// Category Archive for: Reviews

Scrambles of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Remixed by Extraterrestrials

By Emily Carney

In 1977, two separate US spacecraft, Voyager I and Voyager II, were sent into space to explore the solar system and, ostensibly, any worlds that perhaps existed beyond the one with which we are most familiar.

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The Autumn Defense, Once Around

By Less Lee Moore

Wilco fans have known about The Autumn Defense, a side project featuring Patrick Sansone and John Stirratt, for years. For the rest of us, their latest album Once Around is both a surprise and a pleasure.
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show Blu-Ray, 35th Anniversary Edition

By Christian Lipski

The Rocky Horror Picture Show played in theaters in 1975, and was finally released on VHS here in the US around 20 years ago. The movie had been around for 15 years before there was ever a legitimate copy available. People had been dressing up as the characters and mimicking the movie for FIFTEEN YEARS without a way to practice at home (there were bootleg copies around, but oh so rare).

When the VHS tape came out, it was honestly a kind of letdown. Now anyone could practice their part wherever there was a VCR, without waiting seven days to stand in line and pay your money to watch the bug screen for some nuance you forgot. But the old-old-timers eventually dropped their gripe, just as the guys riding buggies stopped yelling at the guys in cars. Time marches on, and so, too does obsession.
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Sarah Kirkland Snider, Penelope

By Chelsea Spear

Photo © Murat Eyuboglu

Monday morning, 10 a.m. The sixth floor of the UMass Boston Healey Library, overlooking Boston Harbor. I have been working on this goddamned paper about Marc Hirsch and Billy Collins and the role of the audience in poetry for two weeks now. The words on the page have calcified into incoherence, but I still feel the pressure of academia goading me towards a conclusion that wraps my argument into a tidy bow.

My eyes shift from the eyestrain-inducing computer screen to a small rowboat in the Harbor, by the Corita Kent gas tanks. A tiny woman, clad in an elegant grey wool coat with the shiniest brass buttons, stands at the hull of the boat, lifting her arms to the overcast sky in a dramatic gesture. I can hear her voice—a high soprano, rich in tone and trembling with vibrato—perfectly.
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Weep, Worn Thin

By Less Lee Moore

You may have thought that Weep was just a one hit wonder.

You were wrong.

Worn Thin is the new album from the band and it’s wonderful.
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Erland & The Carnival, Trouble In Mind EP

By Less Lee Moore

If you didn’t know better, you might think that Trouble In Mind, the new EP from British folk band Erland & The Carnival, was recorded sometime in the mid-to-late-sixties and just unearthed last week.

Interestingly, the title track is the most modern-sounding song on the EP, with its gentle, yet catchy, vocals and harpsichord.

After the opening of “My Name Is Carnival,” which recalls the intro to Cream’s “White Room,” the rolling drumbeat, tremolo guitars, spacey keyboards, and striking harmonies conspire to transport the listener into the past, perhaps a concert scene from a documentary about British folk rock or Haight-Ashbury.
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The Black Heart Procession, Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit

By J Howell

Throughout the eight tracks on Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit, the new mini-album from San Diego’s always-intriguing The Black Heart Procession, there’s plenty of what fans love about the band: their noir feel is present in spades. Overall, though, while Blood Bunny/Black Rabbit is an enjoyable record, as a whole it feels a little like what it is, I suppose: a short work between larger, more cohesive artistic statements.

BHP mainstays Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel have always produced impressive work, and over six albums the band has carved its own dark, beautiful, and often sexy niche in modern music. While this record is quite good, it doesn’t expand much on that remarkable body of work.
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The Legendary Pink Dots, Seconds Late For The Brighton Line

By Hanna

Seconds Late For The Brighton Line is called the Legendary Pink Dots‘ 30th anniversary album, and while I can’t find anything specifically 30th anniversary about it, it does fit that title to some extent.

The album is not an overview of all their styles; in fact, it has a rather specific style, especially for an LPD album, but in other ways, it is extremely typical and in some ways, familiar. This is helped by the the fact that several of the songs were premiered during the band’s 30th anniversary tour. “Hauptbahnhof 20:10” and “Russian Roulette” were both very impressive live, and do not sound much different on the album.
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Let Me In

By Lisa Anderson

As the leaves turn and the air grows colder, a few extra horror movies always make their way into theaters. This year, one of the most anticipated new releases is Let Me In, a remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film, Let The Right One In. Transplanted from 1980s Stockholm, Sweden to 1980s Los Alamos, New Mexico, this version is helmed by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves.

The basic storyline is the same: a bullied 12-year-old boy in a dreary, snowbound apartment complex befriends a mysterious new neighbor his age. At first, their relationship appears to be typical preteen love, albeit between two strange children. It turns out though, that she is a vampire, and the adult human who lives with her has been committing murder to obtain blood for her. Before the story is over, vampire, boy, and man all see their lives change permanently.
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Kristian Hoffman, Fop

By Hanna and Matt Keeley

Kristian Hoffman is perhaps best known for working with the brilliant Klaus Nomi; he was Nomi’s musical director and the wordsmith behind Nomi’s original songs. If you’ve sat down with the records, you know how good those songs were and still are, both in performance (there’s a reason Nomi’s one of Rush Limbaugh’s favorites) and in songwriting. Nomi should have conquered the world; instead, he died too early.

Hoffman, on the other hand, didn’t sleep, and has been working with loads of cool people, including James White and the Contortions, Rufus Wainwright, Sparks, Lydia Lunch and. . . look, this’ll just be a laundry list of who’s who in good music, so just rest assured: if they’re talented, he’s probably worked with ’em. He’s also done solo records, of which Fop is the newest. It’s such an event that Popshifter enlisted TWO, count ’em TWO, reviewers to cover it.
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