// Category Archive for: Reviews

Music Review: The Wood Brothers, The Muse

By Melissa Bratcher

I’ll just put this out there now: I think I’m in love with The Muse. The Wood Brothers’ new album is pure auditory bliss and I might never stop listening to it. Recorded “the old fashioned way,” with the band circled around microphones and all in the same room, The Muse has warmth and analog coziness. There’s a loose-limbed, ramshackleness to it that is delightful.

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Music Review: Blouse, Imperium

By Less Lee Moore

Not sure how Blouse’s debut passed me by, but I’m certainly glad to know of them now. Their second album, Imperium, is a shoegazer’s daydream: echoey, deadpan vocals and layers upon layers of reverbed guitars and bass. From a lyrical perspective, Imperium is fixated on looking and seeing, themes that recur frequently in the band’s clever lyrics.

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Concert Review: White Lies at The Opera House

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto, ON
October 1, 2013

Waiting for White Lies to take the stage on Tuesday, I think I might have been trembling just a bit. If you’ve heard me raving about their recent (and third) album Big TV then it won’t surprise you (review). If you haven’t, then you need to hear the album immediately, but only if you love sweeping, mildly melancholic pop with damn-near-poetic lyrics.

Opening act In The Valley Below had a cool look and a sound to match. The male members of the band were dressed in shirts, pants, and leather suspenders, while singer Angela Gail showed off a stunning white prairie dress and a black hat. She and guitarist/singer Jeffrey Jacob had lovely, mournful harmonies and their music was just dark enough to provide a nice appetizer for White Lies.

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Music Review: The Waitresses, Just Desserts: The Complete Waitresses

By Chelsea Spear

To bite a phrase from The Simpsons, is there a more misunderstood and underrated new wave band than the Waitresses? Those familiar with them in these post-millennial times probably only know their trio of radio hits—”I Know What Boys Like,” “Christmas Wrapping,” and the theme song from the sitcom Square Pegs. While these songs don’t misrepresent their work, their songs were weirder, complex, and more interesting than those three tracks would suggest. For many years, the only way curious listeners could hear the band’s deep tracks was to seek out The Best of the Waitresses, a remastered-for-CD compilation from 1990. Omnivore Recordings has finally given the Waitresses their Just Desserts with a two-disc collection of their recordings for Polydor.

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Music Review: Blitzen Trapper, VII

By Melissa Bratcher

Blitzen Trapper‘s Eric Earley has a story to tell. Loads of them, in fact. Blitzen Trapper’s seventh studio album has a seriously Southern Gothic vibe, which is pretty damn amazing for a guy from Portland, Oregon. VII is full of tantalizing, vivid details and stories that evoke dusty roads and swamplands and rusted out cars. It’s one hell of a ride.

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Music Review: Sunset Graves, Variant

By Jeffery X Martin

Sunset Graves is the creative brainchild of Andy Fosberry. Their debut album is called Variant.

That’s all I know. I kind of wish I didn’t even know that much. I want it to remain this beautiful, ethereal thing, a gift we won’t be able to understand until much later.

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DVD Review: V/H/S/2

By Jeffery X Martin

Here’s a fun experiment to try! Sit ten people around a campfire on a moonless night and start telling scary stories. Everyone takes a turn. What you’ll find quickly enough is that not everything scares everybody. One person may be frightened by ghost stories. Another may be terrified of demonic possession tales. One never knows.

That’s the joy—and the potential for failure—found within any horror anthology film. They’re all scattershot. Even the most ambitious of them (I’m thinking The ABCs of Death) have sections that miss the mark completely (although “D is for Dogfight” was a harrowing piece of storytelling).

2012’s V/H/S was the most consistently enjoyable of the new wave of anthologies, gathering together a conclave of great directors, such as Ti West and Adam Wingard, and letting them do what they do best: scare the shit of people. There are some genuinely unsettling moments in the film (that final sequence, directed by Radio Silence, still haunts my thoughts).

This year’s sequel, V/H/S/2, is better in every regard. The framing device is tighter, the stories are better and the scares are more frequent and more intense.

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Music Review: Headstones, Love + Fury

By Melissa Bratcher

Canada’s Headstones are back after a long hiatus and their return is welcome. Their brand of straightforward, damn the torpedoes and hang-on-to-your-wigs-and-keys rock is refreshing in this age of . . . well, you know the state of popular music today.

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Music Review: Kelley Stoltz, Double Exposure

By Melissa Bratcher

San Francisco’s Kelley Stoltz has made the jump from SubPop to Third Man Records and has embraced the garage rock ethos fully—Double Exposure was recorded in his garage. Not a mere garage this: it goes by the name of Electric Duck Studio and houses vintage synths, an amp used by a Stooge, and a tape machine used by The Residents.

Double Exposure is garagey in the best way. It’s full of exploration and experimentation, and all kinds of noises not naturally occurring in nature. It’s reminiscent of the ’60s psychedelia revival from the ’80s ala the Fuzztones and Fleshtones and their brethren, awash in handclaps and harmonies.

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Music Review: Allen Toussaint, Songbook

By Melissa Bratcher

Allen Toussaint has probably written your favorite song, and you didn’t even know it. His new album, the remarkable, amazing Songbook, is a live recording (including a DVD of the performance) of Allen Toussaint, a piano, and his venerable back catalogue. His songs have been covered by such diverse artists as The Rolling Stones, Glen Campbell, Warren Zevon, Devo, Irma Thomas, and The Who. Listening to Songbook, you can’t help but marvel at his songwriting brilliance.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Allen Toussaint was flooded out of his home and studio and relocated to New York City. There he began to perform solo shows at Joe’s Pub, resurrecting songs he hadn’t performed in years, honing his live show, and developing a passionate following outside of New Orleans. Songbook is taken from those Joe’s Pub shows; an intimate, warm set of songs written by Toussaint that were made popular by other artists.

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