// Category Archive for: Music Reviews

Squirrel Nut Zippers, Lost At Sea

By J Howell

Live records can be dicey propositions. All too often, in attempting to capture the exhilaration of “being there,” live albums fall flat, sounding muddy, noisy, and altogether bad. There are the rare exceptions, though, and while it’s not quite perfect, Squirrel Nut Zippers’ live return from a nine-year hiatus is one of the better live records in recent memory.
(more…)

Air, Love 2

By Emily Carney

Gainsbourg (both Papa Serge and daughter Charlotte), Brel, Françoise Hardy, Jane Birkin, Dalida: these are all various names in French Pop that have made a massive impact even in the Anglo-Saxon world of music. Unfortunately in the United States, most French music is consigned to the “World Music” bin in record stores, guaranteeing that most of the record-buying populace won’t hear of it.

One notable exception is the French duo Air, comprised of Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benôit Dunckel (whose side project called Darkel yielded the lovely 2006 song, “At the End of the Sky”). This band has truly earned its place in the canon of French Pop.
(more…)

Otis Redding, The Best: See & Hear

By Adam McIntyre

A new release of a refreshingly different kind, Otis Redding: Respect Live 1967 is the bonus DVD accompanying Shout Factory’s new best-of Otis Redding CD. Despite being presented sort of strangely, the DVD of a pair of performances from 1967 is mandatory viewing for a vast cross-section of music lovers.
(more…)

The Flaming Lips, Embryonic

By Adam McIntyre

Nothing makes me sicker than hype, and people hyping things up unnecessarily, so I’m going to make this review as short as possible because there is about to be a tsunami of nauseating hype surrounding the new Flaming Lips album, Embryonic.
(more…)

Morphine, At Your Service

By Noreen Sobczyk

Morphine’s music is like a steamy, illicit affair in a slightly dodgy hotel room. It’s dark and smoky and might take you someplace you oughtn’t go, but you are compelled to travel none the less.
(more…)

Big Star, Keep An Eye On The Sky

By Kaye Telle

The mythical proportions of Big Star are hard to deny, so I won’t. Big Star are a treasure worth (re)discovering; they have gems worth seeking out and examining over and over, for years to come.
(more…)

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds, Dracula Boots

By Julie Finley

Kid Congo Powers (a.k.a. Brian Tristan) has been around. . . and around! If you know the name, you know his pedigree! If you are reading this, you probably dig at least one of the following: The Cramps, The Gun Club, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Congo Norvell, Knoxville Girls, Kid & Khan, Fur Bible, Botanica, Mark Eitzel, The Divine Horsemen, The Angels of Light, Die Haut, etc. (or possibly all of them). He’s sort of a renegade musician—he shows up in a lot of things—but in the past few years, he’s finally doing his own thing, where he’s the focus.
(more…)

Jay Reatard, Watch Me Fall

By Less Lee Moore

Maybe he’s grown up a bit since the days when the Memphis music scene dubbed him “Little Lord Punkleroy,” but thankfully, Jay Reatard hasn’t become boring.

In a recent article on the Matador Records blog, he noted:

“A lot of bands these days, they approach the making of an album like it’s collecting songs, they don’t think about how all of the songs are going to work together. They sequence their albums on iTunes, wondering what songs sound best next to each other rather than putting them together as they were written. That’s not an album.”

If these songs were written in the order they appear on the album, then Watch Me Fall is a great achievement for Jay Reatard. If you listen closely enough, you can actually hear the sound of an artist evolving.
(more…)

Bat For Lashes, Two Suns

By Julie Finley

I’d heard of Bat For Lashes last year, and the name didn’t grab me, so I ignored it. I had inadvertently absorbed the info that the act was critically acclaimed. Big Deal, right? So when I was on vacation earlier this year in Dublin, I saw promo posters in almost all of the record stores I went into. . . still ignored it!

(more…)

Electric Six, KILL

By Christian Lipski

“You can’t run away from your legs, because that’s what you’re trying to run away from them with!”
—unknown SubGenius

In “Waste Of Time And Money,” the second track on the new Electric Six album KILL, Dick Valentine sings: Take this back to where we started. It’s not possible to avoid your origins forever; eventually you’re going to have to accept that your beginnings are part of what makes you unique, and embrace them. Or in Electric Six’s case, you just plug them in and dance along with them.
(more…)