// Category Archive for: Music Reviews

Concert Review: IO Echo/CSS at The Mod Club

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto, ON
July 4, 2013

Io Echo’s Ministry Of Love is shaping up to be one of my favorite new releases of 2013, so I was looking forward to witnessing their particular blend of post punk shoegaze in a live setting.

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Music Review: Oblivians, Desperation

By Less Lee Moore

Although it was spectacular, the last Oblivians album was technically a collaborative effort with Mr. Quintron on nine tracks of cover versions and traditional songs. Desperation marks the first release from the band since 1997. The quality of the songs on the album reveals that the various musical endeavors of the trio (Eric Friedl, Greg Cartwright, and Jack Yarber) in the interim has paid off in a huge way.

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Waxing Nostalgic Cover Albums: Duran Duran, Thank You

By Jeffery X Martin

Make no mistake: I have always loved Duran Duran. I have no problem admitting this. I had the John Taylor rubber bracelets, the uncensored version of “The Chauffeur” on VHS, the whole nine yards. Their last studio album, All You Need is Now, is criminally underrated. I say this just so you understand that I have no axe to grind. I’m not out to pick on some New Romantics, looking for that TV sound.

But good gods, folks. This album is a constant.

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Music Review: Preservation Hall Jazz Band, That’s It!

By Melissa Bratcher

An important fact that not everyone knows is this: If a band has a tuba player in it, it is generally worth going to see live. This goes double for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band was founded in 1961, dedicated to promoting traditional New Orleans jazz. Their new album That’s It! is their first album of entirely original music in their entire 50-year history. Produced by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Preservation Hall’s Creative Director, Ben Jaffe, That’s It! is an album of future standards.

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Music Review: The Three O’Clock, The Hidden World Revealed

By Cait Brennan

“You like pop, right?”

The grizzled, ancient record clerk—god, he had to be at least 28!—leaned over the counter.

“What, like Phil Collins?” I asked. Oh, it’s 1984 in Phoenix, by the way.

“God, no, that’s like—bubblegum or something,” he coughed, like he ate a big black bug. “Here,” he flips through the in-store play copies and pulls out a record with some weird pasty kids making kissy faces under a dilapidated pagoda. This crazy sugar-crash stomp comes storming out of the store speakers, swirling keys and guitars ringing in my head like the bells of Notre-Dame. And then the singer, with a voice like none other: “sitting complacent, are you there where I see you, with a cantaloupe girlfriend . . .” What?!

“They’re the Three O’Clock, man,” says he. “A little twee for my taste, but I kinda figured you’d dig it.”

The clerk got my $4.98 and I got Baroque Hoedown, the first EP by the Three O’Clock. It’s at least 20 years later before I even begin to suspect what a cantaloupe girlfriend might be, but I dive headlong into this “paisley underground” thing, rifling through record bins until I have all their stuff, which at that time included their album released as The Salvation Army, and their full-length LP, Sixteen Tambourines. They would go on to release great albums on IRS and Prince’s Paisley Park records, but for me, their stuff on the brilliant Lisa Fancher’s Frontier Records is still the greatest.

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Music Review: Dave Davies, I Will Be Me

By Julie Finley

As a “lifer” in regards to being a Kinks fan, I felt that I should definitely review my childhood idol’s newest release, that idol being Dave Davies. I won’t give a history lesson on The Kinks (as there are enough online sources out there that could clue you in), but I do need to note that Dave’s relationship to his brother Ray has been well-documented as being unrestrained, to say the least. It is no mystery that Ray prefers that Dave live in his shadow, and that the competitive dysfunction between the two of them is one of the things that has led to both having a prolific output of work throughout both of their lives (even outside of The Kinks).

