Music Review: Ambrosia Parsley, Weeping Cherry

By Melissa Bratcher

There’s a compelling, understated darkness to Ambrosia Parsley’s Weeping Cherry. The former Shivaree front woman’s new album has an undercurrent of dread and danger running through: off-kilter keyboards, fiery slashes of guitar, dangerous percussion, and Parsley’s own curious, fascinating vocals. The songs are evocative and rich, experimental and strange. Even the most typical song structure (verse-chorus-verse), becomes a bit twisted in her hands.

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Music Review: Jimbo Mathus, Blue Healer

By Melissa Bratcher

“Well bless my soul and hush my mouth.” With the first words on Blue Healer, you know that Jimbo Mathus’s latest is going to be more of the gritty, swampy Southern Rock that is his stock in trade. Drawing from a lifetime in the South, Jimbo Mathus has created his manifesto with Blue Healer. It’s a concept album that eschews the parts of concept albums that make them so annoying, and instead is filled to the brim with excellent hooks, fine songwriting, and and a layer of honesty that is deeply authentic.

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Music Review, Death, N.E.W.

By Tyler Hodg

The music industry is a funny one: how a band can exist for 40 years, go completely unappreciated, and then experience a surge in popularity decades into the game is quite remarkable. Detroit punk rock band Death has accomplished this very feat—and in grand style, naturally—with their first album since 1976. Appropriately titled, N.E.W. is refreshing and surprisingly current, and is a testament to the longevity of rock’n’roll music.

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Canadian Music Week 2015: Popshifter Picks

By Less Lee Moore

Canadian Music Week 2015, or CMW, has been around for 33 years. This year’s CMW runs from May 1 to 10, and there are over 1,000 participating bands. That sounds overwhelming, but thankfully the CMW schedule page is searchable by date, venue, and band to make it easier to plan out who you want to see, where, and when.

There is an embarrassment of riches this year in terms of music. Here are my suggestions for what you should check out at this year’s CMW.

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Music Review: Marching Church, The World Is Not Enough

By Less Lee Moore

I’ve said it before: there must be something in the water in Scandinavia. How else do you explain the incredible music coming from the area? Much has been written on Popshifter about Iceage as well as the band Lower, both from Copenhagen. They’re friends who’ve toured together as well as collaborated on music, film, and photography.

Iceage singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt has now released a solo album under the enticing moniker of Marching Church. No doubt there are those who see the phrase “solo album” associated with a 23-year-old guy who looks like Leo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet and roll their eyes to the heavens. But we were all 23 once. I’m certain that a lot of people reading this never unleashed music as stupendous as the last three Iceage albums when they were that age, so let’s hold off on the snark.

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Music Review: Male Gaze, Gale Maze

By Less Lee Moore

I’d never heard Blasted Canyons, Mayyors, or The Mall, so references to these San Francisco bands failed to pique my interest when a link to Male Gaze’s “Cliffs Of Madness” single made its way into my inbox last year. What I did like about the song was that it reminded me a bit of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry (in its nervy, post-punkishness) and a bit of Modern English (in the way Male Gaze singer Matt Jones sounds like Robbie Grey). It’s a real thunderstorm of a track with vocal and guitar melodies that present themselves at just the right moments.

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Record Store Day 2015: What To Look For

By Tyler Hodg

With the annual Record Store Day creeping up quickly—April 18, to be exact—now is the perfect time to start thinking about what you want to purchase. There are tons of great bands participating this year, but, as usual, these releases aren’t promoted in the same way a full-length album of new material would be. That’s why I’ve assembled a short list of some my personal “need to check out”s, “might be good”s and “WTF?”s for Record Store Day 2015:

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Music Review: Various Artists, Ork: Box

By Less Lee Moore

Rock and roll is nothing if not incestuous. Everyone likes to talk about who stole from whom (or if you’re less curmudgeonly, who influenced whom), but when music scenes are small, close-knit, and under the radar, such through lines are nearly impossible to pinpoint.

And so it is with the Ork Records Ork: Box, out on Record Store Day 2015, from the always-impressive Numero Records. You might wonder how bands as seemingly disparate as The dB’s, Television, Mick Farren, Link Cromwell (a.k.a. Lenny Kaye), and Cheetah Chrome would nestle so snugly together, but one listen to this dazzling collection of singles will dissuade any doubt. What’s even more remarkable is that the tracks are arranged in chronological order but play like the most cohesive mix tape ever.

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Music Review: Lows In The Mid Sixties, Volume 54: Kosmic City Part 2

By Melissa Bratcher

Who doesn’t love Record Store Day? Piles of picture discs, odd singles, repressings of things you’ve always wanted but couldn’t shell out the car payment-prices for on Ebay. Numbero (an offshoot label of the amazing Numero Group) is releasing Lows In The Mid Sixties, Volume 54: Kosmic City Part 2, on vinyl for Record Store Day 2015, and it is . . . odd.

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Music Review: Thor, Unchained Deluxe Reissue

By Tim Murr

There are so many sub genres in heavy metal that black metal progenitors Mayhem stand under the same umbrella as pop glamsters Poison. Which is kind of cool when you think about it. There’s so much that you can do with metal, so many styles you can mix in, so many identities that exist shoulder to shoulder.

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