// Category Archive for: Music

Music Review: Banditos, Banditos

By Melissa Bratcher

When was the last time you heard a kick-ass kazoo solo (or even a bad one)? On the Banditos’ self-titled debut you’ll find one, and realize that you don’t hear enough kazoo in your daily life. And while that’s an interesting moment on Banditos, there is so much more to dig. The band is tight, taking disparate influences and deftly weaving them into a sound that is completely their own. It’s an incredibly assured, fully formed debut featuring smart songwriting and three vocalists who each add their own flavor to the songs.

(more…)

Music Review: Paul Revere and the Raiders, Revolution! (Reissue)

By Melissa Bratcher

Paul Revere and the Raiders were weirder than they got credit for. In 1967, during the making of their Revolution! album, lead singer Mark Lindsay was living at 10050 Cielo Drive with producer/musician Terry Melcher, making music and doing the sorts of things that young rock stars do. Paul Revere, the band’s namesake, wasn’t in the studio much, having been relegated to playing chords on the organ and taking a backseat to Lindsay’s musical ambition and insane charisma. This left Lindsay and Melcher free to make Revolution! more experimental and freewheeling than other Raiders outings, with a host of the finest session musicians (Ry Cooder! Taj Mahal! Hal Blaine! Glen Campbell!). And Revolution! has some excellently weird moments.

(more…)

Music Review: Them Are Us Too, Remain

By Less Lee Moore

In the press release for Remain, the debut album from southern California duo Them Are Us Too, the band is compared to both Cocteau Twins and The Sundays. It’s a description that is not an exaggeration.

(more…)

Music Review: Various Artists, Rock! Wreck! & Rule!

By Melissa Bratcher

What do you get when you marry B-movie sensibilities with punk ethos and rockabilly’s hard driving, stand-up bass flavored beats? Did you answer “psychobilly?” Of course you did.

(more…)

Music Review: Jacco Gardner, Hypnophobia

By Melissa Bratcher

On Hypnophobia, the follow up to Dutch multi-instrumentalist/producer Jacco Gardner’s 2013 Cabinet Of Curiosities, the lines between sleeping and waking are blurred. Hypnophobia is dream-like and gauzy, with gorgeous, hazy melodies. It feels like Syd Barrett joined the Beatles.

(more…)

Music Review: Part 1, Funeral Parade EP (Reissue)

By Less Lee Moore

Perhaps the only reason that hundreds of copies of Part 1’s 1982 EP Funeral Parade weren’t burned at Southern Baptist churches during the eighties is because there were only 300 of them pressed. Lord knows if I’d heard their vicious, anti-religious lyrics and angular, distorted music back then I would have been an instant fan. Now we can all rejoice because Sacred Bones has reissued a remastered version of Funeral Parade in a deluxe gatefold sleeve. The UK band also reformed in 2013 and did a brief tour of North America for the first time ever this past April.

(more…)

Music Review: Ivan & Alyosha, It’s All Just Pretend

By Melissa Bratcher

Seattle’s Ivan & Alyosha make thoughtful and inspiring music that resides at the crossroads of power pop and folk, but that doesn’t explain enough. Their latest, It’s All Just Pretend, is captivating, as well as familiar, but not derivative. It feels like a classic album but refreshingly new. It’s charming, but not twee.

(more…)

Music Review: Hannah Miller, Hannah Miller

By Tyler Hodg

Nashville folk-pop singer Hannah Miller has returned with a self-titled album and this time she is channeling a darker, edgier side. This is her third full-length album, and Miller has developed a more mature sound, not that her earlier work was exactly child’s play. The ten new songs (plus an alternate version of an already included track) featured on the album are equally as impressive as her previous efforts, if not better.

(more…)

Music Review: Various Artists, Popcorn Exotica

By Melissa Bratcher

Croydon Municipal’s third album of Popcorn tracks, Popcorn Exotica, is another unbelievable confection. “Popcorn” refers to a Belgian club music scene that peaked commercially in the 1970s, and the common thread is the rather sleepy tempo. DJs would sometimes play 45s at 33 RPM to hit the proper beat.

(more…)

DVD and Music Review: Jobriath A.D.

By Hanna

Jobriath A.D. tells the story of singer and would-be glam rock star Jobriath’s career and personal life. It focuses on the period when he was professionally active between 1968 and his death in 1983. His story is told nearly entirely from interviews with people who were involved in his life and career at the time or people who were influenced professionally by his work. There is some narration (by Henry Rollins, no less) to tie parts of the interviews together, and a series of animations provide visual interest and make up for the fact that there exists very little actual footage of Jobriath.

(more…)