Quite honestly, though, Dave’s career is still often overlooked despite the fact he has been even more fruitful in his endeavors regarding the creation of new material. Ray hasn’t had that much solo material since The Kinks stopped recording in the mid-’90s, but the solo work he has put out is mostly rehashing his old catalogue with a few albums of brand new content. Dave has actually put out more original material than Ray since the ’90s! Yes, some of that has been re-releasing long-lost music that was never released as The Kinks, but the bulk of his output has been original material.

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Music Review: Hirsute Pursuit, Tighten That Muscle Ring

By Ann Clarke

It’s been a while since I’ve written any reviews about anything, mainly because I can’t fucking stand new shit, because that is what it is—SHIT! However, sometimes you hear something and it compels you to expel your thoughts in a written context, basically excreting your reaction upon observation. In this particular case, that would be the album Tighten That Muscle Ring by Hirsute Pursuit. This might not be a brand new release (it came out in 2012, so it isn’t old, either), but it is new to my ears.

I wanted to publish this review during the month of June since it’s Pride Month and because I have NEVER heard anyone that is as proud to be gay as the fellas in Hirsute Pursuit! They take their pride to parts unknown. With the Supreme Court ruling on DOMA and Prop 8, the gay pride is at an all-time high, but for the two that are Hirsute Pursuit (Harley Phoenix and Bryin Dall), they clearly aren’t thinking about anything marital when composing their songs. In fact, these are the types of guys that would be out even if it meant the death penalty! Laws or not . . . these guys are going to cause some butt-hurt to someone!

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Music Review: Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me Soundtrack

By Cait Brennan

There’s a part of you that gets wistful sometimes when you see some secret treasure you love finally get its day in the sun. You think back to the day, seven worlds ago, when a friend of a friend handed you a cassette tape of some band you never heard of called Big Star, on an obviously fake record label called PVC Records. The friend gives you a knowing look and you don’t know; you don’t know you have a universe in your hand, that this grubby little tape is going to change your life, it’s going to detonate some ecstatic explosion inside you, and you will never be that person ever again. And a thousand miles later you chance across another copy in the cutout bin of some strip-mall record shop and you buy it for 49 cents and you put it in the hands of someone you love who’s never heard it, and you look at their uncomprehending expression and think “that was me, once upon a time.” And if you’ve chosen wisely and the quantum entanglement is aligned just so, the chain reaction goes on.

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Waxing Nostalgic Cover Albums: Styx, Big Bang Theory

By Jeffery X Martin

In retrospect, there weren’t too many corporate pop/rock bands quite as ballsy as Styx. They were great proponents of the concept album, managing to score hit after hit with singles that, taken out of their album’s context, gave no clue to the listener of what they were really about. While I was slow dancing with yet another girl who wouldn’t let me touch her butt to “The Best of Times” in Tracy White’s basement during another hormonally-interminable eighth grade party, I had no idea I was listening to a song about America, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the Seventies and rushing headfirst into the Eighties. I just knew I was staying a virgin for another long weekend.

Styx’s biggest hits tended to be the namby-pamby Dennis DeYoung ballads. The rocking songs like “Heavy Metal Poisoning” never had quite the same popularity. It’s interesting, then, that for their covers album, Big Bang Theory, the band reaches out for the rockiest rock they can rock your rocks to. Even more interesting is how well it works.

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Music Review: Bosnian Rainbows, Bosnian Rainbows

By Chelsea Spear

Remember the ’80s? Not the kitschified dayglo era of synthesizers and Patrick Nagel portraits, but the pre-Nirvana era of college radio, fly-by-night indie labels, and adventurous bands with eclectic influences. Bosnian Rainbows, a Latin alternative supergroup-of-sorts, exemplifies the magpie musical styles and willingness to experiment that made the previous generation’s proto-alternative bands so addictive.

Bosnian Rainbows trade in expansive, cinematic melodies, driven by curlicuing guitar riffs and strong arrangements. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the creative force behind the band, perfected these skills with his previous band, the Mars Volta. Reacting to what he saw as a dictatorial manner of producing and fronting a band, the guitarist opted for a more democratic experience with his next band.

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