, The Rip Tide, the song titles suggest a travelogue instead of a mere collection of tunes. They are named for locations both exotic and quotidian; the ones that aren’t suggest a skyline broader than that of his Santa Fe home. Which journeys does Condon invite his listeners on with this album?
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Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark

By Less Lee Moore

Horror fans of a certain age surely remember the 1973 TV movie Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark. To me, it was always known as “the movie about the things in the fireplace,” which was enough to keep a scaredy-cat kid away for many years. Although I didn’t see it until more recently, I quickly became a big fan; the movie still provides plenty of genuinely creepy moments which make me glad I never saw it as an impressionable youth.

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who produced the terrific remake that’s out today in theaters, has called the original “the most terrifying on earth.” But the new Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark isn’t a movie full of jump scares like the also-terrific Insidious, which came out earlier this year. It’s more of an old-fashioned haunted house movie, where the unease and dread build slowly and inexorably towards a horrible climax.

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The Middle East, I Want That You Are Always Happy

By J Howell

It’s a rare thing when a band comes along whose music is an instant game-changer, the kind of band that’s simultaneously comfortable but complex; easily understandable but somehow nearly indescribable, like an old friend. The Middle East is just that. (Well, was . . . more on that in a moment.)
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Shonen Knife, Osaka Ramones: Tribute To The Ramones

By Matt Keeley

Sometimes the redundant can be awesome. Shonen Knife‘s own music is quite Ramonesy, so some out there might not see the point of them doing a full album of Ramones covers. Those people who I may have just made up are stupid. Shonen Knife are awesome, as are the Ramones. How can you go wrong with an album of Shonen Knife—a band that was dubbed the “Osaka Ramones” by a Ramone himself—doing Ramones covers? You can’t. QED.
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NRBQ, Keep This Love Goin’

By Danny R. Phillips

NRBQ is the beast that refuses to die. Formed in the ’60s by Terry Adams, the band has been making good ol’ bar party music ever since, despite numerous lineup changes, a bout with throat cancer, changing times, and changing flavors. With Keep This Love Goin’ NRBQ are back doing the same as they always have, and that’s just fine.
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Tony Bennett, The Best Of The Improv Recordings

By Paul Casey

“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more. There’s a feeling in back of it.”
—Frank Sinatra in Life magazine, 1965

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Bill Evans Trio, Explorations

By Paul Casey

Explorations was Bill Evans‘ second album with his most famous trio. It was recorded in one day, on February 2, 1961, in between recording Know What I Mean? with Cannonball Adderley. Explorations was a follow-up to the seminal Portrait in Jazz, Evans’ vision of a three piece that spoke as if with one voice. This was also the last studio recording to feature Scott LaFaro as bassist, as he died tragically in a car crash in the summer of ’61. He was 25.

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