// Category Archive for: Reviews

Béla Fleck, Throw Down Your Heart, Africa Sessions Part Two

By Lisa Anderson

Many people may not know this, but the roots of banjo music actually go back to Africa. Eclectic American banjo player Béla Fleck traveled to Africa to explore this history and learn from African musicians. The result was the 2008 documentary Throw Down your Heart, and the 2009 album Throw Down Your Heart, Tales From The Acoustic Planet, Africa Sessions. Part two of the album was released early this year.
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The Man From Another Place, The Loneliest Cowboy EP

By John Lane

There’s something a-brewing in Scotland, and aye, I believe it has the whiff of genius. (Macbeth, Scotland, witches reference—anyone? Bueller?)

The Man From Another Place (a.k.a. Dan Hirst) has proven himself to perhaps be the next incarnation of Burt Bacharach, providing five cinematic tunes on his debut EP that defy the listener to not daydream or soul-search. The title itself, The Loneliest Cowboy, hints at its instrumental-only air, suggesting a mute cowboy who wistfully ambles along with his ol’ horse and lets the music in his head do the talking while visualizing sweeping country vistas.
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The Dudes, Blood Guts Bruises Cuts

By Danny R. Phillips

In my younger years, Power Pop was a genre that I avoided it like the Black Plague or Herpes. As a long time advocate of the virtues of punk rock I could not allow myself to support music with such an identity crisis. Was it hard rock? Bubblegum? What? With a few exceptions, mainly Cheap Trick, The Cars, and the riff from “Jessie’s Girl,” it was not something I championed or even tolerated.

Then came the 1990s and with it came bands like Weezer and the exceptional songsmith Matthew Sweet, musicians who embraced the principles of power pop and drank fully of its long and storied past. Perhaps years had softened my barriers or I was now old enough to see that punk has its limits. Power Pop was no longer the enemy.
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Everybody Was In The French Resistance. . . Now!, Fixin’ The Charts Volume One

By Noreen Sobczyk

When I first heard that Dyan Valdes (The Blood Arm) and Eddie Argos (Art Brut) were recording an album together, I was excited.

Argos always has plenty of humor and clever turns of phrase in his musical arsenal to fight the musical blahs. His antics with faux glam band Glam Chops even made Christmas music more enjoyable. So when I read Fixin’ the Charts was an album of answer songs I thought, “Well, that’s clever.”
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I Found All The Parts, By Laura Faeth

By Less Lee Moore

In I Found All The Parts: Healing The Soul Through Rock ‘n’ Roll, we learn a lot about author Laura Faeth as we follow her on an important journey.
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Venus In Fur: Femininity, Masculinity, And The Wolfman

By Hanna

When The Wolfman‘s release date was announced, feminist blog Jezebel asked why there aren’t many female werewolves, concluding that because werewolves are disgusting and hairy, people don’t want to equate that with women. They also pointed out that vampires are a lot more popular than werewolves at the moment, and described that position with regards to sex.

Although the answer to the question about women and werewolves lies exactly in those issues, Jezebel drew the wrong conclusions.
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Showdown At The Oscars

By Lisa Anderson

Image from
Awards Daily

As Oscar night grows near, two of the most closely watched nominations are for Best Picture and Best Director. Former spouses James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow are pitted against each other in both categories—Cameron for Avatar and Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. If Cameron wins, it will be a rare triumph for science fiction, one achieved despite controversy about Avatar‘s content. Bigelow stands not only to score an upset victory against a blockbuster, but also to become the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director.
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These New Puritans, Hidden

By Stuart Myerburg

Imagine Philip Glass recording a symphony with Nitzer Ebb, Nine Inch Nails, and Depeche Mode and you have some idea of the singularly daring sound created by These New Puritans on their second album, Hidden.

Frontman and principal songwriter Jack Barnett dubs it a “hybrid,” which is a perfect description of the aggressive, synth-based songs his band couples with classical strings and woodwinds.
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Desktop EP

By Megashaun

Desktop is a combination of the creative forces of two men: Keith Thompson (from Electric Six and Johnny Headband) and Zach Curd (from Suburban Sprawl Music’s The Pop Project). When I first discovered the act several months ago, it was mainly with the intention of reviewing their all-too-short debut EP. At only three songs in length, it can’t possibly be difficult to describe them adequately.

But that’s exactly the position I found myself in. Having heard the EP hundreds of times now, I’m still at a loss to talk about it with adjectives other than “kick-ass,” “amazing,” and “awesome.”
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Sloan, Hit & Run (EP)

By Jemiah Jefferson

The newest original-material release from Toronto’s ambassadors of brainy party rock shows the four members of Sloan further exploring their masterful sound with these five tracks, one from each member (with an additional track from the prolific Chris Murphy).
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