// Category Archive for: Music

Music Review: Luke Winslow-King, Everlasting Arms

By Melissa Bratcher

New Orleans transplant Luke Winslow-King is spreading his ever so creative wings and trying a new musical direction. Sort of. Not every song on his new album Everlasting Arms hews to his faithful reproductions of pre-war, deep South music (though those are the best tracks), and he tries on some rockabilly pants and samba beats for size. The results are mixed.

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Music Review: Monty Python’s Total Rubbish: The Complete Collection

By Melissa Bratcher

Full disclosure: I have no idea how to review the new, incredibly comprehensive, fully-remastered, nine-disc Monty Python box set, Monty Python’s Total Rubbish: The Complete Collection. I, like any good misfit worth her salt, went through a rather serious Monty Python phase while in high school, and spent every weekend watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus with my best pal Lori (and arguing over who was cuter, Michael Palin or Eric Idle. The answer was yes), imitating the sketches, knotting handkerchiefs for our heads, and being fully immersed in Pythonalia. I have no objectivity when it comes to Monty Python. I love them. Full on. I learned more about world history from Monty Python than I did in high school (of course, if it had been taught in funny voices, I might’ve paid more attention).

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Concert Review: Thank You Scientist/Coheed And Cambria at Kool Haus

By Tyler Hodg

Toronto, ON
October 1, 2014

On October 1, New York prog-rockers Coheed and Cambria treated their fans in Toronto to a night they won’t soon forget. Eleven years after its initial release, the album In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 breathes fresh air with the band playing it in its entirety on a 25-date North American tour. Bringing along their friends Thank You Scientist, Coheed and Cambria tore the roof off of the Kool Haus and celebrated not only the album that brought them success, but also their fans for their endless support.

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Music Review: Zola Jesus, TAIGA

By Ben van D

If Frozen were a greasepaint opera, a Brechtian musical set in a hinterland abyss, and directed by Robert Wilson, it would bear a passable resemblance to TAIGA. “Let It Go” would fit in surprisingly well with the themes of self-reinvention and severance from the tethers of the past running through Zola Jesus’s (Nika Danilova) latest offering. Even the winter woodland setting from which the album draws its name is a parallel. None of these are to TAIGA‘s detriment, however. This is markedly a pop album, more so by far than any of Danilova’s offerings to date, and any passing likeness to Disney’s ubiquitous pop monster hit is a feather in its cap.

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Music Review: Goblin, Beyond the Darkness

By Jeffery X Martin

The Italian progressive rock band Goblin has been in existence, in some iteration or another, for over 40 years. Most people know them from their multiple collaborations with film director, Dario Argento, in creating soundtracks for his horror movies. Goblin hasn’t made any new music, though, since the soundtrack for Non so honno in 2001. At this point, they’ve earned the right to rest on their laurels a tad, so instead of new music, Goblin releases a lot of greatest hits compilations.

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Music Review: Lowell, We Loved Her Dearly

By Less Lee Moore

You live in a man’s world, I live in my own world.
I tell you I don’t want you anymore.
—Lowell, “I Love You Money”

Imagine if there were a female singer/songwriter/musician who’s a Britney Spears-loving feminist, a former stripper who self-identifies as bisexual, and who has synasthesia. And imagine that her music is poppy and provocative and that she sings like both an angel and a banshee. That person is real and her name is Lowell.

Lowell first came to my attention earlier this year with her dynamic and delightful EP I Killed Sara V. (review). Its first track, “Cloud 69,” is a unique slice of sugary, sexy pop and like nothing else I’ve heard. We Loved Her Dearly contains that EP’s five tracks plus seven more and it’s going to blow your mind and break your heart.

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Music Review: Death From Above 1979, The Physical World

By Less Lee Moore

I can’t sell you if no one buys.
Point out your heroes, click and they die.
—Death From Above 1979, “The Physical World”

Death From Above formed and later added the 1979 (under a bit of duress, mind you). The duo released some EPs and an album. Then they broke up for a decade and during that time, didn’t speak to each other for five years. Eventually, they started emailing each other again and took steps towards reforming. They toured for a couple of years, including a set at Coachella in 2011. Now they are back with a second album of new material and as much as it pains me to say this, I like it better than everything else they’ve ever done.

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Music Review: Gerard Way, Hesitant Alien

By Tyler Hodg

When it comes to music, change is often a good thing. New settings and surroundings can result in unique creations. Off the heels of a successful past, Gerard Way tries to write a new chapter in his music career with his first post-My Chemical Romance album, Hesitant Alien. It’s not easy starting again, but Gerard Way insists on proving his validity as a solo artist. Unfortunately, the “Black Parade” singer isn’t able to live up to expectations and delivers a painfully mediocre album.

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Music Review: Lucinda Williams, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone

By Melissa Bratcher

There is no one quite like Lucinda Williams: her voice, her particularly Southern identity, her phrasing, her stunning writing. A true American iconoclast, she has been recording for over four decades, and shows no signs of compromising her integrity or sense of self. On her new album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, released on her own independent label, Highway 20 Records, Williams speaks for the poor, the rejected, and the disenfranchised while asking for compassion. Of the 20 songs on the album, she wrote 18 of them, and her very particular voice could not be clearer.

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New Country For Old Men: The Eternal Mystery Of Tim McGraw, Part 2

By Jeffery X Martin

1994 was a big year for Tim McGraw. With his first single, “Indian Outlaw,” he deftly revealed just how far we have to go with our relations with and conceptions of Native American people. Not that he meant to; he just released a terrible song, filled with awful clichés that reached Number One on the US charts because white people, right?

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